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Question

In the 1908 Muller v. Oregon decision, the Supreme Court __________.

A
upheld the use of the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up trusts
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B
forbade states from regulating railroad rates for routes between states
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C
held that worker-protection laws do not violate the constitutional rights of employers
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D
upheld segregation laws, if both sets of facilities are equal to one another.
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E
ruled that the government has the right to limit speech if a clear and present danger exists
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Solution

The correct option is C held that worker-protection laws do not violate the constitutional rights of employers
In the 1908 Muller v. Oregon decision, the Supreme Courtheld that worker-protection laws do not violate the constitutional rights of employers.

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The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1947, gave states the power to enact “right-to-work” legislation that prohibits union shop agreements. According to such an agreement, a labour union negotiates wages and working conditions for all workers in a business, and all workers are required to belong to the union. Since 1947, 20 states have adopted right-to-work laws. Much of the literature concerning right-to-work laws implies that such legislation has not actually had a significant impact. This point of view, however, has not gone uncriticized. Thomas V. Carroll has proposed that the conclusions drawn by previous researchers are attributable to their myopic focus on the premise that, unless right-to-work laws significantly reduce union membership within a state, they have no effect. Carroll argues that the right-to-work laws “do matter” in that such laws generate differences in real wages across states. Specifically, Carroll indicates that while right-to-work laws may not “destroy” unions by reducing the absolute number of unionized workers, they do impede the spread of unions and thereby reduce wages within right-to-work states. Because the countervailing power of unions is weakened in right-to-work states, manufacturers and their suppliers can act cohesively in competitive labour markers, thus lowering wages in the affected industries.

Such a finding has important implications regarding the demographics of employment and wages in right-to-work states. Specifically, if right-to-work laws lower wages by weakening union power, minority workers can be expected to suffer a relatively greater economic disadvantage in right-to-work states than in union shop states. This is so because, contrary to what was once thought, unions tend to have a significant positive impact on the economic position of minority workers, especially Black workers, relative to White workers. Most studies concerned with the impact of unionism on the Black worker’s economic position relative to the White workers have concentrated on the changes in Black wages due to union membership. That is, they have concentrated on union versus non-union groups. In a pioneering study, however, Ashenfelter finds that these studies overlook an important fact: although craft unionism increase the differential between the wages of White workers and Black workers due to the traditional exclusion of minority workers from unions in the craft sectors of the labour market, strong positive wage gains are made by Black workers within industrial unions. In fact, Ashenfelter estimates that industrial unionism decreases the differential between the wages of Black workers and White workers by about 3 percent. If state right-to-work laws weaken the economic power of unions to raise wages, Black workers will experience a disproportionate decline in their relative wage positions. Black workers in right-to-work states would therefore experience a decline in their relative economic positions unless there is strong economic growth in right-to-work states, creating labor shortages and thereby driving up wages.

Which one of the following best describes the passage as a whole?


Q. One type of violation of the antitrust laws is the abuse of monopoly power. Monopoly power is the ability of a firm to raise its prices above the competitive level—that is, above the level that would exist naturally if several firms had to compete—without driving away so many customers as to make the price increase unprofitable. In order to show that a firm has abused monopoly power, and thereby violated the antitrust laws, two essential facts must be established. First, a firm must be shown to possess monopoly power, and second, that power must have been used to exclude competition in the monopolized market or related markets.
The price a firm may charge for its product is constrained by the availability of close substitutes for the product. If a firm attempts to charge a higher price—a supracompetitive price—consumers will turn to other firms able to supply substitute products at competitive prices. If a firm provides a large percentage of the products actually or potentially available, however, customers may find it difficult to buy from alternative suppliers. Consequently, a firm with a large share of the relevant market of substitutable products may be able to raise its price without losing many customers. For this reason courts often use market share as a rough indicator of monopoly power.
Supracompetitive prices are associated with a loss of consumers’ welfare because such prices force some consumers to buy a less attractive mix of products than they would ordinarily buy. Supracompetitive prices, however, do not themselves constitute an abuse of monopoly power. Antitrust laws do not attempt to counter the mere existence of monopoly power, or even the use of monopoly power to extract extraordinarily high profits. For example, a firm enjoying economies of scale—that is, low unit production costs due to high volume—does not violate the antitrust laws when it obtains a large market share by charging prices that are profitable but so low that its smaller rivals cannot survive. If the antitrust laws posed disincentives to the existence and growth of such firms, the laws could impair consumers’ welfare. Even if the firm, upon acquiring monopoly power, chose to raise prices in order to increase profits, it would not be in violation of the antitrust laws.
The antitrust prohibitions focus instead on abuses of monopoly power that exclude competition in the monopolized market or involve leverage—the use of power in one market to reduce competition in another. One such forbidden practice is a tying arrangement, in which a monopolist conditions the sale of a product in one market on the buyer’s purchase of another product in a different market. For example, a firm enjoying a monopoly in the communications systems market might not sell its products to a consumer unless that customer also buys its computer systems, which are competing with other firms’ computer systems. The focus on the abuse of monopoly power, rather than on monopoly itself, follows from the primary purpose of the antitrust laws: to promote consumers’ welfare through assurance of the quality and quantity of products available to consumers

Q. Would the use of leverage meet the criteria for abuse of monopoly power outlined in the first paragraph?
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