AIG

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

*When someone who owns a sports team can get a new stadium built with money supplied by taxpayers, and then gets to keep all the profits, that is unfair to everyone but the owner of the team, and perhaps the athletes, who get giant salaries. Why should anyone have to pay for that, other than the people who profit from it? The owners are rich. They should pay for it themselves.

I think it is pretty crummy too, although it is misleading to say the teamowner takes all the profit while taxpayers paid for it. Teams either lease the use of the stadium or have put significant sums into the purchase and share the profits according to contracts agreed to by the cities in which the stadiums were built. I have the same 'not with my tax money' reaction to, though.

*When a large corporation like WalMart can get away with not paying for health insurance for their workers, and they end up on medicaid subsidized with taxpayers money, that isn't fair. WalMart is one of the richest, most successful corporations ever. The owners/executives of WalMart are extremely rich. Why should taxpayers be burdened with that?

Walmart provides insurance benefits for fulltime employees. I know they use the old 35 hour per week, part time employee escape, but the employees do choose to work there. The reason the owners are rich and the company makes huge profits is because they manage their p/l statements that tightly. Taxpayers are unfortunately stuck paying for some benefits for these low pay employers just like we do for the low pay grocery store clerk and the unemployed guy on his couch. That's the nature of the beast.
*

When pharmaceutical companies can charge as much as they do in THIS country (but not in any other country), but their R&D is subsidized with taxpayer money, that isn't fair.

R&D is subsidized through grants and the like but the companies spend far more in drug trials and development. They are private corporations who pay their employees to do a job. Instead of despising their profit, you should applaud it.
*

When rich people who have millions or billions of dollars can get away paying less than someone who makes 30k/year, that isn't fair.

Do you mean in dollars or percentages? I guarantee there is NO millionaire paying less in either category than someone making $30K/ year. That is a nice fallacy though.
*

When taxpayers end up having to bail out corporations because they have been mismanaged, but the people who mismanaged them get big bonuses and bloated salaries, that isn't fair.

There we agree. Those companies shouldn't be bailed out. If they aren't strong enough to compete and succeed they shouldn't exist.
*

When hundreds of people get laid off from work while the people at the top get bonuses and giant salaries, that isn't fair.

Too true. That is the very hallmark of a poorly managed company that should fail.

What would I do? Well, I'm not sure exactly how to change it, but I would try to enact policies that didn't allow any of that stuff to happen. We need to do something to curtail the greed and corruption. It's obscene, the way this crap happens, and people just put up with it. We are like blind sheep in this country going over a cliff. It's maddening.

You've thrown out the usual statements but without an idea of how to make it better they don't mean much.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by lookout123

I think it is pretty crummy too, although it is misleading to say the teamowner takes all the profit while taxpayers paid for it. Teams either lease the use of the stadium or have put significant sums into the purchase and share the profits according to contracts agreed to by the cities in which the stadiums were built. I have the same 'not with my tax money' reaction to, though.

Taxpayers who don't live in the area where the stadium is being built should not have to pay for it.

Walmart provides insurance benefits for fulltime employees. I know they use the old 35 hour per week, part time employee escape, but the employees do choose to work there. The reason the owners are rich and the company makes huge profits is because they manage their p/l statements that tightly. Taxpayers are unfortunately stuck paying for some benefits for these low pay employers just like we do for the low pay grocery store clerk and the unemployed guy on his couch. That's the nature of the beast.

Even with some of the people who work full time, unless they are managers or higher ups, many of them can't afford the insurance and so they still end up on medicaid. WalMart should pay them enough to afford to buy insurance, or they should provide it to them.

*R&D is subsidized through grants and the like but the companies spend far more in drug trials and development. They are private corporations who pay their employees to do a job. Instead of despising their profit, you should applaud it.

Why? We are paying for a lot of the research and development, then charged extremely high prices for the very drugs we helped pay to develop. What we are paying for is advertising. Why should drug companies even be advertising? That should be between a doctor and their patient. If people really want to know about new drugs, there are plenty of ways to get information about them. Drug companies are extremely corrupt, and they are very profitable. Health care should not be about profit, it should be about helping people.

Do you mean in dollars or percentages? I guarantee there is NO millionaire paying less in either category than someone making $30K/ year. That is a nice fallacy though.

Warren Buffet has even said he pays less than his secretary. Not in actual dollars of course, but the % he pays is less than hers. That is very common.

There we agree. Those companies shouldn't be bailed out. If they aren't strong enough to compete and succeed they shouldn't exist.
Too true. That is the very hallmark of a poorly managed company that should fail.

Yeparoo.

You've thrown out the usual statements but without an idea of how to make it better they don't mean much.

Well, we could start by putting some regulations back into place to stop corruption, have serious oversight and transparency, and we could investigate and try people who break the law or are unethical with regard to how they conduct business. We could reform the tax code. We could stop subsidizing private corporations, or companies that make more than $500,000/year. We could provide health care for everyone so the burden doesn't fall on corporations, and then charge them a higher tax rate to help pay for it. We could stop bailing out companies that fail. We could start enforcing antitrust laws, and break up companies that are too big to fail. And, we could have some kind of regulations about how executives are paid, and have a living wage for workers, so people make enough money to live and afford things. And lastly, we could reform the advertising industry. how is that for a start?

[classicman]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Well, we could start by putting some regulations back into place to stop corruption, have serious oversight and transparency, and we could investigate and try people who break the law or are unethical with regard to how they conduct business.

I love this idea - Lets start here

Barney Frank is the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.
Committee Members
The #1 guy responsible for oversight. And paid rather handsomely for it as well. Do you think he owes us a refund too?

Here is just a tidbit from the site:

The Financial Services Committee is responsible for the oversight of the U.S. banking industry.

The extraordinary increase in subprime mortgage lending over the past decade has made credit and home ownership opportunities available to millions of consumers who could not qualify for conventional mortgages. The Democratic Caucus of the Committee has long advocated expanding access to credit for such consumers and this is a goal the Caucus continues to pursue.

Originally Posted by sugarpop

And lastly, we could reform the advertising industry. how is that for a start?

Wha Wha What?????

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by classicman

I love this idea - Lets start here

Barney Frank is the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.
Committee Members
The #1 guy responsible for oversight. And paid rather handsomely for it as well. Do you think he owes us a refund too?

Here is just a tidbit from the site:

Yes, I do think people in government, who should've been doing their job bu weren't, should also be held accountable.

Wha Wha What?????

Advertising is the bane of existance.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

And lastly, we could reform the advertising industry. how is that for a start?

Why? It's the only one that works.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by TGRR

Why? It's the only one that works.

It doesn't work in a very good way though. Advertising is part of the problem. It should be reformed as well.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

It doesn't work in a very good way though. Advertising is part of the problem. It should be reformed as well.

Good way? There is no "good way" in advertising under capitalism. There is "successful" and "unsuccessful". If that is unacceptable, you'll have to find a new system.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by TGRR

Good way? There is no "good way" in advertising under capitalism. There is "successful" and "unsuccessful". If that is unacceptable, you'll have to find a new system.

Advertising is the bane of an enlightened society.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

It's about something I posted earlier. You have to go back and read the post.

Are you talking about it in general or something specific?

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Advertising is the bane of an enlightened society.

Bullshit.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Advertising is the bane of an enlightened society.

Good thing I don't live in Tibet, then.

TGRR,
Would not have known to avoid "The Angry Whopper", had he not seen the commercial.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by lookout123

...R&D is subsidized through grants and the like but the companies spend far more in drug trials and development. They are private corporations who pay their employees to do a job. Instead of despising their profit, you should applaud it...

Check out these links to learn how pharmaceutical companies really work and how they are screwing us.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244
"...Third, the industry is hardly a model of American free enterprise. To be sure, it is free to decide which drugs to develop (me-too drugs instead of innovative ones, for instance), and it is free to price them as high as the traffic will bear, but it is utterly dependent on government-granted monopolies—in the form of patents and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved exclusive marketing rights. If it is not particularly innovative in discovering new drugs, it is highly innovative—and aggressive—in dreaming up ways to extend its monopoly rights..."
"...Drug industry expenditures for research and development, while large, were consistently far less than profits. For the top ten companies, they amounted to only 11 percent of sales in 1990, rising slightly to 14 percent in 2000. The biggest single item in the budget is neither R&D nor even profits but something usually called "marketing and administration"—a name that varies slightly from company to company. In 1990, a staggering 36 percent of sales revenues went into this category, and that proportion remained about the same for over a decade.[13] Note that this is two and a half times the expenditures for R&D.

These figures are drawn from the industry's own annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and to stockholders, but what actually goes into these categories is not at all clear, because drug companies hold that information very close to their chests. It is likely, for instance, that R&D includes many activities most people would consider marketing, but no one can know for sure. For its part, "marketing and administration" is a gigantic black box that probably includes what the industry calls "education," as well as advertising and promotion, legal costs, and executive salaries—which are whopping. According to a report by the non-profit group Families USA, the for-mer chairman and CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Charles A. Heimbold Jr., made $74,890,918 in 2001, not counting his $76,095,611 worth of unexercised stock options. The chairman of Wyeth made $40,521,011, exclusive of his $40,629,459 in stock options. And so on..."
"...This is an industry that in some ways is like the Wizard of Oz—still full of bluster but now being exposed as something far different from its image. Instead of being an engine of innovation, it is a vast marketing machine. Instead of being a free market success story, it lives off government-funded research and monopoly rights. Yet this industry occupies an essential role in the American health care system, and it performs a valuable function, if not in discovering important new drugs at least in developing them and bringing them to market. But big pharma is extravagantly rewarded for its relatively modest functions. We get nowhere near our money's worth. The United States can no longer afford it in its present form..."

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2001/july/n..._debunks_d.php
"...¤ The actual after-tax cash outlay - or what drug companies really spend on R&D - for each new drug (including failures) according to the DiMasi study is approximately $108 million. (That's in year 2000 dollars, based on data provided by drug companies.) [See Section I]

¤ A simpler measure - also derived from data provided by the industry - suggests that after-tax R&D costs ranged from $69 million to $87 million for each new drug created in the 1990s, including failures. [See Section II]

¤ Industry R&D costs are reduced by taxpayer-funded research, which has helped launch the most medically important drugs in recent years and many of the best-selling drugs, including all of the top five sellers in one recent year.

¤ An internal National Institutes of Health (NIH) document, obtained by Public Citizen through the Freedom of Information Act, shows how crucial taxpayer-funded research is to top-selling drugs. According to the NIH, taxpayer-funded scientists or foreign universities conducted 85 percent of the research projects that led to the discovery and development of the top five selling drugs in 1995. [See Section III]..."

http://survivreausida.net/a4915-rx-r...drug-indu.html
"...Public Citizen based the study on an extensive review of government and industry data and a report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Among the report’s key findings :

* The actual after-tax cash outlay - what drug companies really spend on R&D for each new drug (including failures) - is approximately $110 million (in year 2000 dollars.) This is in marked contrast with the $500 million figure PhRMA frequently touts.
* The NIH document shows how crucial taxpayer-funded research is to the development of top-selling drugs. According to the NIH, U.S. taxpayer-funded scientists conducted at least 55 percent of the research projects that led to the discovery and development of the five top-selling drugs in 1995.
* Public Citizen found that, at most, about 22 percent of the new drugs brought to market in the past two decades were innovative drugs that represented important therapeutic advances. Most new drugs were "me-too" or copycat drugs that have little or no therapeutic gain over existing drugs, undercutting the industry’s claim that R&D expenses are used to discover new treatments for serious and life-threatening illnesses.

A second report issued today by Public Citizen, The Other Drug War : Big Pharma’s 625 Washington Lobbyists, examines how the U.S. drug industry spent an unprecedented $262 million on political influence in the 1999-2000 election cycle. That includes $177 million on lobbying, $65 million on issue ads and $20 million on campaign contributions. The report shows that :

* The drug industry hired 625 different lobbyists last year — or more than one lobbyist for every member of Congress — to coax, cajole and coerce lawmakers. The one-year bill for this team of lobbyists was $92.3 million, a $7.2 million increase over what the industry spent for lobbyists in 1999..."
"...The drug industry is stealing from us twice," Clemente said. "First it claims that it needs huge profits to develop new drugs, even while drug companies get hefty taxpayer subsidies. Second, the companies gouge taxpayers while spending millions from their profits to buy access to lawmakers and defeat pro-consumer prescription drug legislation..."