henry ford robber baron or captain of industry
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
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But it's happening. It would reduce American competitiveness, cost millions of jobs, penalize companies for growing and being profitable, kill funding for small-business startups, and empower unprecedented new regulatory powers to the deep state lawyers and bureaucrats in Washington. Hawley is no fan of the politics of Big Tech -- who is?
Hawley, who has a background as a lawyer, defends his bill by saying, "This country and this government shouldn't be run by a few mega-corporations. That's like saying we should bring back small pox.
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Trustbusting is based on the century-old leftist fairy tale that America had been taken over by rapacious "robber barons. Rockefeller were anything BUT villains who raped consumers with their monopolistic behavior and "stockpiles of wealth. The left disparaged the prosperity from the "Gilded Age" when these titans of industry helped convert America into the unrivaled industrial superpower that it became in the 20th century.
They were heroes who built or supplied the railroads, the steel and aluminum, our modern financial system, the oil and gas, and the automotive industry, to name a few. View Cartoon Monopolies were supposedly evil because they used their market power and domination to gouge consumers with ever-rising prices.
But then, as now, in every industry that was supposedly controlled by monopolists, prices fell rapidly; energy prices, transportation prices, financial services, cars and mass consumer items became affordable to the middle classes for spankings in first time in world history. Now Hawley is echoing liberal Democrats in his charge that America's total dominance in the trillion-dollar high-tech industries -- Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and the like -- "hasn't been a success for the consumer. Globalization has moved more than 1 billion people out of poverty. How are these companies "gouging" consumers? It's the greatest bargain in history, except for a Google search -- which is free. In too many instances, these companies have muzzled conservative opinions and voices.
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But, as Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio notes, "Antitrust laws aren't the right remedy for political attacks on free speech. That is what capitalism is all about.
America has come to dominate the tech world and hold at bay China, Japan and the European Union -- all of which want to replace us as globally dominant. Break up Apple, Google or Amazon and the big winner will be Beijing, as they seek to win the race for artificial intelligence, robotics and 5G networks. All Republicans should reject the comeback of progressive antitrust assaults against our free market system. If Hawley wants to break up monopolies, his efforts would be much better spent see more to break up the government school monopoly.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks.]
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