Came across this article from the Washington Monthly (from 2010) which I think touches on a big part of the problem in the new economy we have and the lack of jobs in a time when we should be theoretically accelerating job growth.
Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine? - Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman
First 10 minutes of the embedded webcast video is mainly an intro to the topic. Minutes 11-25 or so are more the meat of it with the last hour being follow up and questions, etc.
A little left of center I suppose in today's politics but I think it accurately reflects the issues we see with companies getting bigger & bigger and effectively consolidating industries into oligopolies (and in some cases duopolies...with monopolies being more rare but certainly there are some).
Some of the numbers are a bit misleading imho, such as comparing the peak of jobs numbers in 2000 to the valley in 2009 but it is accurate enough that I think you can see there is a certain trend and it isn't a good one.
This is along the too big to fail line of research they were doing at the time but my takeaways are...
1. Too much (unchallenged) consolidation allowed in 1 market vertical has spillover effects to other market verticals. I see this in my own industry where communications companies are (and have been) consolidating to increase their negotiating leverage with media companies (who are doing the same). Walmart & suppliers to Walmart are probably another example where you have a very large player thru consolidation which forces the same onto other players in order to have proper leverage. Chicken or egg thing but the bottom line is...consolidation is eliminating consumers of the very product that is being made more "cost effective". Where is the right balance?
2. Having 2-4 corporations controlling 50%+ of Billion dollar industries is not a good thing. Now, this is where I take exception to "blaming" corporations for this. Corporations serve a valuable role in society but it isn't to determine whether their market share is reasonable nor if their market is incidental enough to require little oversight. Too big to fail should have led to a more holistic debate on what we consider a healthy & competitive industry vs. too heavily consolidated and not serving the public benefit. Thats what laws & regulations are supposed to be for...not vague AG inquiries. Spell it out, classify industries & markets more appropriate to the times, and in the process I suspect you'll see quite a lot more entrepreneurial investments & innovation.
3. I agree anti-trust should be a big part of the economic recovery discussion. I don't think you can blame everything on the increased market share of corporations these days but you certainly cannot ignore it. This is also the argument that I "think" is more persuasive to conservatives & independents (naturally liberals will agree with it) rather than screwing around with 3% arguments on wealthy "people".
Behemoth companies have done what they are supposed to do...capture market share & serve the investors and employees (relatively speaking anyway) within their power. What is missing here is the government doing its' job and looking at the bigger picture. But I'm afraid these topics just might be too complicated for the average political hack to even know whats best for the country...let alone actually stand up & break with their party if needed to do the right thing.
Anyway...might be old news to some but wanted to share it. I had not seen anybody do a real analysis of any kind on this topic and found it while doing my own.