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Spotlight on antitrust #4
People take antitrust for granted in this country, but it’s worth tracking the ill effects it wreaks, especially upon the nation’s most successful businesses: Antitrust is the conduit through which...
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How antitrust poisons the water
The more successful a company gets in America, the more antitrust casts a shadow over every executive decision. Recent headlines spotlight two examples, one involving Amazon, the other Facebook. First,...
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The Forgotten Man of the Minimum Wage Debate
The ongoing debate over whether the federally mandated minimum wage should be raised focuses on low-wage workers. Those who want to see it raised argue this will increase low-wage worker income. Those...
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Government Seizing the Wheel of Automobile Design
The 2013 North American International Auto Show in Detroit showed how automakers are making vehicles lighter to increase their gas mileage. Automakers are substituting steel, which is what cars are...
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Should the Minimum Wage Grow with Worker Productivity?
During a recent Senate Committee hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed that the federally mandated minimum wage would be $22 an hour today if it had been pegged to a benchmark that some economists...
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Forcing businessmen to play politics
The antitrust establishment likes to hide behind a facade of objectivity. For example, regulators deploy fancy measurements for industry concentration (like the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) that require...
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The business “underworld” created by antitrust
The news story about how Google may have snitched on Microsoft (leading the European Union’s competition czar to levy a whopping $730 million fine) made me think of something perceptive that Ayn Rand...
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Government Redirecting Corn Into Your Gas Tank
2012 saw possibly the worst drought in over fifty years. This has devastated corn yields and driven up the price of corn. In terms of surging costs, this would be bad enough for individuals, especially...
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Spotlight on antitrust #5
The antitrust kettle keeps boiling—and the world’s most successful companies are the ones in danger of being scalded. One indication that antitrust law is essentially political, not legal, is that...
View ArticleBusiness and Regulation Roundup
Here are some recent accounts on the government’s involvement in business activity that I found worth reading: Gasoline Regulations. The EPA is ratcheting up regulations on oil refiners, requiring that...
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Potential success delays airline merger
A fascinating article in Fortune details behind-the-scenes negotiations leading up to the proposed merger of American Airlines and US Airways. I say “proposed” because, in our “Mother may I? economy,”...
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Throwing Your Fellow Businessmen Under The Minimum Wage Bus
I am disappointed to see some CEOs of large businesses voicing support for raising the federally mandated minimum wage. For instance, Craig Jelinek—the CEO and President of Costco—said: “An important...
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Yet another obstacle to the beer merger
A group of consumers has sued two brewers, Anheuser Busch InBev and Grupo Modelo, to block their planned merger. What injury have the beer drinkers suffered? Well, they are worried that the merged...
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When do you start calling it persecution?
Fortune magazine has come out with its list of the list of the World’s Most Admired Companies, virtually all of them household names. Would you like to guess how many of the top 10 most admired...
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Chilly reception for drug companies in medical schools
A variety of physician-industry relationships—especially those involving anything of value, from a bagel to an airline ticket to a consulting fee—are being demonized as undermining patient care. Even...
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A unionized McDonald’s?
You arrive at McDonald’s at 1:15 p.m. You deliberately came after lunch rush hour to avoid long lines. But there is still a considerable wait, and the lines seem to be much longer ever since McDonald’s...
View ArticleHardee’s / Carl’s Jr. CEO on California’s anti-business climate
In a recent brief media appearance, Andy Puzder—the CEO of the parent company of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. fast food chains—discussed how difficult it is to do business in California’s regulatory...
View ArticleBowden in IBD: What are the search results when you Google “antitrust”?
My colleague Tom Bowden has a new piece at Investor’s Business Daily on the antitrust campaign against Google. Yielding to the European Union’s threat of massive fines, Google will reportedly change...
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Spotlight on antitrust #6
More stories to remind us how antitrust law casts a cloud over American business: Baseball was exempted from federal antitrust law because the sport was not considered “interstate commerce” in the...
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To cope with Affordable Care Act, Regal Entertainment cuts hours of thousands
For those who may have missed this recent story: The nation’s largest movie theater chain has cut the hours of thousands of employees, saying in a company memo that ObamaCare requirements are to...
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