Why does Washington want to destroy the “magnificent 7” of the United States?

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Nothing exemplifies the dominance of the US technology industry in the global economy more than the meteoric rise of the stocks of what are now being called the “Magnificent Seven”: Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. These companies alone account for almost all of the stock market's gains this year. They, that is We as American shareholders who own them, they have a net worth of nearly $10 trillion.

Think about it. None of these gazelles are Japanese, German or Chinese. All seven are American companies. They are globally dominant. They are innovators almost without equal in human history. Amazingly, you might think his best years are behind him, like an aging baseball player. No. They are getting stronger, not weaker.

As a result, they keep the 401(k) and retirement plans owned by more than 100 million Americans in the green.

These are the General Motors, Standard Oil, JP Morgan and US Steel of the 21st century.

However, here is the mystery. In Washington and among the political class, instead of being called out for their amazing products, they are like Rodney Dangerfield: they get no respect. Worse, Democrats, Republicans and federal regulators have their knives to sharpen. Apparently, making a profit, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and adding trillions of dollars to consumer welfare are now nefarious pursuits in America where, to paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, America's business is supposed to be business. Or, to put it in more modern terms, as Jerry Maguire would say, “Show me the money!” These powers certainly have.

Many Democrats want to break up the big tech companies because they are too dominant. They don't seem to understand that it is much better to be dominant than inferior. There is also a very small problem with the accusation that these companies engage in monopolistic behavior. Each has substantially reduced prices for consumers: in mobile phones, in social media interactions, in the cost of products delivered directly to your door, in laptops, and in artificial intelligence. Or how about having instant access to almost any information you want? Google puts virtually the entire Library of Congress at your fingertips, amazingly and for free. The villains!

Even more absurd is the claim that the multibillion-dollar size and influence of these companies is squeezing out smaller entrepreneurial companies that dare to compete with them. This happens sometimes. But the biggest impact of these behemoths is giving life to literally thousands of startups that attract capital based on the dream that in five years, they will be acquired at 20 times their current value by, say , Microsoft or Meta.

Then there are those on the right who want to tie up the Magnificent Seven because they don't like their leftist politics or the suppression of conservative voices in their platforms. I share their concerns, but it's a free country and they own the products and the megaphones. There are plenty of alternatives if you don't like their public policy positions.

Congress intends to kill Google, the goose that lays the golden eggs. Apparently they'd rather we were all poorer and bought our cell phones and search engines and bots from China or India.

One of the ironies of calling the American tech giants the Magnificent Seven is that in the 1960 film of that title, five of the seven die in the final scene.

In this age of Mach 5 innovation, this could happen to Google and Apple, and sooner than you think. It's not easy to remain king of the hill. These companies have stood tall by constantly innovating and giving customers more for less. But when they are brought down to earth, let's hope it's by the forces of free market competition, not by government regulators trying to fix something that surely isn't broken.

Here is the final irony of this war against the Magnificent Seven. If politicians manage to bring these epic American companies to their knees, there will be an outcry about how America is losing its technological dominance. Then the folks in Washington will start doling out billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the very companies they now set out to thwart and destroy.

Stephen Moore is co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and chief economist at FreedomWorks. His latest book is “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Eating Our Economy.”

Stephen Moore is a journalist, author, and economics columnist who served as a senior economics writer on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page and as a member of the Journal's editorial board.

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