Apparently the NYT believes it does. A lengthy article on the growth of Chinese foreign investment told readers:
“But the show of financial strength [foreign investment by China] also makes China — and the world — more vulnerable. Long an engine of global growth, China is taking on new risks by exposing itself to shaky political regimes, volatile emerging markets and other economic forces beyond its control.
“Any major problems could weigh on China’s growth, particularly at a time when it is already slowing.”
Usually investing in other countries is thought to both increase returns to the country doing the investment and diversify risks, since it is unlikely that foreign countries will be subject to the same problems that may be hitting China (or the U.S.) at the same time. It is interesting that the NYT seems to hold the opposite perspective.
The piece seems to imply that China is unusual in the demands it makes on the countries in which it invests:
“China is forcing countries to play by its financial rules, which can be onerous. Many developing countries, in exchange for loans, pay steep interest rates and give up the rights to their natural resources for years. China has a lock on close to 90 percent of Ecuador’s oil exports, which mostly goes to paying off its loans.”
The United States took the lead in establishing the International Monetary Fund, which often acts as its agent in disputes. For example, in the East Asian financial crisis the I.M.F. imposed very detailed programs on the countries of the region, which set tax and spending schedules, changed regulations throughout the economy, and required the privatization of various industries. The conditions placed by China on the countries in which it invests may be different, but there are not without precedent.
The piece also bizarrely implies that labor abuses by U.S. companies or their contractors is a thing of the past, telling readers:
“Chinese mining and manufacturing operations, like many American and European companies in previous decades, have been accused of abusing workers overseas.”
Of course there are many places in the world, most notably Bangladesh and Cambodia, where there are regular reports of workers, often children, working long hours in dangerous conditions to make goods under contract with U.S. corporations. Sometimes these workers are held against their will and have their pay stolen by their employers. This is an ongoing problem, not a historical concern.
In discussing the new Chinese infrastructure bank the piece tells readers:
“Washington is worried that China will create its own rules, with lower expectations for transparency, governance and the environment.”
It would be helpful to know who in Washington says they are worried about these issues. Presumably all of Washington does not have these concerns. Also, just because politicians say these are their concerns, it doesn’t mean they are their actual concerns. For example, it may just be possible they fear competition from a Chinese investment bank.
Thanks to Keane Bhatt for calling this piece to my attention.
Note: I edited this to make it clear that the labor abuses in Cambodia and Bangladesh are occuring at factories that produce items for U.S. corporations.
Apparently the NYT believes it does. A lengthy article on the growth of Chinese foreign investment told readers:
“But the show of financial strength [foreign investment by China] also makes China — and the world — more vulnerable. Long an engine of global growth, China is taking on new risks by exposing itself to shaky political regimes, volatile emerging markets and other economic forces beyond its control.
“Any major problems could weigh on China’s growth, particularly at a time when it is already slowing.”
Usually investing in other countries is thought to both increase returns to the country doing the investment and diversify risks, since it is unlikely that foreign countries will be subject to the same problems that may be hitting China (or the U.S.) at the same time. It is interesting that the NYT seems to hold the opposite perspective.
The piece seems to imply that China is unusual in the demands it makes on the countries in which it invests:
“China is forcing countries to play by its financial rules, which can be onerous. Many developing countries, in exchange for loans, pay steep interest rates and give up the rights to their natural resources for years. China has a lock on close to 90 percent of Ecuador’s oil exports, which mostly goes to paying off its loans.”
The United States took the lead in establishing the International Monetary Fund, which often acts as its agent in disputes. For example, in the East Asian financial crisis the I.M.F. imposed very detailed programs on the countries of the region, which set tax and spending schedules, changed regulations throughout the economy, and required the privatization of various industries. The conditions placed by China on the countries in which it invests may be different, but there are not without precedent.
The piece also bizarrely implies that labor abuses by U.S. companies or their contractors is a thing of the past, telling readers:
“Chinese mining and manufacturing operations, like many American and European companies in previous decades, have been accused of abusing workers overseas.”
Of course there are many places in the world, most notably Bangladesh and Cambodia, where there are regular reports of workers, often children, working long hours in dangerous conditions to make goods under contract with U.S. corporations. Sometimes these workers are held against their will and have their pay stolen by their employers. This is an ongoing problem, not a historical concern.
In discussing the new Chinese infrastructure bank the piece tells readers:
“Washington is worried that China will create its own rules, with lower expectations for transparency, governance and the environment.”
It would be helpful to know who in Washington says they are worried about these issues. Presumably all of Washington does not have these concerns. Also, just because politicians say these are their concerns, it doesn’t mean they are their actual concerns. For example, it may just be possible they fear competition from a Chinese investment bank.
Thanks to Keane Bhatt for calling this piece to my attention.
Note: I edited this to make it clear that the labor abuses in Cambodia and Bangladesh are occuring at factories that produce items for U.S. corporations.
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That’s the assertion at the end of Robert Samuelson’s piece on the 50th anniversary of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Samuelson tells readers:
“By 2030, the number of Medicare beneficiaries is projected to reach 81 million, an almost 50 percent increase from today. Meanwhile, higher health spending has squeezed other programs. That’s an ironic footnote for the triumph of ’65: By threatening the rest of government, the instruments of a liberal agenda — Medicare and Medicaid — have bred illiberal consequences.”
In fact, the federal government spends considerably more, as a share of GDP, on education than it did before Medicare and Medicaid were created. There have also been expansions of spending in other areas, most notably the insurance subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. It is not clear that we would be spending more money in other areas if we did not have Medicare and Medicaid. It is possible that the success of these programs make the public willing to support spending in other areas.
Addendum:
Robert’s comment reminds me of the obvious point that I should have included originally. Because seniors have most of their health care costs covered by Medicare, they have more money to pay for other things, like taxes for other government services. Samuelson is effectively arguing that if people had their taxes reduced by the amount they pay for Medicare and Medicaid, but had their health care costs increase by an even larger amount (Medicare is far more efficient than the private health care system) then they would be willing to pay more in taxes for other services. There is no reason to believe this is true.
That’s the assertion at the end of Robert Samuelson’s piece on the 50th anniversary of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Samuelson tells readers:
“By 2030, the number of Medicare beneficiaries is projected to reach 81 million, an almost 50 percent increase from today. Meanwhile, higher health spending has squeezed other programs. That’s an ironic footnote for the triumph of ’65: By threatening the rest of government, the instruments of a liberal agenda — Medicare and Medicaid — have bred illiberal consequences.”
In fact, the federal government spends considerably more, as a share of GDP, on education than it did before Medicare and Medicaid were created. There have also been expansions of spending in other areas, most notably the insurance subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. It is not clear that we would be spending more money in other areas if we did not have Medicare and Medicaid. It is possible that the success of these programs make the public willing to support spending in other areas.
Addendum:
Robert’s comment reminds me of the obvious point that I should have included originally. Because seniors have most of their health care costs covered by Medicare, they have more money to pay for other things, like taxes for other government services. Samuelson is effectively arguing that if people had their taxes reduced by the amount they pay for Medicare and Medicaid, but had their health care costs increase by an even larger amount (Medicare is far more efficient than the private health care system) then they would be willing to pay more in taxes for other services. There is no reason to believe this is true.
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A New York Times article may have misled readers by implying that a state or local government with inadequate pension funds is relieved of its pension liabilities. In the context of a court ruling on the constitutionality of a plan negotiated between the city of Chicago and most of its unions, the article told readers:
“An insolvent system would be able to pay retirees only about 30 percent of their benefits. The cuts before the court were less drastic, and in combination with other changes, were supposed to leave the workers and retirees better off.”
Actually the city is still legally obligated to make the full payment for workers’ pensions even if the funds are depleted. In this case the payment would have to come directly from current revenue or the sale of assets. Workers may in fact be better off with a reduced pension in the sense that they would care about the city’s ability to pay current workers, in addition to retirees, and also its ability to provide necessary services, however it is wrong to imply that the insolvency of the pension funds would end the city’s obligations to retired workers.
A New York Times article may have misled readers by implying that a state or local government with inadequate pension funds is relieved of its pension liabilities. In the context of a court ruling on the constitutionality of a plan negotiated between the city of Chicago and most of its unions, the article told readers:
“An insolvent system would be able to pay retirees only about 30 percent of their benefits. The cuts before the court were less drastic, and in combination with other changes, were supposed to leave the workers and retirees better off.”
Actually the city is still legally obligated to make the full payment for workers’ pensions even if the funds are depleted. In this case the payment would have to come directly from current revenue or the sale of assets. Workers may in fact be better off with a reduced pension in the sense that they would care about the city’s ability to pay current workers, in addition to retirees, and also its ability to provide necessary services, however it is wrong to imply that the insolvency of the pension funds would end the city’s obligations to retired workers.
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The Washington Post reported on a speech by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she decried corporate America’s short-term focus and called on companies to invest in their workers. She did not indicate any specific proposals for bringing this about. In an earlier speech she had suggested tax incentives to promote profit sharing.
It actually is not hard to give companies more incentive to invest in their workers, we can just make it harder for them to fire them. According to the OECD the United States has by far the weakest employment protection legislation, meaning that it is extremely easy to fire workers. The United States is the only country in which even long-term workers can be fired immediately for no reason and with no compensation.
Laws that imposed some cost for firing long-term workers would give companies more incentive to invest in workers and ensure that their productivity continues to rise. This is a very simple and well-established mechanism that is likely to be far more direct than any tax scheme that Ms. Clinton might put forward.
While she has not put out any specifics of her plan to promote profit sharing, it is worth noting that Carter administration tax incentive to promote employee ownership has largely been used as a tax break for creative owners. For example, when Sam Zell bought up the Tribune Company in 2007 he used the money in the workers’ pensions to create an employee stock ownership plan, which provided much of the money for the purchase. While this did nothing to give workers any effective control of the company, it potentially provided enormous tax advantages to Zell. (Since the company lost money, he turned out not to need the tax break.)
The Washington Post reported on a speech by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she decried corporate America’s short-term focus and called on companies to invest in their workers. She did not indicate any specific proposals for bringing this about. In an earlier speech she had suggested tax incentives to promote profit sharing.
It actually is not hard to give companies more incentive to invest in their workers, we can just make it harder for them to fire them. According to the OECD the United States has by far the weakest employment protection legislation, meaning that it is extremely easy to fire workers. The United States is the only country in which even long-term workers can be fired immediately for no reason and with no compensation.
Laws that imposed some cost for firing long-term workers would give companies more incentive to invest in workers and ensure that their productivity continues to rise. This is a very simple and well-established mechanism that is likely to be far more direct than any tax scheme that Ms. Clinton might put forward.
While she has not put out any specifics of her plan to promote profit sharing, it is worth noting that Carter administration tax incentive to promote employee ownership has largely been used as a tax break for creative owners. For example, when Sam Zell bought up the Tribune Company in 2007 he used the money in the workers’ pensions to create an employee stock ownership plan, which provided much of the money for the purchase. While this did nothing to give workers any effective control of the company, it potentially provided enormous tax advantages to Zell. (Since the company lost money, he turned out not to need the tax break.)
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Bloomberg got into the act today with a quote from a Chinese economist telling readers:
“‘A lot of entrepreneurs probably have invested in the stock market and now they have seen a significant loss,’ Liu Li-Gang, chief Greater China economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Hong Kong, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. ‘As a result business confidence has lowered. In the past, sentiment tends to have a lot of impact on this survey.'”
The problem with story for arithmetic fans everywhere is that people only lost money on what they have invested since April. The Shanghai stock market is still up by more than 25 percent since the start of the year and nearly double its year ago level. In other words, not many people could be on net losers in this story, even if they are not quite as rich as they hoped to be.
Bloomberg got into the act today with a quote from a Chinese economist telling readers:
“‘A lot of entrepreneurs probably have invested in the stock market and now they have seen a significant loss,’ Liu Li-Gang, chief Greater China economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Hong Kong, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. ‘As a result business confidence has lowered. In the past, sentiment tends to have a lot of impact on this survey.'”
The problem with story for arithmetic fans everywhere is that people only lost money on what they have invested since April. The Shanghai stock market is still up by more than 25 percent since the start of the year and nearly double its year ago level. In other words, not many people could be on net losers in this story, even if they are not quite as rich as they hoped to be.
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The NYT gave us a bit of the old “he said, she said” in an article reporting on the Obama administration’s latest push for reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. It told readers:
“While opponents contend that most of the bank’s money benefits corporate giants like Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar, the small-business owners invited to the White House underscored supporters’ counterargument that most of the bank’s beneficiaries are smaller companies. Mr. Obama’s guests included the owners of Love & Quiches Gourmet in New York, Ferra Coffee in Texas and Bob’s Red Mill in Oregon.”
Of course the opponents are right. The largest beneficiaries include companies like Boeing, Caterpillar and other huge companies. In a typical year the fifteen largest beneficiaries will get more than 85 percent of the bank’s loans or guarantees and often more than 95 percent.
If President Obama and other supporters of the bank were actually concerned about the smaller companies who are the bulk of the bank’s beneficiaries it could presumably propose that the bank be reauthorized with a cap of something like $10-20 million on loans per beneficiary. This would ensure that the small companies who were President Obama’s guests could still get their loans, without giving taxpayer handouts to some of the country’s biggest companies.
The article concludes by telling readers:
“‘The Export-Import Bank makes money for the U.S. government,’ Mr. Obama said, referring to the loan repayments and proceeds from borrowers. ‘This is not a situation in which taxpayers are subsidizing these companies.’
In a fully employed economy (i.e. one in which the Federal Reserve Board is raising interest rates to slow the pace of job creation and economic growth) a below market interest rate loan that is issued or guaranteed by the Export-Import Bank is pulling capital away from other uses. This means that companies not favored by the Export-Import Bank will pay higher interest rates on their loans because of the loans supported by the Export-Import Bank. This is in effect a tax on other borrowers to support the companies getting loans from the Export-Import Bank.
Every economist in the Obama administration knows this to be true. It would have been helpful to point this fact out to readers who might otherwise believe that the Export-Import Bank has free money as President Obama appears to be claiming.
The NYT gave us a bit of the old “he said, she said” in an article reporting on the Obama administration’s latest push for reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. It told readers:
“While opponents contend that most of the bank’s money benefits corporate giants like Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar, the small-business owners invited to the White House underscored supporters’ counterargument that most of the bank’s beneficiaries are smaller companies. Mr. Obama’s guests included the owners of Love & Quiches Gourmet in New York, Ferra Coffee in Texas and Bob’s Red Mill in Oregon.”
Of course the opponents are right. The largest beneficiaries include companies like Boeing, Caterpillar and other huge companies. In a typical year the fifteen largest beneficiaries will get more than 85 percent of the bank’s loans or guarantees and often more than 95 percent.
If President Obama and other supporters of the bank were actually concerned about the smaller companies who are the bulk of the bank’s beneficiaries it could presumably propose that the bank be reauthorized with a cap of something like $10-20 million on loans per beneficiary. This would ensure that the small companies who were President Obama’s guests could still get their loans, without giving taxpayer handouts to some of the country’s biggest companies.
The article concludes by telling readers:
“‘The Export-Import Bank makes money for the U.S. government,’ Mr. Obama said, referring to the loan repayments and proceeds from borrowers. ‘This is not a situation in which taxpayers are subsidizing these companies.’
In a fully employed economy (i.e. one in which the Federal Reserve Board is raising interest rates to slow the pace of job creation and economic growth) a below market interest rate loan that is issued or guaranteed by the Export-Import Bank is pulling capital away from other uses. This means that companies not favored by the Export-Import Bank will pay higher interest rates on their loans because of the loans supported by the Export-Import Bank. This is in effect a tax on other borrowers to support the companies getting loans from the Export-Import Bank.
Every economist in the Obama administration knows this to be true. It would have been helpful to point this fact out to readers who might otherwise believe that the Export-Import Bank has free money as President Obama appears to be claiming.
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This NYT article on various state bills calling for drug companies to reveal their spending on research for high-priced drugs might have been a good place to mention that we have alternatives to patent financing for prescription drug research. For example, the federal government already spends more than $30 billion a year on research through the National Institutes of Health. If this sum were doubled or tripled, it could likely replace the patent supported research now being done by the drug industry.
And, since the research was all paid for upfront, the great new drugs developed for cancer, AIDS, and other diseases could all be sold as generics. Then we would not face tough decisions about whether to pay for expensive drugs for people who need them. We also would have eliminated the incentive for drug companies to mislead the public about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs.
This NYT article on various state bills calling for drug companies to reveal their spending on research for high-priced drugs might have been a good place to mention that we have alternatives to patent financing for prescription drug research. For example, the federal government already spends more than $30 billion a year on research through the National Institutes of Health. If this sum were doubled or tripled, it could likely replace the patent supported research now being done by the drug industry.
And, since the research was all paid for upfront, the great new drugs developed for cancer, AIDS, and other diseases could all be sold as generics. Then we would not face tough decisions about whether to pay for expensive drugs for people who need them. We also would have eliminated the incentive for drug companies to mislead the public about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs.
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You’ve got to admire those Silicon Valley boys, they hire one of President Obama’s top political advisers as a lobbyist, put out misleading studies on drivers’ pay, and now they are trying to get their drivers to lobby to reduce their own pay.
The context for the latter was their urging of their “partners” to come to a rally against New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to freeze the number of new cars for hire that Uber and other Internet based companies can put on the city’s streets. De Blasio was ostensibly putting in place this freeze to reduce congestion.
Whether or not the freeze is justified, one thing that is straightforward is that it would act to protect the earnings of existing Uber drivers in the same way that it would protect the earnings of the incumbent taxi industry. With fewer taxis on the road, there will be more passengers for each driver. This is likely to make an especially large difference for Uber drivers since its surge pricing model will lead to automatic fare increases when cars are in short supply.
This means that Uber was effectively asking these drivers to demand that the city cut their pay. I guess we’ll see if it works, maybe it really is a new economy.
You’ve got to admire those Silicon Valley boys, they hire one of President Obama’s top political advisers as a lobbyist, put out misleading studies on drivers’ pay, and now they are trying to get their drivers to lobby to reduce their own pay.
The context for the latter was their urging of their “partners” to come to a rally against New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to freeze the number of new cars for hire that Uber and other Internet based companies can put on the city’s streets. De Blasio was ostensibly putting in place this freeze to reduce congestion.
Whether or not the freeze is justified, one thing that is straightforward is that it would act to protect the earnings of existing Uber drivers in the same way that it would protect the earnings of the incumbent taxi industry. With fewer taxis on the road, there will be more passengers for each driver. This is likely to make an especially large difference for Uber drivers since its surge pricing model will lead to automatic fare increases when cars are in short supply.
This means that Uber was effectively asking these drivers to demand that the city cut their pay. I guess we’ll see if it works, maybe it really is a new economy.
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That is the conclusion that readers might draw from a piece by Neil Irwin in which he interviews Alexander Stubb, the Finnish finance minister, on the merits of the euro for Finland. Finland is often cited by euro critics because its economy is mired in recession even though, unlike Greece, it has always maintained low budget deficits and its government is not corrupt and highly efficient. The problem cited by critics (including me) is that the being in the euro prevent Finland from devaluing its currency to regain competitiveness.
Stubb dismisses the current weakness as a rough patch:
“You have to look at a longer time horizon. In his telling, the integration with Western Europe — of which the euro currency is a crucial element — deepened trade and diplomatic relations, making Finland both more powerful on the world stage and its industries better connected to the rest of the global economy. That made its people richer.
“‘In the early 1990s in the middle of a Finnish banking crisis and economic depression, we were a top 30 country in the world in per capita G.D.P.,’ he said. ‘Then we opened up; we became members of the E.U. Now we’re always up there in G.D.P. per capita or whatever other measure you look at with Sweden, Denmark, Australia and Canada.'”
Actually, if we look at a slightly longer time horizon, we would find that Finland was actually very close in per capita income to Sweden, Germany, and other rich countries in the 1980s before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Source: International Monetary Fund.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland’s per capita GDP was roughly 95 percent of the levels in Germany and Sweden. It fell sharply in the early 1990s but was already regaining ground rapidly by the mid-1990s, before the establishment of the euro. Since the recession Finland’s per capita GDP has fallen relative to both countries. It is now lower relative to Sweden, which is not in the euro, than it was at any point in the nineties, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Note: An earlier verison had a graph without years on the axis, as several comments notes, this has been corrected.
That is the conclusion that readers might draw from a piece by Neil Irwin in which he interviews Alexander Stubb, the Finnish finance minister, on the merits of the euro for Finland. Finland is often cited by euro critics because its economy is mired in recession even though, unlike Greece, it has always maintained low budget deficits and its government is not corrupt and highly efficient. The problem cited by critics (including me) is that the being in the euro prevent Finland from devaluing its currency to regain competitiveness.
Stubb dismisses the current weakness as a rough patch:
“You have to look at a longer time horizon. In his telling, the integration with Western Europe — of which the euro currency is a crucial element — deepened trade and diplomatic relations, making Finland both more powerful on the world stage and its industries better connected to the rest of the global economy. That made its people richer.
“‘In the early 1990s in the middle of a Finnish banking crisis and economic depression, we were a top 30 country in the world in per capita G.D.P.,’ he said. ‘Then we opened up; we became members of the E.U. Now we’re always up there in G.D.P. per capita or whatever other measure you look at with Sweden, Denmark, Australia and Canada.'”
Actually, if we look at a slightly longer time horizon, we would find that Finland was actually very close in per capita income to Sweden, Germany, and other rich countries in the 1980s before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Source: International Monetary Fund.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland’s per capita GDP was roughly 95 percent of the levels in Germany and Sweden. It fell sharply in the early 1990s but was already regaining ground rapidly by the mid-1990s, before the establishment of the euro. Since the recession Finland’s per capita GDP has fallen relative to both countries. It is now lower relative to Sweden, which is not in the euro, than it was at any point in the nineties, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Note: An earlier verison had a graph without years on the axis, as several comments notes, this has been corrected.
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Those folks at the Wall Street Journal are really turning reality on its head. Today it ran a column by Robert Ingram, a former CEO of Glaxo Wellcome, complaining about efforts to pass “transparency” legislation in Massachusetts, New York, and a number of other states. This legislation would require drug companies to report their profits on certain expensive drugs as well as government funding that contributed to their development.
Ingram sees such laws as a prelude to price controls. He then warns readers:
“There is no surer way to bring pharmaceutical innovation to a halt in the U.S. than letting governments decide how much companies can charge for their products or harassing them into lower prices. It also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how pharmaceutical research works. Scientific discoveries involve trying and failing, learning from those failures and trying again and again, often for years.”
Ingram bizarrely touts the “flowing pipeline of new wonder drugs spurred by a free market,” which he warns will be stopped by “government price controls.” This juxtaposition is bizarre, because patent monopolies are 180 degrees at odds with the free market. These monopolies are a government policy to provide incentives for innovation. Mr. Ingram obviously likes this policy, but that doesn’t make it the free market.
Of course there are other ways that the government can finance research and development, such as paying for it directly. It already does this to a large extent. At the encouragement of the pharmaceutical industry it spends more than $30 billion a year on mostly basic research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. It could double or triple the amount of direct funding (which could be contracted with private firms like Glaxo Wellcome) with the condition that all findings are placed in the public domain.
This would eliminate all the distortions associated with patent monopolies, such as patent-protected prices that are can be more than one hundred times as much as the free market price. This would eliminate all the ethical dilemmas about whether the government or private insurers should pay for expensive drugs like Sovaldi, since the drugs would be cheap. It would also eliminate the incentive to mislead doctors and the public about the safety and effectiveness of drugs in order to benefit from monopoly profits.
It would be great to have an honest debate about the best way to finance drug research. The first step is to stop conflating government granted patent monopolies with the free market.
One important point that Ingram gets wrong in this piece is his claim that, “Prescription drugs account for only about 10% of U.S. health-care spending, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This percentage has not changed since 1960 and is projected to remain the same for the next decade.”
While spending on drugs is roughly the same share of health care spending as it was in 1960, this is a sharp recovery from the level of the early 1980s, when it was close to 5 percent. Furthermore, spending on pharmaceuticals rose by more than 10.0 percent in 2014, which means that currently they are growing rapidly as a share of total health care spending.
Source: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Those folks at the Wall Street Journal are really turning reality on its head. Today it ran a column by Robert Ingram, a former CEO of Glaxo Wellcome, complaining about efforts to pass “transparency” legislation in Massachusetts, New York, and a number of other states. This legislation would require drug companies to report their profits on certain expensive drugs as well as government funding that contributed to their development.
Ingram sees such laws as a prelude to price controls. He then warns readers:
“There is no surer way to bring pharmaceutical innovation to a halt in the U.S. than letting governments decide how much companies can charge for their products or harassing them into lower prices. It also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how pharmaceutical research works. Scientific discoveries involve trying and failing, learning from those failures and trying again and again, often for years.”
Ingram bizarrely touts the “flowing pipeline of new wonder drugs spurred by a free market,” which he warns will be stopped by “government price controls.” This juxtaposition is bizarre, because patent monopolies are 180 degrees at odds with the free market. These monopolies are a government policy to provide incentives for innovation. Mr. Ingram obviously likes this policy, but that doesn’t make it the free market.
Of course there are other ways that the government can finance research and development, such as paying for it directly. It already does this to a large extent. At the encouragement of the pharmaceutical industry it spends more than $30 billion a year on mostly basic research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. It could double or triple the amount of direct funding (which could be contracted with private firms like Glaxo Wellcome) with the condition that all findings are placed in the public domain.
This would eliminate all the distortions associated with patent monopolies, such as patent-protected prices that are can be more than one hundred times as much as the free market price. This would eliminate all the ethical dilemmas about whether the government or private insurers should pay for expensive drugs like Sovaldi, since the drugs would be cheap. It would also eliminate the incentive to mislead doctors and the public about the safety and effectiveness of drugs in order to benefit from monopoly profits.
It would be great to have an honest debate about the best way to finance drug research. The first step is to stop conflating government granted patent monopolies with the free market.
One important point that Ingram gets wrong in this piece is his claim that, “Prescription drugs account for only about 10% of U.S. health-care spending, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This percentage has not changed since 1960 and is projected to remain the same for the next decade.”
While spending on drugs is roughly the same share of health care spending as it was in 1960, this is a sharp recovery from the level of the early 1980s, when it was close to 5 percent. Furthermore, spending on pharmaceuticals rose by more than 10.0 percent in 2014, which means that currently they are growing rapidly as a share of total health care spending.
Source: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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