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Extreme policies lead to extreme outcomes.
Income inequality reached its highest level in more than half a century last year, as a record-long economic expansion continued to disproportionately benefit some of the wealthiest Americans.
A key measure of wealth distribution jumped to 0.485 in 2018, the Census Bureau said Thursday, its highest reading since the so-called Gini index was started in 1967. The gauge, which uses a scale between 0 and 1, stood at 0.482 a year earlier.
Work alone won't solve poverty—unless wages and earnings pick up substantially. It still takes government aid for families with children and others who do not earn enough, despite working 40 plus hours a week.
The most troubling thing about the new report, says William M. Rodgers III, a professor of public policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University, is that it "clearly illustrates the inability of the current economic expansion, the longest on record, to lessen inequality."
According to some research, US income inequality might be higher than it was during the Roman Empire, and pre-tax income inequality is as high as it was in the Roaring Twenties.
Income inequality is blamed on cheap labor in China, unfair exchange rates, and jobs outsourcing. Corporations are often blamed for putting profits ahead of workers. But they must to remain competitive. U.S. companies must compete with lower-priced Chinese and Indian companies who pay their workers much less. As a result, many companies have outsourced their high-tech and manufacturing jobs overseas. The United States has lost 20 percent of its factory jobs since 2000. These were traditionally higher-paying union jobs.
Service jobs have increased, but these are much lower paid.
If current policies touted as "decreasing globalism" in the US economy are trying to reduce income inequality, they're failing.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:00PM (28 children)
Yes. And I call it "stupidity" when you can't figure out why that happened. It's not some generic "rich are gonna rich". It's the unintended consequences of regulation by the FDA. Because they care more about saving the hypothetical lives of a handful of people who might die from quality of medication than the people who have to put out $600 to save their lives from rather common events, we got that situation.
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:49PM (9 children)
In 2007 the price of a pair of EpiPens was about $100. Today the price is $600+. Can you please enlighten me as to what new regulations the FDA has introduces in the last decade that caused this 6x increase?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @05:00PM (1 child)
Inflation accounts for about 2x, health insurance and medicare inflating prices the rest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @05:01PM
Yeah...No.
Here's a timeline for ya:
https://mendelspod.com/blog/all-american-epipen-timeline/ [mendelspod.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @09:14PM
khallow is friends with Pharma-bro! Not on a personal level, just an ideological affinity. As Mike Douglas's character said in "Wall Street", "Greed is good". And according to our resident ethicist (my God, he's going to live in a Church!), TMB, greed is better than envy, which is only a consequence of sloth, and the busom buddy of gluttony and the rest of the Seven Deadlies.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @09:54PM (5 children)
Whether the regulations are new or old, several competitors were blocked [thehill.com] from entering the EpiPen market.
Point is in the name of reducing some modest risk to the consumer of these devices, the FDA had created the monopoly that was able to charge $300 per EpiPen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:22PM (1 child)
I'm not an expert on the Pharmaceutical industry but I suspect that $1.5 million is not all that big an investment for a company of moderate to large size. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they spend much more on the development of drugs that haven't even reached Phase I trials.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 30 2019, @04:04AM
Unless they don't have that kind of money on hand. Not all companies are moderate to large in size.
(Score: 2) by helel on Monday September 30 2019, @12:03AM (1 child)
First, if no regulations changed between 2007 and now then the price increase is not driven by regulation but by other factors.
Secondly, holding a monopoly doesn't force priced to increase like some law of physics - an entity holding a monopoly could charge nothing beyond their own costs if they chose to.
It seems clear that the true cost of an EpiPen is somewhere south of $100($125 today) even with all the regulations accounted for. The increase since then is pure greed. Therefore anyone defending the current market value has quite a bit of explaining on how exactly a 6x increase in the price of life saving medicine is good and complaining about regulations that have been in place for decades just doesn't cut it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 30 2019, @03:50AM
Regulation != regulation change. The FDA has long had this power.
"IF".
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 30 2019, @05:53AM
$1.5 million? That's chump change for a business. The tiny medical device company I work for burns over a million a month.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Informative) by Pav on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:56PM
Yeah, the FDA and related regulators around the world are bad for witchdoctor business... although if you bribe the right politicians and researchers you might be able to sell your addictive opiate of choice. BUT in the free market paradise of Somalia...
It could be MUCH worse in the USA though. If you had more regulation you might suffer the indignity of tax-included health care, cheap pain killers (paracetamol, asparin, ibprophen etc...) that cost around 95 cents, with most prescriptions (bah! regulation!) costing a few dollars. The stress would see you to an early grave (if you could convince them to withhold the medical care you're entitled to).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @07:20PM (4 children)
It's the unintended consequences of regulatory capture by the FDA by the industry being "regulated". And it's not really unintended. I mean, that's the purpose of bribing government officials.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:04PM
Indeed.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:07PM (2 children)
I've made this exact same argument with Hallow, that regulatory capture is no more a failure of regulation than my kicking him off a building and him going splat is a failure on his part to fly. He just sent back a "yuh-huh it is, lalalalala I'm not listening" reply. Why he chooses this hill to die on, why Uzzard does too, is a mystery. What kind of mindless, amoral psychopath does someone have to be to do this, to close themselves off so thoroughly not just from other human beings but from observable, repeatable, testable reality?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:44PM (1 child)
Just roll with it and take it as their quest for the money shot... Don't give it to them! [rawstory.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:36AM
Nothing is going to change until they find themselves in a position where their worldview bites them in the ass. That is why I have been known to wish homelessness, extreme poverty, and disease on them, because they are such self-interested antisocial little shits that only personal suffering will change their mind. This mindset or personality, I am not sure which, is distressingly common and I don't know a way to fix it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:49PM (11 children)
Ah, so *that's* your problem, you don't "believe in" regulation so you make it a point to keep a steady diet of lead paint chips and rat-feces sausage. You've surpassed "window-licking retarded" and gone on to "radium watch dial-licking retarded."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:09PM (10 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:28AM (9 children)
This, Mr. Hallow, is again a case of regulatory capture, i.e., *im*proper regulation.
I am saying this again: regulatory capture is no more a failure of regulation in general than my kicking you off a building is either a failure of your sense of balance or the building's structural integrity. Malfeasance and malice can wreck anything, especially the type that deliberately enter into a system and corrupt it from the inside. Regulation is to regulatory capture as an ant is to Cordyceps.
Get it now? I know you do, intellectually, but you won't admit it, because your whole worldview is based around the economic equivalent of "fuck you I won't do what you tell me." Sit down, shut up, and don't interrupt the grownups when they're speaking.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 02 2019, @04:28AM (8 children)
It's a No True Scotsman argument. The thing you completely miss is that a piece of regulation in itself cannot prevent regulatory capture. Integrity of the regulators do that. It's like stalling an airplane where the airflow over the wings is disrupted so that the plane can't be controlled. Once your regulation is no longer enforced, it doesn't matter how proper it is or how many "this time I mean it" regulations you subsequently pass.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 02 2019, @04:40AM (7 children)
No shit, Sherlock! These systems don't exist in vacuum. I replied to another post of yours on the subject with an analogy of rebar-reinforced concrete, the rebar being anti-corruption measures (with some actual fucking teeth) that would make it dangerous and personally painful to attempt. The lack of protection against surrounding environmental stressors is what causes concrete slabs to crack and fail spectacularly and in a brittle manner; ditto regulatory systems.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 02 2019, @12:26PM (6 children)
Unless, of course, nobody enforces the anti-corruption measures. What I find particularly ridiculous about this discussion is the complete absence of any concrete problem that your "proper" regulation fixes. It's all after the fact second-guessing. Several hundred dollar EpiPens? Not proper regulation. Regulators and regulated jumping back and forth? Clearly no anti-corruption measures with teeth are in place. No clue what proper regulation is other than it is a "system" that works.
Well, I'd like to point out that proper regulation is often less regulation (not no regulation!). The less that is regulated, the less there is for regulation capture, barrier to entry, and other well-known failure modes of regulation to affect.
Here, the story subject is a classic example. We don't even have a problem coming from income inequality. It's just assumed. You have a massive number of people who aren't trying to optimize their wealth versus a smaller population that is. And not everyone is equally competent at getting income. So as a result there is inequality. So what?
Here, what's the point of trying regulation to reduce income inequality? You're not going to interest people in increasing their income through regulation. That disinterest remains. Varying skills and experience remain. In fact, attempts to improve inequality often have the opposite effect by making people radioactive to employ or provide financial services to.
My view in fact is that the best way to improve income inequality and the like is to greatly reduce the barrier to entry for new businesses and the obstacles to business growth. That increases demand for workers who then have greater pricing power. So more competition for the capital side of businesses and more opportunities for workers to increase their income. Inequality goes down.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 03 2019, @02:54AM (5 children)
"As simple as possible, but no simpler." Your lot seem to forget the second half of that. Shit's complicated.
Besides which, the issue isn't the simple fact of inequality, it's the fact that some people are sitting on more money than they could spend in a dozen lifetimes while others are scrounging for food in trash cans and living on the streets. A society can't stay stable like that for too long, and it actually costs *less* to make sure people are basically cared for than to ignore them until they start clogging the prison and hospital systems. That last point is why I so often say that you and people who think like you know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Again: shit's *complicated.* There are no simple one-size-fits-all solutions. The best you can do is think about a given system as if you were the worst sort of bloody-minded psychopathic bastard possible whose sole goal was to cause as much suffering as you could by perverting said system, and then think about how to obviate the loopholes which would let that happen. You're never going to catch all of them, but you can damn sure plug the most obvious holes.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday October 03 2019, @12:28PM (4 children)
We're clearly nowhere near that point. The complexity of the regulation, the vast sprawl, the endless things large governments do, how can you keep track? The answer is you do not.
You have yet to explain how that is relevant. I get that we could treat our homeless and such much better, but I also get that there's not many of them - less than a million. Keep in mind that the people "sitting" on that money are mostly doing vastly more for society than the people in trash cans. I grant that there's rent seekers and other sorts of parasites in that group. But I don't grant that the people, for example, charging hundreds of dollars for EpiPens are characteristic of the entire population than some homeless serial killer is of the homeless.
And your proof for that is? What is the cause of instability?
Like "proper regulation"?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 04 2019, @12:14AM (3 children)
The very fact that you can even say "explain how that is relevant" to the above is sickening. And even worse is your apparent justification for ignoring them or worse is "there's not that many of them - less than a million." What the fuck is wrong with you? There's only ONE of YOU, buddy boy; by that logic it would be perfectly justified to torture you to death because, hey, who cares, there's not that many of you. Just one. And you seem to be doing your damndest, like the other two "asocial" posters on here, to make yourself a minority of one.
That you even need to question how a society whose members are unproductive due to hunger, illness, or simple constant fear would become unstable is another gobsmacker. You know, I don't think you're asking this stuff in good faith; a minute or two of thinking would make the logic completely obvious.
"Proper regulation" is not a one-size-fits-all solution either; rather it is the mindset and the basic approach necessary to have solutions to given problems at all. Anarchy doesn't work, corrupt regulation vulnerable to capture or other perversion from the inside doesn't work, and ignoring observable reality and human nature when crafting regulation doesn't work either. There are a lot of wrong ways to regulate, and few right ones, and they're not always obvious.
But one good pillar of a successful regulatory regime is the "asshole genie" test: "Supposing I were to find a suspiciously brutalist, institutional-looking lamp and rub it, and a genie in the most tight-laced boring bureaucratic suit in the history of ever popped out and let me wish for a regulatory framework, how do I phrase it so that this bowtie-wearing puff of supernatural methane can't grind it to a halt on its own by-laws?"
I get it, thinking is hard. You sure as hell don't seem to like doing any of it. But hey, that's why you're not in charge of anything more consequential than the local bin of fries.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 04 2019, @11:57AM (2 children)
Every time you pretend to care that there's suffering people out there without giving a shit for how many suffering people there are, you are committing the perfect world fallacy. There's always going to be homeless, there's always going to be poverty, there's always going to be people that you can't reach. What we can do is make the world better.
But if you want to make the world better, you need to be paying attention to what works, if you ever want to be interested in that. Your glib assurance that "proper regulation" is one of those things that can help is a great example of good intentions, bad results. Most regulation exists in the first place because someone, somewhere thought it was a great idea to help fix society, often adding more and more layers as the old stuff didn't work out as expected. It's all "proper" as far as they're concerned.
What changes the game is people having the power to change their own lives. Sure, regulation can help with that. But too often, like this very discussion, we see how it can kill it. People are more concerned that there's rich people out there, than mitigating the problems of poverty. It's easy to come up with regulation that holds back the rich people, but doesn't help the poor people.
In other words, your "one-size-fits-all solution" is better, because it's a "mindset and basic approach". Well, my take is that the current state of affairs throughout the world indicates that regulation reduction is part of that, whether you choose to recognize it or not.
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" is always good for crazy hijinks. Because if you think that said genie can't turn any "proper" regulatory framework into concrete, you're not thinking.
Finally, as to your nihilistic "but yer only one person!" complaint. So what? Everyone else is one person too. In particular, if my opinion doesn't matter because I'm one person, then yours doesn't either. You destroy the very argument you make, a very similar fallacy to the one you claimed I was making (the "stolen concept" fallacy).
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 04 2019, @10:02PM (1 child)
You're doing the equivalent of someone who only stops talking to think about what they're going to say next when the other person finishes. This is not a reply in good faith, especially not the last paragraph; I didn't make an argument there, I simply did the needful reductio on your previous one. I didn't say your opinion doesn't matter because you're only one person, but rather that according to your own "logic," that's what we'd end up with.
Why do you spend so much time and so many words doing nothing but repeating back what someone says to you with a "nuh-uh, you're wrong" added to it, and why do you think this makes for productive dialogue? It doesn't.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday October 05 2019, @09:05AM