Monopolization and Labour Exploitation

Details: Published on Sunday, 02 April 2017 22:30; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1392 .... April 3, 2017
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Monopolization and Labour Exploitation

Marty Hart-Landsberg

Those who advocate "freeing the market" claim that doing so will encourage competition and thereby increase majority well-being. These advocates have certainly had their way shaping economic policies. And the results? According to several leading economists, the results include the growing monopolization of product markets and steady decline in labour's share of national income. Neither outcome desirable.

The economists -- David Autor, David Dorn, Lawrence F. Katz, Christina Patterson, and John Van Reenen -- did not actually seek to examine the consequences of decades of neoliberal economic policies. Rather they sought to understand why "there has been a decline in the U.S. labour share since the 1980s particularly in the 2000s."

What they found was evidence that... sales have become increasingly concentrated in a small number of firms across many industries. And, that "those industries where concentration rises the most have the sharpest falls in the labour share." Thus, "the [overall] fall in the labour share is mainly due to a reallocation of labour toward firms with lower (and declining) labour shares, rather than due to declining labour shares within most firms."