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Matt Stoller Profile picture
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16 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Covid's a bullshit excuse for higher beef prices. We pay $1.23/lb more for beef than we should because of meatpacker monopoly tax. mattstoller.substack.com/p/economists-t…
Underlying data compiled by Paul Hammel and Henry J. Cordes of the Omaha World-Herald, drawn from USDA sources. nptelegraph.com/agriculture/th…
A different way to see the same data. Here's the retail price of a pound of beef, allocated between the rancher, the packer, and the retailer. The blue line is the packer and it starts going up in 2015 when alleged price fixing starts,
That's about 18% of the cost of beef, as pure monopoly rent going to packers.

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
13 Oct
1. My newsletter BIG on monopoly power just went paid. You should subscribe. I'm surprised by the outpouring of support, but I shouldn't be. People hate monopolies because we hate being dependent on another's will. It's the humiliation. It's this image.
mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-big-announ…
2. We've felt an inchoate sense of frustration for years, at inequality, polarization, or just being put on hold with an automated phone tree and a customer service rep who is equally powerless. My goal is to show the source of the problem. Monopolies. mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-big-announ…
3. So much of what's going wrong with our commerce and politics is analyzed in isolation. A lot of it is traceable to one upstream cause - the consolidation of economic power. For instance, I've shown that monopolies induce shortages. mattstoller.substack.com/p/counterfeit-…
Read 17 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
12 Oct
I have a big announcement. I'm taking my Substack on monopolies paid. I'll explain more tomorrow, but the gist is that the newsletter has been so much more successful at addressing monopolies than I ever could have dreamed. mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-big-announ…
There's a lot of cynicism in politics, and for good reason. But over the last two years, our government has filed five antitrust suits against Google, two against Facebook, and one against Amazon. And a lot more is on the way, in sectors beyond tech.
mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-big-announ…
What a lot of people don't realize is that the business of politics is polarization, so as to disguise power. Anti-monopoly politics thrives on doing the opposite - patient teaching about our laws and history. And it works. mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-big-announ…
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
12 Oct
What makes this conversation difficult among Dems is they can't internalize that they *haven't* delivered. Obamacare is still sort of good instead of a broken promise and the foreclosure crisis was inevitable. Much easier to talk messaging than admit we harmed a lot of people.
A lot of people ask me why I'm so hard on Obama. It has nothing to do with Obama, it has to do with how most people experienced *our policies* that facilitated foreclosures and GoFundMe-driven health care. The goal is to understand how we failed, so we can change.
It's also why I'm so assertive about rejecting socialism or saying the problem is capitalism. There are specific policy choices we made that harmed many people. Either holding up Obama or focusing on abstract forces is the same thing - refusing to admit what we did.
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
11 Oct
I can’t decide what I want most.
I love coloring books!
It’s total bullshit that the Pelosi doll comes with a mask and the AOC doll doesn’t.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
9 Oct
In fact Democrats always do this. They poll and run ads on whatever polls highest. In 2010 they all ran ads bashing Wall Street and they got pasted even though everyone hated Wall Street.

You can't not deliver what you promised and continue to be heard. People will tune you out.
Biden promised to deal with Covid and return us to normalcy. Instead he's procrastinating and refusing to pick among factions in the White House. Dems can talk about whatever they want but voters can see they aren't getting what they were promised.
This isn't some sort of ideological factional problem either. The left, center, moderates, whatever, none of them actually seem to get that you have to deliver on governance. No one paid attention to the rental assistance getting out the door.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
9 Oct
Brilliant essay by Julius Krein. americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-va…
"Perhaps the clearest understanding of the U.S. economy is found in China, where officials and the media speak directly about America’s increasing dependence on high asset valuations, as opposed to growth in the real economy."
"Cold wars are led by states, and the U.S. state is subordinate to an oli­garchy. This class is reliant on China - for contract manufacturing, and to maintain high asset values.... To confront China, the U.S. state would first have to gain supremacy over the oligarchs."
Read 5 tweets

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