Dean Baker's Blog, page 23

Changes that Would Make a Difference in the Biden Administration

I’m not going to get too into mapping out an agenda for the Biden administration. I still remember speaking at the zombie conferences (stealing that line from my friend, Josh Bivens) in November and December of 2016. We had all sorts of great plans for the Clinton administration. But there are still some points that can be usefully made even if Biden doesn’t win. (Okay, I realize the world will look pretty scary if Trump gets four more years and can let loose the fury of hell on anyone who doesn...

Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro Plot to Get Brazilians Killed

It’s not normal for a president of the United States to make plans with the president of an allied country, that is likely to get tens of thousands of people in that country killed. But we’re not talking about ordinary presidents; we’re talking about Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.

The goal of the Trump-Bolsonaro plot was to keep Brazil from getting access to a vaccine developed in China. China is apparently somewhat ahead of the United States in developing an effective vaccine. While the pharm...

Washington Post Reports on How Top Execs at Bankrupt Companies Get Large Bonuses

The Post had a nice piece reported on how the top executives of major companies that went into bankruptcy were able to get large bonuses. As the piece points out, the bonuses are not tied to performance outcomes, like getting the companies out of bankruptcy in a specific time frame. Of course, ordinary workers at these companies are not so lucky, with many being laid off with little or nothing by way of severance pay.

While the piece does not make this point explicitly, these sorts of payouts to...

Yet Another Diatribe on Patent Monopolies and How They Are Not Talked About in Polite Company

I had a short vacation last week, so my comments are both late and short. I will yet again take a shot at patent monopolies as a mechanism for financing the development of prescription drugs. This is because it is in the news, both with Purdue Pharma’s settlement in the opioid case and also with China’s moving forward in distributing a coronavirus vaccine.

Patents and Lying

Starting with the Purdue Pharma settlement, I did not see any mention anywhere of the fact that government-granted patent m...

Red State Governors Still Flunk Coronavirus Testing

A few weeks back I did a post noting that states governed by Republicans had the highest positive test rates, while the states with the lowest positive rates were mostly governed by Democrats. I argued that positive test rates are a good measure of how serious the governors are in trying to bring the pandemic under control.

While they can take measures to limit the actual spread, such as longer and stronger lockdowns and mask requirements, many factors determining the spread are outside their co...

The Impact of the Pandemic on Superstar Cities

The Washington Post had a piece last week discussing the extent to which the pandemic, and more specifically increased opportunities for remote work, will affect thriving cities like New York and San Francisco. The main conclusion of the piece is that it won’t have much impact.

This view is a bit peculiar. The argument in the article is essentially that these cities are very attractive places to live, and that will continue to be the case even if people have more opportunities to work remotely.

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Government-Granted Patent Monopolies Gave Purdue Pharma Incentives to Push Opioids

Maybe this is too obvious a point, but I don’t see it mentioned in news coverage of the company’s settlement. If we could ever have a serious debate on the relative merits of government-granted patent monopolies compared with direct upfront funding, as we did with Moderna’s research on a coronavirus vaccine, the incentive that patents give to lie about the safety and effectiveness of drugs would be an important factor.

Unfortunately, we may never have this debate because our policy types refuse ...

Government-Granted Patent Monopolies Gave Purdue Pharma Incentives to Push Opiods

Maybe this is too obvious a point, but I don’t see it mentioned in news coverage of the company’s settlement. If we could ever have a serious debate on the relative merits of government-granted patent monopolies compared with direct upfront funding, as we did with Moderna’s research on a coronavirus vaccine, the incentive that patents give to lie about the safety and effectiveness of drugs would be an important factor.

Unfortunately, we may never have this debate because our policy types refuse ...

Washington Post Suffers from Which Way Is Up Problem: Repealing Section 230 is DEREGULATING Facebook

A common problem in policy circles is that government protections that redistribute income upward are defined as part of the market, and getting rid of them or weakening them is described as government intervention. This issue comes up most frequently with government-granted patent monopolies with prescription drugs. Any measure to lower prices by weakening patent monopoly protections is treated as a government intervention, while the patent monopoly itself is treated as the free market. And, ju...

Waiting for a Vaccine and the Collaborative Research Alternative

It seems increasingly likely that China will begin providing vaccines to its own people, as well as those in some other countries, by December, and possibly as early as next month. The prospect of a vaccine being available that soon has to look good to people here, now that the Trump administration’s pandemic control efforts have completely failed. The whole country would like to get back to normal, but that doesn’t seem like a serious possibility until we have an effective vaccine widely availa...