Zephyr Teachout - Break Em Up ; Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money

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To Lissarette, Merita, Cristina, Ariella, and Mama Rosa, the owner and providers at our sons daycare. Thank you for the joy, care, and warmth you have given our baby, and the peace of mind you have given me. Without you this book could not have been written.

by BERNIE SANDERS

When we turn on television or listen to the debate in Washington, we are so often told that the economy is booming. And yet, most of us are well aware that the economy today is not working for working people. Yes, a handful of billionaires and large corporations are doing better than they ever havebut at the same time, millions are struggling to secure the most basic necessities needed to survive.

Today, the richest 10 percent of Americans own an estimated 97 percent of all capital incomeincluding capital gains, corporate dividends, and interest payments. Since the 2008 Wall Street crash, 49 percent of all new income generated in America has gone to the top 1 percent. The three wealthiest people in our country now own more wealth than the bottom 160 million Americans. And the richest family in Americathe Walton family, which inherited about half of Walmarts stockis worth $200 billion and owns more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the American people.

While the corporate profits that presently go to a small number of ultra-wealthy families are at or near an all-time high, wages as a percentage of our economy are near an all-time low.

This did not happen by accident. We must understand that the move toward oligarchy has occurred in conjunction with a level of corporate consolidation and concentration not seen since the Gilded Age.

In the last four decades, nearly every single industry in America has become more concentrated. Monopolies and oligopolies rule over every aspect of American life, from the food we eat, And with less competition, these corporate behemoths are able to rip off consumers, extort suppliers, stifle innovation, drive down wages, and buy elections.

The monopolization of America is not some esoteric issueit is one of the trends that has created an economic crisis for working people all over our country.

If that seems familiar, that is because this dangerous trend similarly threatened our nation in a past eraand our government took action to stop it. Indeed, at the turn of the twentieth century, Congress empowered regulators to break up monopolies and halt consolidationand those antitrust laws helped workers gain a larger share of the economic pie.

However, in recent years, the courts and regulatory agencies have been taken over by corporate ideologues determined to weaken antitrust laws and accelerate the consolidation of industries across the country. And so here we are againin a new Gilded Age and a new era of monopolies dominating our economy and writing our laws.

We have seen giants like Amazon grow to control more than half of all e-commerce. The company employs various anticompetitive tactics to harm small businesses, all while it pays virtually no taxes in the communities where it operates and also pays zero federal income taxes after making billions in profits.

We have seen the consolidation of large hospital systems, which command higher prices and deliver worse service. Indeed, one analysis found that after major hospital mergers, local communities saw hospital prices rise by between 11 and 54 percent.

We have seen media mergers and Silicon Valley mergers that create a handful of news and technology conglomerates that control more and more of what we read, watch, and listen to in our democracy.

We have seen mega-mergers like the one between T-Mobile and Sprint, which represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the public good. Americans deserve affordable wireless access. This kind of merger will not only lead to fewer options and higher prices for consumers, but it could lead to 30,000 jobs lost and reduced wages for thousands more.

And in rural America, we have seen giant agribusiness conglomerates extract as much wealth from small communities as they can, while family farmers go bankrupt and, in many cases, are treated like modern-day indentured servants.

In too many rural communities there is only one buyer of crops, which means farmers and ranchers are at their mercy. They are forced to use one corporations feed and livestock. They are forced to accept one corporations costs, and they are forced to accept one corporations lower and lower payment rates.

The numbers are stark: today, just four large companies control 82 percent of the beef packing industry, 85 percent of soybean processing, 63 percent of pork packing, and 53 percent of chicken processing. At the same time, Monsanto controls 80 percent of U.S. corn and more than 90 percent of U.S. soybean seed patentsa situation that has only gotten worse after the Trump administration approved Monsantos disastrous merger with Bayer.

The result: today, for every dollar Americans spend on food, farmers earn less than 15 centswhich is the smallest share in the modern-day history of our nation.

None of this is random or inevitableit is happening because our government is allowing it to happen. But it doesnt have to be this way.

We can rediscover our American tradition of controlling corporate power and promoting fair competition through antitrust.

We can halt the consolidation and concentration of our economy, and reverse the trend in the same way that we did a century ago.

We can halt anticompetitive mergers, break up existing monopolies and oligopolies, and appoint federal regulators ready to take action on behalf of workers and consumersnot massive corporations. We can also use regulatory agencies to crack down on anticompetitive business practices, and we can institute new guidelines for proposed consolidation that makes sure mergers are approved only if they will not harm workers and consumers, or our economy as a whole.

We can do all of thisbut it will not happen by itself. It can happen only through a grassroots, bottom-up movement that understands the challenge in front of us, and then organizes against monopoly power in communities across this country.

This book is a blueprint for that organizing. In these pages, you will learn how monopolies and oligopolies have taken over almost every aspect of American life, and you will also learn about what can be done to stop that trend before it is too late.

Let me be clear: this book is not designed to make readers experts in the legal minutiae of antitrust. It is designed to empower people from all walks of life to join the movement to break up the power of these mega-corporations that are threatening our communities.

This will be no easy task. The effort to break up monopolies will be opposed by those very same corporations that are benefiting from the status quo. They will spend unlimited sums of money to try to preserve the current system that provides them so much wealth and power.