Why Your Phone Service Is So Expensive

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Many Americans pay close to $100 a month for smartphone service. And this pricetag isn’t some natural reflection of the service’s value. In many other countries, smartphone plans cost much less.

The economists Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago and Mara Faccio of Purdue estimate that Americans pay $50 billion per year more than they would if they instead were paying European prices — for the same quality service. That translates into about an additional $30 per month for every American household.

Zingales discusses this research in a Times op-ed and argues — correctly, I believe — that it highlights the problem with antitrust policy in the United States. We have allowed companies to grow too large, to the point that many of them have outsize power. They can raise prices, as they are doing in the cellphone market, as well as hold down wages and unduly influence government policy.

Europe has taken antitrust more seriously and fought back against corporate gigantism. The recent fine against Google, for its behavior in the smartphone market, is just one example.

“The United States invented antitrust and for decades has been the pioneer in its enforcement. Not anymore,” Zingales writes. “A recent paper shows that in the last two decades, enforcement in the United States has been much less strict than in Europe.”

There’s nothing inevitable about corporate consolidation. The United States used to push back against it effectively — and could do so again.

For a piece of good news, see the recent Times story by Rachel Abrams about state attorneys general who’ve taken on the big restaurant companies’ mistreatment of workers through restrictive employment clauses.

Georgia. In one of his advertisements, Brian Kemp points a shotgun at a young man interested in dating his teenage daughter. In another ad, Kemp talks about his truck, which he says he might use “to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself.” President Trump, of course, endorsed Kemp — and last night Georgia’s Republican primary voters made Kemp, who’s currently Georgia’s secretary of state, their nominee for governor.

He will face Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who has a very different message: “We are here to ensure that everyone who calls Georgia home has the freedom and opportunity to thrive — to live their very best lives,” Abrams said after winning the party’s nomination earlier this year.

Georgia remains a very tough state for a Democrat. The Cook Political Report lists the governor’s race as “solid Republican” — which means an Abrams win would be a major upset. She will likely need both a surge of progressive turnout and the support of many Georgians who’ve voted Republican in the past.

But if there is any long-shot governor’s race worth some attention from national Democrats, it’s this one. It embodies today’s dark Republican message and many Democrats’ attempts to find a better alternative.

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