Here's a table (sortable, now!) which ranks nations by level of income inequality; this isn't a perfect metric, since (for instance) wealth inequality tends to be far more dramatic, and a nation with high inequality but a high minimum standard of living may have fewer people in misery than a nation with low inequality, but a low average standard of living.
That said, Bolivia leads the "richest 10%/poorest 10% ratio" category, at 168.1:1 (USA: 15.9:1); Sierra Leone leads "richest 20%/poorest 20% ratio" at 57.6:1 (USA: 8.4:1); Namibia has the highest Gini coefficient, 74.3 as calculated by the UN, 70.7 by the CIA (USA: 40.8, 45). Of course, some of this data goes back to 1989, so take it with a grain of salt. The least unequal countries based on these metrics are, respectively, Azerbaijan (3.3), Azerbaijan (2.6) and Denmark (24.7, 23.2).
There's also a measure of the proportion of the population living in poverty, both in absolute (in Nigeria, about 90% of the population lives on under $2 a day) and relative (in Liberia, 80% of the population is below the poverty line) terms.
I hadn't had a fast food sandwich in a few years; I had a bite of my car-mate's, and I was amazed at how mushy it was--as if it had been designed to require as little chewing as possible. I mean, I eat sandwiches, but I usually have to chew them, you know?
I've seldom seen such a failure to get the point. Here, I'll recap the thread for your convenience:
Bloke down the pub: Government research programs are inherently wasteful, and would never work. Me: Actually, a government program discovered the drug we're discussing--but the patent was essentially handed to BMS, and they're gouging patients. You: Drug companies have to charge a lot for drugs because of the R&D costs. Government-funded research programs would never work. Me: But BMS didn't bear the R&D costs in this case. The government did. Weren't you reading? You: I said, drug companies need the high profits because of R&D costs! Me: I told you, BMS didn't pay for the R&D costs! You can say that they need the money, but you haven't explained why they actually deserve it in this case, since they didn't do the basic R&D on the drug any more than I did. You: But drug companies need to charge high prices because of R&D costs.
Quoting directly, you said: Do you think all the employees work for free? I'm certainly not advocating that the government fund private research. The drug companies are making good profits for the risks they are taking, and thus need no subsidies.
If you'd been reading instead of mindlessly repeating yourself, you'd have noticed that (a) the government turned over its research to a private concern for commercialization, (b) the "risk", in this instance, was subsidized, while the profits were privatized. Whether or not BMS "need[s] no subsidies", they certainly got them.
Also, the government already does fund private research directly; see, for instance, the FDA's OOPD Grant Program, for just one example.
So far, man's attempts to influence his environment for the good have historically brought about far worse negative consequences. For sure, when the situation is not fully known and fully assessed, doing nothing is the best and safest course of action to take even though it requires the strongest fortitude and leadership which are not factors one hardly ever finds in the ruling class.
I'd be right with you on that whole doing-nothing thing, except that we're not. It's not like we're faced with the choice of whether or not to monkey with the atmosphere; proposals to actually reduce the amount of carbon that we puke up into the atmosphere are essentially taboo at this point. The question that's posed is then in what manner we perform said monkeying.
Reference to Orwell, check. Assertion that it's all Clinton's fault, check. (Though I'm going to deduct half a point for failing to mention the Clenis.) Complaints about a lack of civility on the left, check. Insistence that Bush isn't a Real Conservative, check.
Does it make sense to you that an isolationist nation would, on the eve of invasion, give away its weapons? Of course it doesn't make sense, but you believe it because, well, you need to. Just like you believe that Bush isn't really a conservative--not because of his policies, which were the toast of the conservative intelligentsia until they started to bear bitter fruit--but simply because they've turned into utter failures, and conservatism, in your view, cannot fail, it can only be failed, and is thus an unfalsifiable doctrine, an article of faith. Just as it's easier to believe that magical fairies and elves spirited away those WMDs, not because it's particularly likely or plausible, but because if they didn't, well, best not to think about that.
"Powerhungry, greedy and corrupt" describes the administration quite handily. The promulgation of the ludicrous "unitary executive" doctrine, no-bid windfalls to politically connected contractors and the rampant cronyism in the initial post-invasion phase of the Iraq occupation illustrate this quite nicely, but of course, you're blind to this, and because you've sold yourself so thoroughly on the idea that your guys (well, the guys whose water you carry) wield the mystical Truncheon of Stag Held and are engaged in bloody (political) warfare with the Dominators of Zind... well, the other guys must be a batch of Orcs, and there's a ready-made narrative for you to pick up and spew back out. Good show, there.
You're still whining about why drug companies neeeeeed all that money, but you've yet to address my central point, which is that BMS did nothing to deserve the windfall profits they've been drawing from a drug they didn't discover or develop. We might as well just send them an extra fifty billion from the federal budget, by your logic.
Every banana you get at the store is a clone of the same Cavendish banana. If there were to be a plague on bananas, they'd be extraordinarily susceptible. Of course, since bananas are the third most popular crop on the planet, we'd be in quite a world of shit, then.
Look, it's not World War II. It's also not the American Revolution, and it's not the Star Wars Trilogy. The mess we find ourselves in in Iraq is more like France's involvement in Algeria, or in Indochina, or our own involvement there. It's not an honorable thing, it's not an admirable thing, and it's one of the worst foreign policy decisions ever, right up there with Operation Ajax and the Kirkpatrick Doctrine. We're not fighting Hitler or Sauron, George Bush isn't Winston Churchill or Aragorn or Feric Jaggar, or whatever your preferred fantasy trope is. This was a stupid mess, and it cannot be made better. Our options are (a) leave, and watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, (b) keep doing what we're doing until the Republicans are safely out of office and the disaster can be blamed on the Democrats, then watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, and (c) roll through Iraq like the Ottoman Turks, the Roman Legions, the Golden Horde, the Germans or any other empire-builder of yore, and exact disproportionate revenge on random civilians for any act of defiance, causing them to fear us more than they fear the insurgents. (I provide option (c) only for completeness; if you find it appealing, please seek help.)
Occupying a large country and pretending that we're not invaders is a stupid idea. It was a stupid idea before it was executed, and it's a stupid idea now. No good will come of it, no matter how much better you feel when you blame the person who points out that it was a stupid idea.
Drug companies cannot possibly sell drugs for near the cost of manufacture. Most of the cost of getting a drug to market is in the research that went into developing the drug. First, chemists and biologists need to create and find compounds to test. Out of several promising compounds, perhaps one of them makes it past preclinical (animal) trials. Out of several of those compounds, perhaps one of them makes it past clinical (human) trials and gets approved for sale. Out of several of those compounds, perhaps only one makes any significant profit. It's these few blockbuster drugs that fund the research to get the next generation of drugs to market.
The create-and-find-compounds bit was performed by the USDA, as well as the initial trials. BMS took over only at the end, and received funding for that from the government. Are you just pasting drug-industry boilerplate, or did you bother to read about the situation we're discussing? I'm well aware that it's expensive to find and test new drugs, but that was already done by the government (which you handwave away as a bad idea below) rather than by the company that's extracted billions of dollars in profits from people with cancer. You've utterly failed to explain how these record profits are justifiable, or why the normal pricing rules on drugs patented by private companies off of publically-funded research were suspended, apart from greed and corruption.
If pharma companies sold drugs for only a small amount more than the cost of manufacture, that would be the end of private-sector drug research.
So... how do we get generic drug manufacturers, then? I mean, given that there's no reason for BMS to hold the patent, given that they didn't do the work, they (and you) have no reason to whine about the cost of research, because it's got nothing to do with this drug.
Perhaps you'd rather pay taxes to fund only government-sponsored research instead? I'm sure that idea will go over well with voters.
Did you even read the original post? About how the drug was initially discovered through government-sponsored research? I guess it went over rather well with voters, judging by the number of people who've been helped by Taxol. (Though, of course, not as many as would have been if they weren't paying corruption money to BMS.)
That would be relevant if Iran was an Arab nation, but it's not. Your own link points out that Iraqi (Arab) forces did poorly against Iranian (Persian) troops in the Iran-Iraq war. They don't speak Arabic, and they're ethnically distinct. I don't know what effect this has on military supremacy, but it ticks me off when people mix up Arab/Arabic with Persian/Farsi.
I take it you're speaking of the IFR? I still don't understand why, given the recent spike in interest in non-fossil energy, we're still not building or even talking about them. I mean, (a) fail-safe, (b) radioactive waste safe in under 200 years, (c) far, far more fuel efficient, (d) capable of reprocessing weapons-grade material... what went wrong?
Of course, in this case, the government was in charge of the whole thing, and it turned out rather well. But I don't quite understand what you're saying--of course there are some things the goverment is good for, and some things that private industry is good for. It's like having a left hand and a right hand. Using that metaphor, here's the story thus far:
Bloke down the pub: The right hand is the only hand that counts. The left hand is never useful--it would have totally bollocksed up this program. Me: But the left hand in fact executed this program, and did so rather well. heinousjay: That's only one counterexample! You just want to cut off everyone's right hand!
Look, the DCA story isn't as simple as we'd like it to be. Clinical trials are going on, and if you're wondering why you shouldn't buy it from a chemistry supply company and try to treat yourself, Orac and Abel Pharmboy have some information which might interest you. "The media is told not to report it"? Look, it's the media not reporting it! Could you even be bothered to do a Google search before throwing out your conspiracy theories?
In short: (a) The drug has never been actually given to live people for cancer. (b) The drug doesn't kill cancers, it slows their growth. (c) This isn't the first time a drug has shown mighty promise in the lab; this doesn't mean it will work in practice. (d) The drug is not without side effects, and isn't entirely safe, though if it works against cancer, these risks are no doubt acceptable. But until it's shown to be effective, it's not good to give it to people.
Cure rates nearly that of conventional treatments, without the grueling side effects of chemotherapy and radiation? Interesting! Could you point me to where the research was published?
BZZT. Taxol was original discovered and extracted by a government-sponsored program, the kind which you abhor so much. Bristol-Myers Squibb, on the other hand, is selling it at twenty times the cost of manufacture, because of, uh, the magic of the market, or something like that. Blazing efficiency, there. Can't imagine what would have happened if we hadn't handed them the multi-billion dollar patent rights.
Taxol was originally discovered by a massive National Cancer Institute-funded USDA survey of 30,000 plant species for potential anti-cancer activity. If you want to know why Bristol-Myers Squibb holds a patent on Taxol and can sell it at a 2000% markup (I'm not exaggerating; they sell it for twenty times the manufacturing cost), well, you've got me there. I think Ralph Nader's given a talk about it.
See some history: 1958, the NCI sends the USDA to test 30,000 plant species for potential anti-cancer activity. 1963, Monroe Wall discovers that the bark of the Pacific yew tree is effective against cancer. 1967, the active ingredient is isolated. 1971, the chemical structure is discovered and published. 1993, Bristol-Myers Squibb starts selling Taxol, at twenty times the cost of manufacturing. The patent still belongs to them today. See more about how this works.
So, in short: citizens pay for research which is then handed over to corporations who then sell the results back to the aforementioned citizens at a hideous markup. Fabulous work if you can get it.
Oh really? Why, then, the reports that the new Iranian security service, SAVAMA, was SAVAK with a new acronym? Why, then, the installation of Hossein Fardoust as first chief of SAVAMA, since he had been the Shah's right hand man, with the acceptance of his recommendations for people to serve in the "new" organization?
Go on, explain. And please provide some evidence to back up your claims that SAVAK was dismembered after the revolution, instead of just waving your hands about and saying how unlikely it seems to you.
I'm the "he" to which you refer. Again: I compared opting out of social security to opting out of any other common good provided by government--something which works only because everyone pays into it, even though not everyone needs it; in fact, most people may not. You completely missed the point, and argued that my example was wrong because the common goods I described were locally administered. This was entirely orthogonal to my point, but I went along and provided an example that covers the same territory as the social security system original in question. You're continuing to miss the point, so I'm going to write it again:
Common goods work because we can't opt out of them; if we could, the system would fall to the free-rider problem. This is how government-provided services of many kinds work, and it's how social security works. You can no more opt out of social security than you can opt out of any of the others.
The Wall Street Journal had the ten-pound testicles to refer to people too poor to pay income tax as "Lucky Duckies". Wikipedia has an excellent article on the subject; the Ruben Bolling cartoons are quite good. It's absolutely insane how people can unashamedly cry that rich people are oppressed, and no matter how many times I see it, I'm still struck by it.
The CIA helped found the Shah's brutal secret police, SAVAK. Three of the hostages were CIA operatives who were training SAVAK. Of course, the current regime's secret police is essentially the same people; certain apparatuses of state control are useful no matter what political face you paint over your authoritarianism.
Do you mean by achieving stunningly low overhead, or by investing solely in low-risk government bonds? Please explain to me how that justifies the A-P'ing.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a table (sortable, now!) which ranks nations by level of income inequality; this isn't a perfect metric, since (for instance) wealth inequality tends to be far more dramatic, and a nation with high inequality but a high minimum standard of living may have fewer people in misery than a nation with low inequality, but a low average standard of living.
That said, Bolivia leads the "richest 10%/poorest 10% ratio" category, at 168.1:1 (USA: 15.9:1); Sierra Leone leads "richest 20%/poorest 20% ratio" at 57.6:1 (USA: 8.4:1); Namibia has the highest Gini coefficient, 74.3 as calculated by the UN, 70.7 by the CIA (USA: 40.8, 45). Of course, some of this data goes back to 1989, so take it with a grain of salt. The least unequal countries based on these metrics are, respectively, Azerbaijan (3.3), Azerbaijan (2.6) and Denmark (24.7, 23.2).
There's also a measure of the proportion of the population living in poverty, both in absolute (in Nigeria, about 90% of the population lives on under $2 a day) and relative (in Liberia, 80% of the population is below the poverty line) terms.
It's called Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs. Good luck scoring a copy, though.
I hadn't had a fast food sandwich in a few years; I had a bite of my car-mate's, and I was amazed at how mushy it was--as if it had been designed to require as little chewing as possible. I mean, I eat sandwiches, but I usually have to chew them, you know?
I've seldom seen such a failure to get the point. Here, I'll recap the thread for your convenience:
Bloke down the pub: Government research programs are inherently wasteful, and would never work.
Me: Actually, a government program discovered the drug we're discussing--but the patent was essentially handed to BMS, and they're gouging patients.
You: Drug companies have to charge a lot for drugs because of the R&D costs. Government-funded research programs would never work.
Me: But BMS didn't bear the R&D costs in this case. The government did. Weren't you reading?
You: I said, drug companies need the high profits because of R&D costs!
Me: I told you, BMS didn't pay for the R&D costs! You can say that they need the money, but you haven't explained why they actually deserve it in this case, since they didn't do the basic R&D on the drug any more than I did.
You: But drug companies need to charge high prices because of R&D costs.
Quoting directly, you said: Do you think all the employees work for free? I'm certainly not advocating that the government fund private research. The drug companies are making good profits for the risks they are taking, and thus need no subsidies.
If you'd been reading instead of mindlessly repeating yourself, you'd have noticed that (a) the government turned over its research to a private concern for commercialization, (b) the "risk", in this instance, was subsidized, while the profits were privatized. Whether or not BMS "need[s] no subsidies", they certainly got them.
Also, the government already does fund private research directly; see, for instance, the FDA's OOPD Grant Program, for just one example.
Reference to Orwell, check. Assertion that it's all Clinton's fault, check. (Though I'm going to deduct half a point for failing to mention the Clenis.) Complaints about a lack of civility on the left, check. Insistence that Bush isn't a Real Conservative, check.
Does it make sense to you that an isolationist nation would, on the eve of invasion, give away its weapons? Of course it doesn't make sense, but you believe it because, well, you need to. Just like you believe that Bush isn't really a conservative--not because of his policies, which were the toast of the conservative intelligentsia until they started to bear bitter fruit--but simply because they've turned into utter failures, and conservatism, in your view, cannot fail, it can only be failed, and is thus an unfalsifiable doctrine, an article of faith. Just as it's easier to believe that magical fairies and elves spirited away those WMDs, not because it's particularly likely or plausible, but because if they didn't, well, best not to think about that.
"Powerhungry, greedy and corrupt" describes the administration quite handily. The promulgation of the ludicrous "unitary executive" doctrine, no-bid windfalls to politically connected contractors and the rampant cronyism in the initial post-invasion phase of the Iraq occupation illustrate this quite nicely, but of course, you're blind to this, and because you've sold yourself so thoroughly on the idea that your guys (well, the guys whose water you carry) wield the mystical Truncheon of Stag Held and are engaged in bloody (political) warfare with the Dominators of Zind... well, the other guys must be a batch of Orcs, and there's a ready-made narrative for you to pick up and spew back out. Good show, there.
You're still whining about why drug companies neeeeeed all that money, but you've yet to address my central point, which is that BMS did nothing to deserve the windfall profits they've been drawing from a drug they didn't discover or develop. We might as well just send them an extra fifty billion from the federal budget, by your logic.
Every banana you get at the store is a clone of the same Cavendish banana. If there were to be a plague on bananas, they'd be extraordinarily susceptible. Of course, since bananas are the third most popular crop on the planet, we'd be in quite a world of shit, then.
I'll bite.
Look, it's not World War II. It's also not the American Revolution, and it's not the Star Wars Trilogy. The mess we find ourselves in in Iraq is more like France's involvement in Algeria, or in Indochina, or our own involvement there. It's not an honorable thing, it's not an admirable thing, and it's one of the worst foreign policy decisions ever, right up there with Operation Ajax and the Kirkpatrick Doctrine. We're not fighting Hitler or Sauron, George Bush isn't Winston Churchill or Aragorn or Feric Jaggar, or whatever your preferred fantasy trope is. This was a stupid mess, and it cannot be made better. Our options are (a) leave, and watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, (b) keep doing what we're doing until the Republicans are safely out of office and the disaster can be blamed on the Democrats, then watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, and (c) roll through Iraq like the Ottoman Turks, the Roman Legions, the Golden Horde, the Germans or any other empire-builder of yore, and exact disproportionate revenge on random civilians for any act of defiance, causing them to fear us more than they fear the insurgents. (I provide option (c) only for completeness; if you find it appealing, please seek help.)
Occupying a large country and pretending that we're not invaders is a stupid idea. It was a stupid idea before it was executed, and it's a stupid idea now. No good will come of it, no matter how much better you feel when you blame the person who points out that it was a stupid idea.
That would be relevant if Iran was an Arab nation, but it's not. Your own link points out that Iraqi (Arab) forces did poorly against Iranian (Persian) troops in the Iran-Iraq war. They don't speak Arabic, and they're ethnically distinct. I don't know what effect this has on military supremacy, but it ticks me off when people mix up Arab/Arabic with Persian/Farsi.
Consider John Edwards's bit about eliminating poverty. Of course, Socialist Worker doesn't like him, but they wouldn't, now would they.
I take it you're speaking of the IFR? I still don't understand why, given the recent spike in interest in non-fossil energy, we're still not building or even talking about them. I mean, (a) fail-safe, (b) radioactive waste safe in under 200 years, (c) far, far more fuel efficient, (d) capable of reprocessing weapons-grade material... what went wrong?
Of course, in this case, the government was in charge of the whole thing, and it turned out rather well. But I don't quite understand what you're saying--of course there are some things the goverment is good for, and some things that private industry is good for. It's like having a left hand and a right hand. Using that metaphor, here's the story thus far:
Bloke down the pub: The right hand is the only hand that counts. The left hand is never useful--it would have totally bollocksed up this program.
Me: But the left hand in fact executed this program, and did so rather well.
heinousjay: That's only one counterexample! You just want to cut off everyone's right hand!
Look, the DCA story isn't as simple as we'd like it to be. Clinical trials are going on, and if you're wondering why you shouldn't buy it from a chemistry supply company and try to treat yourself, Orac and Abel Pharmboy have some information which might interest you. "The media is told not to report it"? Look, it's the media not reporting it! Could you even be bothered to do a Google search before throwing out your conspiracy theories?
In short: (a) The drug has never been actually given to live people for cancer. (b) The drug doesn't kill cancers, it slows their growth. (c) This isn't the first time a drug has shown mighty promise in the lab; this doesn't mean it will work in practice. (d) The drug is not without side effects, and isn't entirely safe, though if it works against cancer, these risks are no doubt acceptable. But until it's shown to be effective, it's not good to give it to people.
Cure rates nearly that of conventional treatments, without the grueling side effects of chemotherapy and radiation? Interesting! Could you point me to where the research was published?
BZZT. Taxol was original discovered and extracted by a government-sponsored program, the kind which you abhor so much. Bristol-Myers Squibb, on the other hand, is selling it at twenty times the cost of manufacture, because of, uh, the magic of the market, or something like that. Blazing efficiency, there. Can't imagine what would have happened if we hadn't handed them the multi-billion dollar patent rights.
Taxol was originally discovered by a massive National Cancer Institute-funded USDA survey of 30,000 plant species for potential anti-cancer activity. If you want to know why Bristol-Myers Squibb holds a patent on Taxol and can sell it at a 2000% markup (I'm not exaggerating; they sell it for twenty times the manufacturing cost), well, you've got me there. I think Ralph Nader's given a talk about it.
See some history: 1958, the NCI sends the USDA to test 30,000 plant species for potential anti-cancer activity. 1963, Monroe Wall discovers that the bark of the Pacific yew tree is effective against cancer. 1967, the active ingredient is isolated. 1971, the chemical structure is discovered and published. 1993, Bristol-Myers Squibb starts selling Taxol, at twenty times the cost of manufacturing. The patent still belongs to them today. See more about how this works.
So, in short: citizens pay for research which is then handed over to corporations who then sell the results back to the aforementioned citizens at a hideous markup. Fabulous work if you can get it.
Oh really? Why, then, the reports that the new Iranian security service, SAVAMA, was SAVAK with a new acronym? Why, then, the installation of Hossein Fardoust as first chief of SAVAMA, since he had been the Shah's right hand man, with the acceptance of his recommendations for people to serve in the "new" organization?
Go on, explain. And please provide some evidence to back up your claims that SAVAK was dismembered after the revolution, instead of just waving your hands about and saying how unlikely it seems to you.
I'm the "he" to which you refer. Again: I compared opting out of social security to opting out of any other common good provided by government--something which works only because everyone pays into it, even though not everyone needs it; in fact, most people may not. You completely missed the point, and argued that my example was wrong because the common goods I described were locally administered. This was entirely orthogonal to my point, but I went along and provided an example that covers the same territory as the social security system original in question. You're continuing to miss the point, so I'm going to write it again:
Common goods work because we can't opt out of them; if we could, the system would fall to the free-rider problem. This is how government-provided services of many kinds work, and it's how social security works. You can no more opt out of social security than you can opt out of any of the others.
The Wall Street Journal had the ten-pound testicles to refer to people too poor to pay income tax as "Lucky Duckies". Wikipedia has an excellent article on the subject; the Ruben Bolling cartoons are quite good. It's absolutely insane how people can unashamedly cry that rich people are oppressed, and no matter how many times I see it, I'm still struck by it.
The CIA helped found the Shah's brutal secret police, SAVAK. Three of the hostages were CIA operatives who were training SAVAK. Of course, the current regime's secret police is essentially the same people; certain apparatuses of state control are useful no matter what political face you paint over your authoritarianism.
Do you mean by achieving stunningly low overhead, or by investing solely in low-risk government bonds? Please explain to me how that justifies the A-P'ing.
... than you can opt out of the protection against foreign invasion provided by the army, or of any other common good provided by the government.