What Microsoft’s $4 Trillion Market Value Really Means
For all the handwringing over big business getting bigger, it's not clear that this trend has been bad for the average American.
Bigger is sometimes better.
Photographer: Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images
We are entering a Golden Age of big business. Or, depending on how you look at it, a Dark Age for small business. Economic concentration is rising almost everywhere, from Main Street to Wall Street, where Microsoft Corp. this week became the second company to reach a $4 trillion market capitalization after Nvidia Corp. In fact, nine of the 10 of the world’s largest companies are based in the US and all are worth at least $1 trillion. And despite the efforts of anti-trusters, this trend will only continue.
Why? For all the handwringing about market power and concentration from both the left and the right of the political spectrum, lawmakers continue to enact policies that benefit big businesses at the expense of their smaller competitors.