I take it you skipped your Econ 101 course the day they went over “rent seeking behavior” and the distinction between accounting profits and economic profits. Economic profits (ie. excess profits) are a characteristic of markets lacking sufficient competition. Considering US antitrust laws haven’t been enforced since the Clinton administration, this finding on excess profits would not surprise any honest economist (ie. not on the payroll of a far-right think tank). The M&A spree of the last 30 years has been a mass pillaging of the American working class.