Maggie's Farm

In what may be the classic example of bad journalism in the field of economics, I offer this example

"In what may go down in history as the textbook example of how dangerous an unregulated free market can be when a company decides it wants to be greedy, Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York hiked the cost of a powerful drug used to treat people with life-threatening illnesses like AIDS and cancer by over 5,000 percent overnight."

The last time I looked, patents were government-protected monopolies.  The benefits of patents are debatable in the discussion of free markets.  Most economists recognize their value as an tool for creating the incentive for innovation.  However, it is recognized as a temporarily assigned privilege.

I don't hold a particular stance on whether or not patents are viable tools.  Unlike Jeffrey Tucker, I'd venture that removing patents altogether would not be good for innovation.  I'm willing to accept his arguments, they do make a great deal of sense, I just don't think they have practical applications (I could be wrong...saying something doesn't have practical application just means it hasn't been tried, so we're wary.  In fact, patents didn't exist for many years and humans still made tremendous innovations without intellectual property rights.)

Since patents are a government rigging of market management (controlling production), perhaps the length of patents should be reduced.  Or perhaps upon the sale of a patent, the protections are eliminated within a shortened time frame.  

Patents are government regulation and an inhibition on markets.  Thus, the government has the means to 'fix' what it broke with patents.  That said, the journalist needs to learn quite a bit about what a free market is.

Late note:  A comment mentions that Daraprim is off-patent and the firm purchased 'exclusive rights', which the journalist failed to look into and assumed was a patent.  I looked into it at lunch, because I'd assume the same thing.  There are no 'exclusive rights' without a patent.  What the firm purchased was the only factory currently making the drug.  There are no 'exclusive rights' at all.  By keeping the price down, the current company was making a profit and reducing competition (which should have, oddly enough, brought it up on anti-trust laws).  But the new owner may make a short term large margin, only to face a competitor who decides to now enter this market and drive prices down.

All in all, the free market is working far better than this journalist ever imagined, even if the short term hit for people is substantial.  My guess is the competition will push the price for the drug far lower than it was previously.

Times haven't really changed.  But views and perspectives certainly have.

We are in a better economic place today than we were during the Bush/Reagan debate.  Yet, somehow, the conversation has devolved. There is a problem today - but it's the same problem it was 35 years ago.  In fact, the question was about "the problem" of illegal immigration.

We don't need to just welcome them in, but a path to citizenship for those who work hard should be available. 

NBC's dismissal of Trump, last week, was probably not a bad decision, depending on your point of view.  I consider him a blowhard who does not add much meaningful dialogue to the discussion of politics.  He's not a viable candidate for president.  I consider his comments about Mexicans wrong and misguided.  His statements point to many misguided but widely held beliefs about immigration in our country.  Yes, his comments were intolerant.  So what?  Last I checked, that's a perfectly legal trait to have in this nation where we have freedom of speech.  It may not be socially acceptable, though I will not play Thought Police and tell him he can't say these things.  I know plenty of people who share his views, and just as many people who applauded his ouster from NBC on the basis of these views.  I fail to see why these led to his removal, since Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton are still employed by NBC.  Both of these commentators are incredibly biased, and have chosen to be intolerant or racist like Trump.  It's also worth noting how they are exceedingly partisan, without facing the kind of repercussions we've seen for other partisan commentators (I guess you have to be a very special leftist to be accorded this kind of treatment).

So what can be said about Trump's removal?  Not much, really.  NBC has every right to employ whomever they choose.  On that basis alone, Trump's dismissal isn't worth talking about.  What is worth talking about are the reasons NBC used.  Had they said "We do not choose to work with him anymore" or "We really just don't like his comb-over," I doubt many people would pay much attention to this tempest in a teapot.  But they didn't.  NBC called him out for his comments about Mexicans, citing these as the reason for the parting of ways.  It's an odd reason, considering their other employees' stated views.  

Happy Independence Day!  If you're like me, you're with your family and being independent together (h/t to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer).  

If you're like me, you're probably having hot dogs and hamburgers, potato or macaroni salad, soda or beer, or other kinds of foods which were purchased at a store after being shipped from some other part of the U.S. or even another nation.   

If you're like me, you probably don't spend time worrying about the details of how your food reached your table.  But you may know people, as I do, who think the whole "eat local' idea will save our health and economy.  We have a restaurant here which is excellent, but very expensive, and always booked.  We need to make reservations several months in advance to get a table.   They only serve locally grown foods (I believe it's a 50 mile radius), and it's BYOB (so I guess they're OK with bringing French wine to go with the Jersey Tomatoes).

Normally I don't go in for faddish trends, and I really don't buy the whole "local food" movement.  But this is a good restaurant and just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I'll avoid a good meal.  Good food is good food.  There are reasons why I don't necessarily think the local food movement is ever going to change how we live, and it certainly is not going to make our lives better.

As this video (45 minutes long - so be prepared) points out, most nations with small farms have economic problems.  This doesn't intrinsically mean small farms are impoverishing those nations, but there's no doubt being a food exporter (and the U.S. is by far the largest) is an indication of economic strength through size.  This video also points out the hypocrisy of our nation's politics and its 'solutions' to perceived problems.  We have deemed some banks "Too Big To Fail" and willingly subsidize their moral hazard, while at the same time pointing to large agricultural firms and saying they are "Too Big To Succeed" and impose excessive regulations on them while subsidizing failing small farms.  So the policy of the U.S. that we subsidize failure, and engage double standards wherever we see fit.

The Jungle is often touted as an example of what would happen if we did not support regulation of the food industry.  Unfortunately, this novel was a work of fiction designed to draw attention to the plight of the working man.  It was the lies of Upton Sinclair about the Chicago Packing District that stick in people's memory, however.  By and large, most food businesses provided healthier foods than smaller firms.  It was in their best interest to do so.  One does not win new consumers by killing or injuring those you have.  In fact, most of these businesses wanted regulation as a means to raise barriers to entry against their smaller competitors, and to prevent foreign foods, which had raised trade barriers, from being too competitive.

A friend of mine who absolutely loves Obama enjoys sharing little things with friends via Facebook and email.  I've put a few below the fold, though I'm still searching for the one which claims that Obama lowered unemployment, increased the stock market to record highs, and lowered gas prices to recent lows.  That one was a hoot. 

They are factoids which support the concept that Obama is a good, gracious, and successful president despite claims to the otherwise.

By the same token, this same person (and many others like him) continually complain about the 'state of the economy' and how 'corporations are ruining the US' and how we're still plagued with high unemployment and poverty.  

 I suppose they can make the claims they make because they believe if Obama had the full support of the nation and Congress, these things would finally be 'taken care of' and we'd all live in Candyland.

But it doesn't square.  These folk are deluded enough to say the things they say, and make no mistake - none of the facts used are untrue, they are merely out of context and misunderstood by the dopes who use them (to be fair, I've seen plenty of similar stuff by Republicans, and the information used just as poorly).  Yet if things are just so dandy, what else does Obama need to really 'fix'?  That's what I don't understand.  These people are incapable of leaving well enough alone.  Once you've got something working, you don't keep fiddling with it.  That is, if you actually assume the economy is working.  I don't.  It's functioning.  Sort've.  You can't really shut down an economy, it just shifts its activities to more profitable and easier methods.  So yes, the economy continues to function despite the damage Obama has done.  Measurements are just data.  They don't tell you about the health of the economy.  These fools have misconstrued momentary data for meaningful analysis, and completely missed out on the fact that correlation is not causation.