What makes the Amazon-Whole Foods deal so problematic is that they are going into an industry with large infrastructure, brick-and-mortar cost, and seeking to build consolidation where we already suffer from consolidation. It’s not like Walmarts and Targets have been good for wages or local grocery stores or niche producers. Ro Khanna Read Quote
We can’t have all the concentration of wealth in a few places in this country. We’ve got to create economic opportunity and new industries in communities that feel left behind. Ro Khanna Read Quote
We have tried to change regimes through a variety of means – over 80 times, by some estimates. Many of these efforts were counterproductive to U.S. interests. Ro Khanna Read Quote
If you look across the economy, if you have multiple players in an industry, you have more customization, more innovation, greater choice for consumers. The more you have consolidation, the less likely you are to invest in innovation. It becomes all about driving down cost and mass production. And that’s not good for innovation in an industry. Ro Khanna Read Quote
We have an economy that’s really geared toward rewarding the investor class. What are we doing to make sure that people who want to have a middle-class life are able to keep up? Ro Khanna Read Quote
The fruits of the economy and all the advantages of technology and globalization have gone far more to the investor class and the professional class and not as much to the working class. Partly because of the loss of labor unions, partly because of things like a lack of antitrust enforcement, policies that have privileged shareholder returns. Ro Khanna Read Quote
The 21st-century mix of jobs is probably going to be different than the 20th-century mix. Ro Khanna Read Quote
There’s no doubt we need stronger antitrust enforcement. We shouldn’t allow Amazon to privilege its own products on its platform, and we should make sure they’re not using sellers’ data, but the E.U. is not a model for America to copy. Ro Khanna Read Quote
