This quote comes from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 4, by Phil Gramm and Christine Wilson titled “The New Progressives Fight Against Consumer Welfare.” They are describing the new anti-trust regime in the “Biden” Administration, now led by Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission; Tim Wu, a special assistant to the White House National Economic Council; and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
They note that in the past, anti-trust law and enforcement were “anchored in consumer welfare”. Here are a few pithy quotes from the article.
These officials see the world through the lens of class warfare, as a zero-sum game. Like Progressives before them, they view the rule of law not as a cornerstone of liberty and democracy, but as an impediment to equality and the means by which the ruling class suppresses the masses. In their view, economics-based antitrust enforcement under the consumer-welfare standard drives this oppression. Sandeep Vaheesan of the Open Markets Institute, who has written academic papers with Ms. Khan, claims that an “antitrust enforcer anchored in consumer welfare is an antitrust enforcer anchored in anti-labor.”
And the “money quote”:
Matthew Stoller, who worked with Ms. Khan at the Open Markets Institute, believes that “the point of economics as a discipline is to create a language and methodology for governing that hides political assumptions from the public.”
That sounds like class warfare to me, brainwashing the public to accept anything the ruling class decides is good for it. And the only acceptable “ruling class”, which in their view oppresses the masses, is the Administrative State, which has only good intentions for those masses, and could never be oppressors.
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