The second brief in the series, by Sandy Hager and Joseph Baines, zoomed out to provide an updated empirical analysis of how the US tax code affects the profit share of the top 10 percent of public companies compared to the rest (Hager and Baines 2023). [...] THE DUAL RISE OF MARKET CONCENTRATION AND US TOP-END WEALTH CONCENTRATION The concentration of markets in the hands of a very small set of firms and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a very small set of households are often treated as separate economic phenomena, with different sets of institutions and policy solutions to manage them. [...] What are we to make of the dual rise of market power and wealth concentration in the US? Are these independent trends? Is there a relationship between the rapid accumulation of wealth by the very top households in the US, and an increasingly consolidated set of dominant corporations controlling markets in the US? What are the contours and direction of the connection between market dominance by a f. [...] CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP, CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FAILURES, AND THE REBIRTH OF THE BILLIONAIRE “BLOCKHOLDERS” We’ve established above that the lion’s share of billionaire wealth in the US today derives from the upsurge in equity value generated by excess market power of the firms in which these same billionaires own vast amounts of shares. [...] The tax tools described above could disincentivize the hoarding of market power by decreasing the intensely concentrated personal returns of the individuals controlling the business strategies of some of the country’s most dominant firms.
- Pages
- 22
- Published in
- United States of America
