Antitrust Can't Tame Inequality, Let Alone Inflation

The Biden administration’s plans to take antitrust action to head off inflation are splitting progressives, with some openly rejecting the notion that monopolies are to blame for surging prices and others arguing that even if the initiative fails to tame inflation, more antitrust enforcement can only be a good thing.

What both sides should be questioning is not whether applying antitrust to inflation is too much of a good thing, but whether antitrust is good for progressives at all. Because, as I explain in a recent paper, an inconvenient truth about competition is that it breeds inequality — something economists have known at least since the days of the original progressive movement a century ago.