The consolidation of the economy in a limited number of giant corporations is a major factor in the failure of the economic recovery. While this is apparent it has been obscured by the massive shift from traditional multinational corporations to the the new, transformative digital behemoths. The changes have brought a completely new order to the market for people with the technology and income to shift their buying to Amazon. While this may once have been done at locally owned stores that was already changed by Walmart in its destruction of flyover country or Trumpistan.
The result is continued economic stagnation for most of the US population. The exceptions are the key metropoles hosting a growing majority of innovation and entrepreneurial development that are picking up some trickle. But, as always with the old trickle down mythology, there is very little that makes it to the bottom half of the economy.
As I have written previously, if the economic is booming then what’s the problem? Yet people are asking why they are not seeing any improvement after forty years of stagnation. As this article shows the only the top percent are seeing the bulk of the gains with a hollowing out of the middle class.
Of course the great irony of the people being destroyed by corporate exploitation are the ones most clearly in support of Trump. That has resulted in the great tax reform that is doing the exact opposite of what these people thought they were getting. Surprise! What they are getting is a direct attack on the elements of neoliberalism and globalization that has made it possible for the bottom half of the middle class to hold on to that status. Whole retail changes in clothes and other commodities are based on cheap prices as a product of global manufacturing and trade. This appears to be doomed with Trump’s trade war.
The entire economic structure of hyper capitalism must be taken apart and logically reconstructed for the benefit of the majority of the population. Sustainability will make this a matter of survival but the need to reallocate assets for greater benefit could well be driven by antitrust actions as this article suggests.
This is a logical route for revolutionary change.
