You’re Probably Getting Screwed by Employer Consolidation

Welcome to You’re Probably Getting Screwed, a weekly newsletter and video series from J.D. Scholten and Justin Stofferahn about the Second Gilded Age and the ways economic concentration is putting politics and profits over working people.

What does Rickey Henderson have to with corporate monopolies?

Brian Callaci’s piece on the reserve clause and noncompetes.

If you want Rickey baseball content, Howard Bryant is excellent.

On monopoly power and the declining labor share.

YOU’RE PROBABLY (ALSO) GETTING SCREWED BY:

Elon Musk

If last week’s government funding fiasco was any indication on how the next four years go, we’re in for it… Elon Musk saw his $277 million investment in the Republican Party get him influence with Congress and their attempt to pass a budget bill.

While most of the media reported that Elon Musk, and Donald Trump, were pressuring lawmakers to prepare for tax cuts for the rich, the part that was under reported (in our opinion) were the carve outs for Elon’s ability to work with China while the rest of the country “gets tough on China.”

Stock Prices versus Corporate Profits versus Personal Income

Economic analyst Steven Rattner discusses the growing disparity between corporate profits and personal incomes, highlighting how corporate profits have far outpaced personal income growth under both Trump and Biden, with the average American seeing significantly less benefit from the economy’s success: “We’ve had a great economy for a good while, with some ups and downs, but generally quite strong — But the rewards of that have not been delivered equally.”

Billionaires lies…

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Economic Policies that hurt young Americans

Professor Galloway says “We’ve broken the social contract that binds America: Work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll be better off than your parents were. For the first time in our nation’s history, this is no longer true.”

And the TL;DR version is this clip.

Employers who pay minimum wage

Here’s comedian Dan Danohue talking about how poorly people who work minimum wage gets treated versus the employers who pay minimum wage.

Corporations

Some Good News

FTC helps people with asthma

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower district court order against pharmaceutical maker Teva requiring the drugmaker to delist several asthma inhaler patents from the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Orange Book.

Hannah Garden-Monheit, Director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning, issued the following statement:

“We are pleased the court agreed with the FTC that these improper inhaler patent listings must be wiped from the Orange Book. Removal of junk patent listings is critical to ensuring drugmakers can fairly compete to offer generic drugs at a lower price for consumers. This decision is important not only for lowering asthma inhaler costs, it also sets the stage for removal of junk listings on a range of other critical medications where junk device listings impede competition.”

BEFORE YOU GO

Before you go, I need two things from you: 1) if you like something, please share it on social media or the next time you have coffee with a friend. 2) Ideas, if you have any ideas for future newsletter content please comment below. Thank you.

Break ‘Em Up,

Justin Stofferahn