we let our big businesses get too big, let them use their size and power to kill off competition and raise prices excessively. Meanwhile Europe by the turn of this century remade itself economically to be more like the United States used to be, enforcing robust competition to make prices lower and service better. “Because the EU has adopted the US playbook,” including antitrust enforcement, “which the US itself has abandoned,” Philippon writes, the “prices for the same goods and services” have become much lower in Europe. Mobile phone and Internet service, for instance, cost Europeans half as
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