Op-Ed by State Representative Nick Pisciottano of Allegheny County
This Saturday is Small Business Saturday, and it’s the perfect time to start your holiday shopping by supporting the small businesses who create jobs and invest in our local community. But, it’s also a time to recognize that our main street businesses need more than just our dollars.
In the United States, a fair marketplace is a healthy marketplace. Open competition is the engine of our nation’s economy, and we need to ensure that state law protects against companies that seek to restrain Pennsylvania commerce.
For decades, large companies across the nation have purchased smaller ones, creating concentrated power in almost all sectors of our economy. Large, monopolistic firms then use their dominant market share to engage in price gouging, collusion and other predatory, anti-competitive tactics that harm consumers, small businesses and workers by raising prices, suppressing wages and more. This monopolistic consolidation has also led to offshoring our nation’s production capacity, while creating brittle supply chains for even basic goods.
Some people might say “that’s just capitalism” – but it’s not capitalism when the system is broken in favor of the big companies making it impossible for the mom-and-pop shops to sustain themselves. After decades of corporate consolidation and lax enforcement of federal antitrust laws, we only have four major airlines, four major commercial banks, four major oil companies, one company that controls most internet searches, and one dominating online shopping. It’s why you think you have choice at the store when you buy cereal, toothpaste or peanut butter, when it’s really the same company who owns several different brands. The truth is there’s very little competition, which is why you get more and more empty space in your grocery boxes and higher prices for less product.
Historically high gas prices across the country crippled worker people’s pocketbooks at the same time that monopolized companies like ExxonMobil made $4,000 a second in profits every single second last year. Your chicken sandwich gets more expensive at the same time chicken farmers get paid less because the nation’s chicken processing industry is controlled by only a few corporations who were recently accused of colluding to drive up prices. If you look, you can see similar examples in almost every industry where a handful of companies control supply, demand or both.
Monopolization of the American economy has a been a concern as far back as the late 1800s during the gilded age of robber barons like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller. We need to revisit the problem again by changing Pennsylvania’s laws to give the “little guys” some muscle with enhanced antitrust protections.
My legislation — the Pennsylvania Open Markets Act — would protect consumers, local business owners and workers by prohibiting anti-competitive behavior and keeping markets open and fair.
The Open Markets Act would give the attorney general power to investigate companies suspected of anti-competitive behaviors at the expense of consumers and sharply increase penalties for anti-trust violations. Right now, we’re one of the few states in the country without an anti-trust law, so our AG doesn’t have the tools to investigate and crack down on suspected antitrust violations. Our states’ competitiveness and future growth will continue to suffer if we don’t have a business environment that promotes competition, innovation and entrepreneurial vision.
Please, contact your local state representative and ask them to support a stronger local economy and support the businesses that support your community – please ask them to support the Open Markets Act. And keep shopping local!
Representative Nick Pisciottano (D-Allegheny) serves a constituency that includes parts of Allegheny County, encompassing the city of Pittsburgh (specifically, Ward 31) as well as the boroughs of Baldwin, Dravosburg, Glassport, and West Mifflin (specifically, Districts 01, 02, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21), along with Whitehall.
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