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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On November 03 2012 13:06 Souma wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2012 10:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 03 2012 09:27 Kich wrote:On November 03 2012 06:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 03 2012 06:42 Souma wrote:On November 03 2012 06:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 03 2012 06:34 Souma wrote:On November 03 2012 06:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 03 2012 06:04 Souma wrote:
Jonny you have this weird habit of not addressing the actual argument. How does that refute the fact that drug companies purposefully bloat their R&D costs...? Well you didn't make a good case (no data) that the R&D costs are actually inflated. Presumably they would do so to take advantage of the R&D tax credit, though I have no idea what the rules / restrictions / valuation of the tax credits are. Assuming they do inflate those costs, other than taking advantage of another stupid government program, what's the problem? If they are inflating one cost then they are deflating another. So the books still balance and at the end of the day the industry needs to at least cover its cost of capital. Linked to me through a careful observer of this thread *cough*: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/01/the-trouble-with-corporate-taxes/to-overhaul-the-corporate-tax-code-start-with-drug-companiesWell, I think we can agree that they are taking advantage of a stupid government program, but that's really not what was being argued either. And inflating R&D costs with marketing costs etc. cannot justify their price gouging. Not all cost is the same and not all cost can be justified. Ok, so the issue is supposed price gouging? Then make your case - demonstrate that drug companies are charging an unjustified price. I just did. They inflate their R&D costs to make it seem like it's okay to charge everyone what they do. And actually the issue was not price gouging. The issue is inflating R&D costs. Edit: I gotta get to work. Talk to ya later. :D I still don't get it. Drugs don't get priced at R&D cost plus margin... So inflating R&D cost does not equal over pricing. I feel like this should be pretty easy to get. He's implying that by inflating their R&D costs they are justified in charging a high price by saying, "Hey look, we spent a ton of money making this thing, so it will obviously cost a lot." If things cost a lot to make, they will cost a lot to buy. Generally, people do not price extremely expensive to create products at low costs because they're nice people. Ok, but demonstrating that they are inflating their R&D costs for tax purposes (separate books) doesn't mean that they are inflating R&D costs for pricing purposes. Moreover, even if they are inflating R&D costs for pricing purposes you do not know the effect because you do not know the role R&D costs play in pricing the drug. The drug industry is similar to the movie industry. Most drugs are money losers and a few blockbusters pay for it all. So yes, quite often an expensive to create drug will be priced below the level of profitability. 1) The original argument was me merely pointing out that they inflate R&D costs because people like to throw the $1 billion number around. But, if you look around it's quite obvious they do it in part for pricing purposes along with tax purposes. You get idiots from Forbes and whatnot doing part of the price justification for them. 2) What other roles could R&D possibly play when it comes to pricing the drug other than to raise the price? Companies don't just spend billions of dollars and then not factor in those costs. That would be bad business. We do not know how much they are inflating their R&D costs nor their prices as a consequence (I would assume it varies from company to company) but is that somehow supposed to make me feel better or something? 3) Yeah, in that respect pretty much all industries that invest a lot in R&D are like the movie industry; however, the movie industry's products do not vary in pricing like those of the drug industry. Drug companies can have a "blockbuster" hit then charge whatever the hell they want. This is straying from the original argument though, which was just me saying, "Hey, be careful, drug companies like to inflate R&D costs!"
dean baker also makes the point that the reason why they develop the 'me too' drugs is because they are patented brand name drugs, and if you convince doctors to prescribe that instead of far cheaper generic drugs, you can make back the r&d on it. it's kind of a wasteful process.
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I got me some Obama shares on intrade for around $5.50. I'll make around a hundred bucks if he wins. 
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Nate Silver says 22 polls are out today, Obama leads in 19, Romney leads in 1.
Friday’s polling should make it easy to discern why Mr. Obama has the Electoral College advantage. There were 22 polls of swing states published Friday. Of these, Mr. Obama led in 19 polls, and two showed a tie. Mitt Romney led in just one of the surveys, a Mason-Dixon poll of Florida.
Although the fact that Mr. Obama held the lead in so many polls is partly coincidental — there weren’t any polls of North Carolina on Friday, for instance, which is Mr. Romney’s strongest battleground state — they nevertheless represent powerful evidence against the idea that the race is a “tossup.” A tossup race isn’t likely to produce 19 leads for one candidate and one for the other — any more than a fair coin is likely to come up heads 19 times and tails just once in 20 tosses. (The probability of a fair coin doing so is about 1 chance in 50,000.)
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/nov-2-for-romney-to-win-state-polls-must-be-statistically-biased/
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If Romney loses, there won't be that much for me to say. I'd have to start by acknowledging that my reading of the polls was wrong. Obviously, some kind of post mortem will need to given about Romney's candidacy (a reaffirmation that he was a flawed candidate -- not that it should have mattered). In terms of the system overall, I can't say that it is broken. My only criticism (which merits discussion regardless of whether Obama wins), is that the media establishment is obviously broken. The degree to which traditional media has whored itself out for Obama's benefit is truly gross. Even so, this will fix itself in the near future as Internet-based news continues to supplant traditional TV and print sources.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
if by the happy off chance obama wins, i really do wonder what the tea party people will do.
might they even form their own party? the big shots running the republican party surely would not allow that to happen. but the more extreme the right becomes, the less chance of winning they have. who will be the third plank on that boat, besides evangelicals and tea partiers?
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On November 04 2012 03:11 xDaunt wrote:
If Romney loses, there won't be that much for me to say. I'd have to start by acknowledging that my reading of the polls was wrong. Obviously, some kind of post mortem will need to given about Romney's candidacy (a reaffirmation that he was a flawed candidate -- not that it should have mattered). In terms of the system overall, I can't say that it is broken. My only criticism (which merits discussion regardless of whether Obama wins), is that the media establishment is obviously broken. The degree to which traditional media has whored itself out for Obama's benefit is truly gross. Even so, this will fix itself in the near future as Internet-based news continues to supplant traditional TV and print sources.
Do I sense your confidence faltering there?
I mean I was expecting the first phrase to be "If Romney loses (which is kind of a long shot at this point, Obama is clearly having trouble in all the states that matter)..."
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
ahahaha so it shouldn't have mattered that romney is a flawed candidate? do you think a monkey should have beaten obama?
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On November 04 2012 03:21 oneofthem wrote:
ahahaha so it shouldn't have mattered that romney is a flawed candidate? do you think a monkey should have beaten obama?
A plywood board should beat Obama.
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On November 04 2012 03:11 xDaunt wrote:
If Romney loses, there won't be that much for me to say. I'd have to start by acknowledging that my reading of the polls was wrong. Obviously, some kind of post mortem will need to given about Romney's candidacy (a reaffirmation that he was a flawed candidate -- not that it should have mattered). In terms of the system overall, I can't say that it is broken. My only criticism (which merits discussion regardless of whether Obama wins), is that the media establishment is obviously broken. The degree to which traditional media has whored itself out for Obama's benefit is truly gross. Even so, this will fix itself in the near future as Internet-based news continues to supplant traditional TV and print sources.
Well said, good points. Romney is a flawed candidate, everyone knew it from the start. People like Santorum would never have garnered much support if Romney wasn't the alternative. But surely part of this is predicated on the fact that incumbents have a larger inherent advantage these days.
The media is broken, in a lot of ways. One thing that bothers me in particular is when the media excludes coverage of third party candidates, and then uses their lack of popular support as the justification to exclude them, it's such circular logic.
The internet is a double-edged sword, primarily because most heavy internet users are young and because you can get a lot of "low information voters" (read: idiots) dominating the discourse. But I have seen a lot of good things in internet media, particularly the criticism from both sides of the aisle of the terrible job the mainstream media has been doing and their ridiculous degree of bias. That's a first step at least.
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On November 04 2012 03:23 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2012 03:21 oneofthem wrote:
ahahaha so it shouldn't have mattered that romney is a flawed candidate? do you think a monkey should have beaten obama? A plywood board should beat Obama.
I don't think Keanu Reeves could win the primary though.
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On November 04 2012 03:26 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2012 03:23 xDaunt wrote:On November 04 2012 03:21 oneofthem wrote:
ahahaha so it shouldn't have mattered that romney is a flawed candidate? do you think a monkey should have beaten obama? A plywood board should beat Obama. I don't think Keanu Reeves could win the primary though.
I'm not sure. He chose the red pill over the blue pill. That has to count for something on the right....
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If Romney loses, I'd blame the far-right in the Republican party that forced him to morph into severe conservative Mitt. I'd also blame them for driving away any of the more pragmatic Republicans from running this year.
The Republican primary was a huge joke.
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On April 19 2012 20:26 bartus88 wrote:
Not American, but I wouldn't want to vote for either for them. Even the most left wing politicians in the USA would be extremely right wing in Europe. I'm hoping Obama will win, but I'm afraid it's going to be a Republican victory, since the idiotic hive-mind of common people everywhere tend to blame their current leader when times are tough, even when he's not the cause of it.
The irony in your post is pretty funny.
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On November 04 2012 03:30 Adila wrote:
If Romney loses, I'd blame the far-right in the Republican party that forced him to morph into severe conservative Mitt. I'd also blame them for driving away any of the more pragmatic Republicans from running this year.
The Republican primary was a huge joke.
I would say that this is quite a sensible assessment.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
I believe if Obama wins, it will be a sign that the majority of Americans will not sit quietly by while the Republican party drags the country down the dumps with their stupid obstructionism and blatant lies. Not when it's done at this extremity, anyway.
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On November 04 2012 03:30 Adila wrote:
If Romney loses, I'd blame the far-right in the Republican party that forced him to morph into severe conservative Mitt. I'd also blame them for driving away any of the more pragmatic Republicans from running this year.
The Republican primary was a huge joke.
This is the reason. Not the media, not Romney as a flawed candidate. It's the idiots in the party itself. The Republican party will evolve (hopefully) and be back in 2016.
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On November 04 2012 03:36 Souma wrote:
I believe if Obama wins, it will be a sign that the majority of Americans will not sit quietly by while the Republican party drags the country down the dumps with their stupid obstructionism and blatant lies. Not when it's done at this extremity, anyway.
I don't see that stopping, given that Republicans are expected to hold the House. I expect more obstructionism. And it's probably not impossible that we go over the fiscal cliff because of it.
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When the economic stakes are so high for the ENTIRE WORLD, no other issue matters. It's like a company who is on the verge of closing down and filing bankruptcy, yet they have a meeting discussing if workers should get 15 minute or 20 minute breaks.
There's pro's for both.
Pros for Obama: Will let the Fed continue low interest rates, QE, easy money policies and allow us to basically buy our own debt to push the financial disaster down the road( who knows for how long Japan did it for along time).
Pros for Romney: By some huge stroke of luck if he actually tries to change things maybe it will work (I doubt it). But the other Pro to Romney is that the economy would crash a lot faster, allowing us to at least have hope for the future and start to rebuild. The crash will be a lot worst when it comes if we keep doing what we have (as I explained in previous post).
Anyone who thinks we can continue down this path without having a correction knows nothing about economics or cycles of life. There are Ups and Downs in almost everything, that includes the economy. You can't have never ending growth and never ending debt( That's what the American economy has been based on for a long time now). We needed a crash in order to correct this so that we could rebuild. All the policies were doing now are to stop this natural correction, but it EVENTUALLY HAS TO HAPPEN. How can you argue that growth and debt can go on forever without a NATURAL correction?
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On November 04 2012 03:37 Risen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2012 03:30 Adila wrote:
If Romney loses, I'd blame the far-right in the Republican party that forced him to morph into severe conservative Mitt. I'd also blame them for driving away any of the more pragmatic Republicans from running this year.
The Republican primary was a huge joke. This is the reason. Not the media, not Romney as a flawed candidate. It's the idiots in the party itself. The Republican party will evolve (hopefully) and be back in 2016.
I dunno man. The game plan seems to be "when in doubt, shift to the right".
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On November 04 2012 03:39 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2012 03:36 Souma wrote:
I believe if Obama wins, it will be a sign that the majority of Americans will not sit quietly by while the Republican party drags the country down the dumps with their stupid obstructionism and blatant lies. Not when it's done at this extremity, anyway. I don't see that stopping, given that Republicans are expected to hold the House. I expect more obstructionism. And it's probably not impossible that we go over the fiscal cliff because of it.
I don't know about that, to be honest. Democrats will have all the leverage coming into the new term. Republicans in Congress will have to start fearing for their jobs.
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EPT
