Question

Can monopoly bring desirable solutions in societies having an
inequitable distribution of income? Explain.

Answer 1

Many factors contribute to today’s rising inequality. The decline of unions, the offshoring of work, the rise of winner-take-all-economies in music, sports, film, and many other fields, as well as more stringent patent and copyright rules all play a role. But in the United States, one of the main factors behind soaring inequality is also the weakening of our country’s antimonopoly policy beginning in the 1970s.

The rapid rise in monopolization over the last generation has increased inequality in several ways. Monopolization means the powerful can charge citizens more for such basic goods as health care, housing, and travel. “In concrete terms, monopoly pricing on goods and services, in general, turns the disposable income of the many into capital gains, dividends, and executive compensation for the few,” write Lina Khan and Sandeep Vaheesan in a forthcoming article in the Harvard Law and Policy Review. Monopolization also means that the people who control corporations can pay workers less, knowing workers have fewer places to sell their labor.

“Monopoly, like most forms of concentrated power, is often brought to bear against the least advantaged in an unequal society.”
Furthermore monopoly, like most forms of concentrated power, is often brought to bear against the least advantaged in an unequal society. Monopolistic meatpackers and farm operators subject their slaughterhouse workers, who are predominantly people of color, and their farm workers, who are predominantly immigrants, to exploitative labor conditions and stop them from forming unions to achieve better treatment. Consolidation in the economy has been at the root of America’s poor job economy, under which minority Americans experience disproportionately high rates of unemployment. Monopoly, like the inequality it spurs, aggravates existing disparities. So the incomes are not evenly distributed among people through monopoly.

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