What Microsoft's $4-trillion market value really means

WE ARE ENTERING a Golden Age of big business. Or, depending on how you look at it, a Dark Age for small business.

- Allison Schrager Bloomberg

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.

Sure, big businesses have always made up a large share of employment. But its dominance over American industry in all its forms has only grown the last 30 years. Fewer small companies are able to go public these days, and those who do sell at a discount. The number of listed companies in the US had shrunk to some 4,000 right before the pandemic from about 7,000 in 1996.