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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Competition has decreased throughout the economy. There are several ways to measure this. New firm creation in the USA has been in steady decline since the 1970s, and the explosion of software startups has not been enough to offset the rapid disappearance of industrial startups. Or, to take another measure, in 1999 there were 8,000 companies listed on USA stock markets, but now there are only 3,400 companies. Consolidation has moved at a rapid pace.

Here is another take on the subject:

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/paul-krugman-mon...

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First you claim

>So high profits and high inflation suggests an economy dominated by monopolies,

then pivot to

>Competition has decreased throughout the economy.

Competition decreasing is a far cry proving "an economy dominated by monopolies," which is simply not true.

>Or, to take another measure, in 1999 there were 8,000 companies listed on USA stock markets, but now there are only 3,400 companies

That says more about stock markets than number of companies. Fortunately the Census Bureau tracks relevant facts (and there are more at the BLS), and their data puts literally millions more businesses in 2019 [1] (the last year they have data) than in 1999 [2].

And nothing in their data supports "suggests an economy dominated by monopolies".

Care to explain how you measure dominated? As is most of consumer money is spent there? As in the majority of businesses? As in what?

[1] https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2019/econ/susb/2019-sus...

[2] https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/1999/econ/susb/1999-sus...

High profits and high inflation suggests an economy dominated by monopolies. You won’t get the combination of high profits and high inflation in eras when competition is running hot.

>High profits and high inflation suggests an economy dominated by monopolies

High inflation means values are simply bigger, with no other changes needed, so increased profits are exactly expected in high inflation (along with high revenues, high prices, high costs, high spending, .... that is the definition of inflation).

So your claim that larger numbers "suggests an economy dominated by monopolies" is demonstrably not true. It can merely be inflation with zero other changes.

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