• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Merged Economics, politics and the election

3point14 said:
Given that 'Communist' seems to mean, in the USA, 'a financial or taxation policy I don't like', I suspect it's impossible.
Click to expand...

The point about using "communist" to describe your oppenent is to persuade first and second generations from Asia and Latin America to side with you. Many of them have a very negative view of communism and Trump is trying to exploit that.

It's a lie, of course, Harris/Walz and the Democratic Party are far from communist.
 
acbytesla said:
How do you prove it, even if you know it's happening?

Guess what industry where two companies made agreements in the 1970s to control pricing and effectively drove out competition? Now there is a duopoly and little to no price competition.
Click to expand...

Just check how much it would cost to buy the product from another country.

If it's way less, that means that the domestic companies are either gouging or incompetent - in either case a good reason to take over and show them how it's done.
 
Last edited:
slyjoe said:
Nobody answered this. I would like to know how price controls on insulin are a bad thing.
Click to expand...

They are not using price controls. They negotiate the price Medicare will pay for insulin for Medicare patients. The new proposal is to negotiate the price regulated insurance (Obamacare) will pay for insulin.

They should do so for all perscription drugs.

I would like to know why Americans paying 10 times or more as much for the same drugs than other industrial nations is a good thing.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Just check how much it would cost to buy the product from another country.

If it's way less, that means that the domestic companies are either gouging or incompetent - in either case a good reason to take over and show them how it's done.
Click to expand...

Except there are laws against that. Specifically in the US Constitution. You can't deprive people of their property without due process.
 
CarbShark said:
They are not using price controls. They negotiate the price Medicare will pay for insulin for Medicare patients. The new proposal is to negotiate the price regulated insurance (Obamacare) will pay for insulin.

They should do so for all perscription drugs.

I would like to know why Americans paying 10 times or more as much for the same drugs than other industrial nations is a good thing.
Click to expand...

I don't know if they are doing this with insulin, but the FTC and DoJ are going after manufactuers who use spurious patent claims to jack up the price of inhalers with "proprietary technology" claims.
 
ahhell said:
Yes they do.
Click to expand...

No they don't. Many so called drug shortages have nothing to do with costs or shortages of ingredients, but deliberate market manipulation and price gouging. Something that is so common with the pharmaceutical industry it has become a standard practice.
 
acbytesla said:
No they don't. Many so called drug shortages have nothing to do with costs or shortages of ingredients, but deliberate market manipulation and price gouging. Something that is so common with the pharmaceutical industry it has become a standard practice.
Click to expand...

See: Shkreli, Martin
 
acbytesla said:
Except there are laws against that. Specifically in the US Constitution. You can't deprive people of their property without due process.
Click to expand...

I guess at some point we will have to collectively decide: what is more important: human lives or unlimited personal property without any obligations.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
I guess at some point we will have to collectively decide: what is more important: human lives or unlimited personal property without any obligations.
Click to expand...

This is what is wrong with the US Constitution. We've made it so difficult to alter/amend that any meaningful alterations are done through grotesque and undemocratic interpretations of the courts.
 
acbytesla said:
No they don't. Many so called drug shortages have nothing to do with costs or shortages of ingredients, but deliberate market manipulation and price gouging. Something that is so common with the pharmaceutical industry it has become a standard practice.
Click to expand...

I never said they were the only cause of shortages. So, its still yes, price caps cause shortages.
 
acbytesla said:
Except there are laws against that. Specifically in the US Constitution. You can't deprive people of their property without due process.
Click to expand...

Yeah a lot of stuff's in that thing that doesn't matter anymore.

If the right people are in power in the right positions anything is possible. If the last few years haven't made that clear...
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yeah a lot of stuff's in that thing that doesn't matter anymore.

If the right people are in power in the right positions anything is possible. If the last few years haven't made that clear...
Click to expand...

There's absolutely NOTHING in the US Constitution that provides immunity to POTUS. ZIP, ZILCH, ZERO. I'd also say there isn't much in the document that says a corporation should be considered a citizen either. Yet SCOTUS magically reads that into it.

There's nothing that specifically guarantees the right to bodily autonomy and reproductive health either. But there is a hell of a lot more in that document that can be interpreted to that liberty than there is with my previous examples.
 
Last edited:
Donal said:
I don't know if they are doing this with insulin, but the FTC and DoJ are going after manufactuers who use spurious patent claims to jack up the price of inhalers with "proprietary technology" claims.
Click to expand...

I know that in 2020 Harris proposed the US demand a legal share of ownership for drugs developed with a certain percentage of US funded research, which would allow them to license production to manufacturers at a lower cost.
 
CarbShark said:
Price gouging is a thing. That op-ed piece in the Washington Post got it wrong.
Click to expand...

Well, since were talking Economics, I will tell you my own experience with the outcome of anti-price gouging. About 20 years ago, Phoenix experienced a gas shortage due to a problem with a refinery in Tucson. As it happened, my car was low on gas. And for two weeks I could not get my tank filled because everytime a gas station opened up, there was a quarter-mile long line to get to the pumps. Most didn't exactly need gas desperately; people were just topping up their 1/2 to 3/4 tank. And why were they willing to do that? Because our idiot Attorney General, Terry Goddard threatened to prosecute any dealers who were guilty of price-gouging. If the stations had been allowed to (say) increase their prices by $1-2 a gallon, those people would have waited a bit and I would have been able to gas up.

This is the problem with price gouging laws in general; they prevent the market from sending the signal to consumers that availability of a good is limited. You mentioned the toilet paper shortage during Covid. Once again, our price-controlling commissars decreed no increases, and once again the response of the public was to hoard and buy beyond any current need. Let the price rise a bit and those who don't need it will say that's too much and those who do will be thrilled to find it on the shelf even at a dear price.
 
The thing is prices are information. They combine two bits of information, the costs of production and the extent of demand. Artificially fix that and that information is lost.
 
Brainster said:
Well, since were talking Economics, I will tell you my own experience with the outcome of anti-price gouging. About 20 years ago, Phoenix experienced a gas shortage due to a problem with a refinery in Tucson. As it happened, my car was low on gas. And for two weeks I could not get my tank filled because everytime a gas station opened up, there was a quarter-mile long line to get to the pumps. Most didn't exactly need gas desperately; people were just topping up their 1/2 to 3/4 tank. And why were they willing to do that? Because our idiot Attorney General, Terry Goddard threatened to prosecute any dealers who were guilty of price-gouging. If the stations had been allowed to (say) increase their prices by $1-2 a gallon, those people would have waited a bit and I would have been able to gas up.

This is the problem with price gouging laws in general; they prevent the market from sending the signal to consumers that availability of a good is limited. You mentioned the toilet paper shortage during Covid. Once again, our price-controlling commissars decreed no increases, and once again the response of the public was to hoard and buy beyond any current need. Let the price rise a bit and those who don't need it will say that's too much and those who do will be thrilled to find it on the shelf even at a dear price.
Click to expand...

I agree with your Attorney General.

The problem with your story is that it doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. If one is worried about a shortage people are likely to stop whenever they could regardless of the price. You're suggesting the service stations should have been allowed to take advantage of the shortages so they could make obscene profits.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom