General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Krugman: When a business owner complains about being unable to find workers, ask how much he pays. [View all]Selatius
(20,441 posts)Very very few Democrats, including Obama, won on the idea that large corporations and large banks should have the Sherman/Clayton Anti-Trust Acts brought down on their heads.
The whole notion that people should be free from unfair competition and monopolies was entirely absent from the national dialogue and, indeed, from all the major presidential debates. It is something only a small segment of the left in the United States have spoken about explicitly. Most issues coming from the left are in the form of defenses of social safety networks and of the desire to expand them, not about actual market intervention and anti-trust sentiment.
The labor market is a market as much subject to the forces of competition as are markets for products and services. Healthy competition in labor markets where there are only a few big employers is rare. In a market run by a monopoly, of course the monopolist will try his hardest to utilize the existing labor force to move product instead of trying to hire more workers to meet demand. He doesn't have to worry about his market share being stolen by competitors who are willing to increase production/hire to meet that demand.