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Matt Stoller Profile picture
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28 Oct, 6 tweets, 2 min read
This bill isn't anything close to a New Deal agenda in any way shape or form. Tossing around "New Deal" doesn't make it so.
FDR's goal during the New Deal was to break the power of oligarchs. He did it while governor of New York, he ran on it in 1932, and he implemented it when in office. That's not Biden or the Democrats or the progressives' goal. Social spending wasn't the New Deal.
Here's a comparison of FDR's infrastructure spending and whatever these plans are. They don't match up in their political goals. mattstoller.substack.com/p/will-monopol…
Example: There are plenty of executive levers Biden could pull to address pharmaceutical costs, but he hasn't pulled them. FDR would have pulled them. Biden waited for Congress.
The core critique here isn't that Biden abandoned progressives/Democrats, but that progressives/Democrats don't actually have a theory of the politics that makes sense. It's not Biden's fault that Democrats don't prioritize policy, corporate power or governing.
No! Biden put up Gary Gensler to run the Securities and Exchange Commision, and Gensler is aggressive. It's that Democrats don't notice market power in finance.

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
29 Oct
1. For at least five years, Facebook has been mired in significant public scandal. But Mark Zuckerberg simply doesn't care. Why? The answer is, he knows it doesn't matter, because the rule of law doesn't apply to the powerful. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
2. Zuckerberg has heard intense criticism since he started Facebook at Harvard. And while criticism would seem shameful to a normal person, to him, the scandals, far from a problem, are why he won. He is worth $100 billion bc he grabbed whatever he could, and others didn't.
3. The legal problems, the settlements for deception with the Federal Trade Commission, the $5B fine for violating it, foreign investigations, and the antitrust suit... to him it's noise. He's a builder, and builders build. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
Read 22 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
28 Oct
Re: antitrust, it's time for the committee vote on Jonathan Kanter. John Cornyn says he's concerned about big tech, but is attacking Kanter over Kanter's opposition to the consumer welfare standard. Says antitrust law has nothing to do with stronger labor law. @JohnCornyn
The fissures in the Republican Party are fairly significant. @JohnCornyn cannot both seek meaningful action against big tech and support the status quo. It doesn't work. The status quo *created* big tech dominance.
And @amyklobuchar talks about how so many mothers can't keep their kids from seeing 'crap' online, and blames big tech. Calls for bipartisan support for Kanter.
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
27 Oct
In a few minutes the new CFPB director @chopracfpb will testify before the House Financial Services Committee. I wonder if anyone will ask him about his initiative on big tech and financial data or it'll all be 'help consumers' vs 'be nicer to the banks.' financialservices.house.gov/calendar/event…
What a shocker, @PatrickMcHenry is using his time to bash the CFPB's burden on business and the Democrats 'far left agenda' and ignoring Chopra's initiative on big tech and financial data. Exactly like Democrats, totally uninterested in substance.
"We will be keeping a close eye on practices that might impede competition, we plan to listen carefully to local
financial institutions and nascent competitors on obstacles they face when seeking to challenge dominant
incumbents, including in Big Tech." financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/…
Read 13 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
27 Oct
No, Bidenomics isn't working. Higher demand is leading to inflation but there's massive demand leakage due to imports. We don't make much here anymore. People don't feel the boom because domestically it's ephemeral and they know it.
The current policy framework isn't getting us to make things in the U.S., and that's why people don't see this economy as doing well. It's factories in China getting the extra orders, not your neighbors. msn.com/en-us/money/ma…
This is what Trump and Biden have wrought, and it's because most policymakers simply do not believe making things is important, except in China, where they believe making things is essential.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
21 Oct
1. This week Biden did something quite useful on monopoly. 40 million Americans have some form of hearing loss. And yet hearing aids, unlike most other consumer technologies, are super expensive and haven't dropped in price for decades. Why? mattstoller.substack.com/p/silencing-th…
2. The answer is... monopoly. Nearly all hearing aids come from a cartel of firms that own all parts of the hearing aid supply chain. mattstoller.substack.com/p/silencing-th…
3. These hearing aid firms have joined together to pool patents, so just to enter the market requires paying them a private tax. himpp.info/about-himpp/id…
Read 13 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
19 Oct
This article is a useful summary of the philosophy of inevitabilism that colors elite discourse around dominant firms. It goes, 'Multinationals are too big and clever and are their own sovereign power.'

The reality is these firms are creatures of state policy.
If big tech firms cannot be governed because they are too powerful, then it's neither our fault nor responsibility to govern them. If they can be governed bu tit's our libertarian philosophy of governance that makes big tech firms dominant, then it's our responsibility to do so.
The Chinese government is governing their big tech firms. The U.S. is starting to do so but is hindered by legacy libertarianism. Europe is making a big show of it while failing for the same reason. @vestager and their various bureaucrats do not actually want to govern.
Read 4 tweets

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