The Protectionists Are Running Wild: Pharmaceutical Industry Lobbying Expenditures Soar

July 21, 2017

Everyone who has been through an intro econ class knows how bad a 20 percent tariff on steel or clothes is. So naturally, all economists are outraged by patent monopolies for prescription drugs, which are the equivalent of tariffs of thousands of percent. Okay, that’s not true; economists seem to only get upset about the tariffs on steel and clothes.

Nonetheless, the textbooks are right: patent monopolies lead to massive corruption. The NYT has a good piece on their increased lobbying efforts in the era of Trump. 

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