I'm still laughing at the thought of if Joe biden wins he'll offer an olive branch and returns to a healthy bipartisanship after all this
RBG passes away | Trump to nominate replacement soon
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It will be 2012 all over again except the Iraq report will be the Trump report and it’ll all be settled as a compromise and in return Republicans will be nothing but shit bags.
Kamala Harris is your best bet right now. She is way more aggressive and vicious, and kind of what you want to fight back.
Trump is not going to go down with a fight. He will destroy the GOP if McConnell offers him up as a compromise.
Likely they will raise that as a threat and Pelosi and co will do nothing.
She declined to prosecute Mnuchin and in a wild coincidence, he also donated to her campaign.
Modern day politician. If changing the Senate or the SC will get her votes and donations, that's what she will do.
Bit different to appease the GOP in the guise of "bipartisanship" and getting nothing in return, as is the case for the older Dems.
Judging by some of your posts recently that's far from obvious.
If Trump loses, wonder what GOP future would look like. Do they follow Trumpism or will the traditionalists for a divide?
Of course you were.
Xoxo
At this rate? anything than full Trump Mk.2 will lose them vote.
Trump is their point of no return, you imagine if somehow the next GOP candidate offers an olive branch to the democrats after all this? It'll only get uglier from this point forward i think
The saga will continue, if Trump lose they'll double down on that.
Unless Trump's popular vote falls bellow 40% then there's no chance the next GOP candidate not being trumpish
What makes you guys think this? Bidens personal character ?
What's biden grand policy? I honestly dont know till today. Defund the policy? What's his slogan?
I might not agree with trump 4 years ago but I'm sure as hell understood what he promised, like it or hate it he delivers.
I'm not American so probably I'm missing alot but from where i stand i dont see much of biden
Trump hasn't delivered much on what he promised.
His key promises were jobs in the rust belt (nothing done) and being tough on China (all we got was the worst pandemic in a generation out of China).
Bluster =/= delivering on promises.
What Trump has shown, without doubt, is that if you keep repeating a lie, most people including those who oppose you will come to believe it.
His key promises were jobs in the rust belt (nothing done) and being tough on China (all we got was the worst pandemic in a generation out of China).
Bluster =/= delivering on promises.
What Trump has shown, without doubt, is that if you keep repeating a lie, most people including those who oppose you will come to believe it.
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/s...acking-court-why-would-you-go-down-that-path/
Democrats are useless at politics, this is now 2x senior democrats saying they wont do anything if trump rams a nomination through. fecking democrats are trash politicians
No one cares. Those who believed what he said don't care because he's delivered the culture war they wanted and those who didn't believe what he said but voted for him because they believe in conservatism are absolutely thrilled with his judicial moves and the tax break for the rich.
They do care. Those who voted for coal jobs care. Those small farmers who are going bankrupt care. Not all Trump voters in 2016 were deplorable. Naive maybe.
My suspicion is many of them will be naive again. I don't buy the idea that all these coal workers have turned against him, at all. The Democratic party is offering them nothing.
Everyone is aiming for the centre and the rich, it seems. I've said this before elsewhere, but to me, there seems to be huge electoral potential in squarely addressing the 50% of the country that has a below-median household income, and would massively benefit from a tax overhaul (stronger progressive taxing and closing loopholes for the rich), better job security, and a stronger welfare system (especially health insurance). Sure, some people will hate those ideas ideologically among the target group, but in turn there will be people from the other half of society that support the approach for the opposite ideological reason. (Plus rational reasons: on average, all income groups have better and longer lives in more equitable countries.)
In the meantime, though, nobody is addressing these people. They used to vote for the Democrats pretty much out of tradition, but they are feeling disenfranchised by them as well now. I can (vaguely) understand how a lot of those people figured they'd give Trump a chance last time, and might even try it again. I mean, it's not like there's a great alternative for them. (In the US same as in many OECD countries, I might add.)
^ this general fallback idea of raising income taxes is also why the Dems are losing.
Middle class and higher in a lot of blue states are already paying a higher income tax rate for a significantly worse and more expensive quality of life, compared to parts of "socialist" Europe. As someone who lives in the US and has lived in multiple countries in Europe, this is certainly the case.
The issue with taxation is the low corporate taxes, low estate and inheritance taxes and the amount of loopholes on income tax if you are a shareholder.
Continuously trying to screw people who earn on a W-2, and are thus the easiest ones to screw over, is a losing strategy.
Middle class and higher in a lot of blue states are already paying a higher income tax rate for a significantly worse and more expensive quality of life, compared to parts of "socialist" Europe. As someone who lives in the US and has lived in multiple countries in Europe, this is certainly the case.
The issue with taxation is the low corporate taxes, low estate and inheritance taxes and the amount of loopholes on income tax if you are a shareholder.
Continuously trying to screw people who earn on a W-2, and are thus the easiest ones to screw over, is a losing strategy.
No one in the US wants to show the numbers though because that would expose the fallacy that in the US you pay less taxes than those crazy euro socialists with their ‘free’ healthcare and free or subsidised education (even up through 3rd level).
I have no experience with this not having lived in the US, but I have heard that before, yeah, that taxes aren't actually very low in the US. Any idea how come you pay all that tax but why government services are anyway very poor? I mean, if revenue is high but the state still isn't providing broad public health or employment insurance and infrastructure is crumbling (from what I've read), you have to wonder where that money goes - or am I missing something?
Btw, to clarify, I didn't say 'raise income tax', I said 'stronger progressive taxation'. By that, I mean that it could start from 0% for bottom salary brackets, and go much higher for the top, with an exponential-type scale (i.e., not linear) in between. The top income tax bracket in the US still had a 70% tax percentage in the 70s, and now it's 37.5%, while for the bottom bracket it dropped only from 14% to 10% (source). And it's a similar story in other OECD countries (if not as extreme). That's criminal. But anyway, all very theoretical - I was just trying to make the point that no-one is really addressing the poor, and so they vote for whoever somehow appeals to them most. And that's not necessarily the Democrats, even if they are supposed to be the leftist party.
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The way I see it, their healthcare system is a big corruption daylight robbery, the insurance company took a piece of it along the way including the pharmaceutical company.
In other developed countries the same medications cost a fraction of what they cost in US, that and the weapons corporations are robbing the taxpayer's money blind, and it's legal. They're forced to pay for wars (and it's costly weapon) that has no benefits to them.
Such ignorance. Mnuchin is from WV and a republican in all but name. He certainly isn't a senior leader as after he leaves no Dem will win in WV for a generation or more. If he endorsed any of this he would be voted out in a hearbeat.
People don't seem to understand that the US is a right of center country. Left wing politics won't and don't work here (and I'm probably center left if not completely on the left when it comes to politics)
the last 4 governor's elected in west virginia have been democrats. before manchin, byrd was a democrat who held the seat for 50 years. before capito, rockefeller held the seat for 30 years. democrats have abandoned west virginia. they are the party of elitist coastal liberals and rich suburbs.
To be honest we should be thankful for that on this side of the pond as US customers subsidise medical research of which we're a beneficiary.
To some degree the less they pay the more we'll have to.
Despite ample revenue and profits, however, R&D spending has been relatively stagnant. While industry revenue increased by 45 percent, or $241 billion from 2008 to 2014, industry spending on R&D increased just 8.5 percent in that same period, from $82 billion to $89 billion (GAO 2017). By some measures, R&D expenditures are actually falling, as more firms are outsourcing R&D to third parties. In that seven-year period, purchased R&D increased from $20.5 billion to $31.2 billion while in-house R&D fell from $61.7 to $58.2 billion (GAO 2017). Finally, the industry can only claim partial credit for recent medical breakthroughs. The federal funding provided by taxpayers contributes around 25 to 30 percent of all R&D spending per year, and a Bentley College study found that all 210 drugs approved between 2010 and 2016 were rooted, in whole or in part, on National Institute of Health (NIH)-funded research (Cleary et al. 2017).
Many pharmaceutical firms spend more on activities intended to increase profits and stock price than they do on the development of needed drugs. Of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies, only one spent more on research and development than it did on sales and marketing in 2013. Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest drug corporation, spent more than double on sales and marketing ($17.5 billion) as they did on R&D (8.2 billion), according to research firm GlobalData (Anderson 2014). Spending on stock buybacks outpacing spending on R&D was also an industry norm (Lazonick et al. 2017).
Meanwhile, the investments that drugmakers do make in research and development often do not meet the greatest health care needs of the many, instead investing in cures and remedies for diseases that affect those who can pay the most. Researchers describe this phenomenon with the 90-10 rule: 90 percent of R&D focuses on diseases affecting 10 percent of the world’s population (Stiglitz and Jayadev 2010). This misalignment often results in drugmakers not investing in R&D to treat diseases we need, such as the development of new antibiotics (Mazzucato et al. 2018), or for diseases that affect lower-income individuals, who are unable to pay for the fixed costs of drug production (Stiglitz and Jayadev 2010). This failure amplifies pre-existing inequalities in health outcomes, disproportionately harms people of color and women, and disincentivizes development for diseases that disproportionately impact people in the developing world.
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI_Profit-Over-Patients_brief_201902.pdf
Except I doubted that the cost of research was that huge to begin with and how fare their evaluation really is.
The cost of generic Panadol locally made is only 0.50 pound / Strip (10 pcs), the actual cost of manufacturing these medicines are practically very close to 0 on a larger scale. One really wonder is paying a few scientist in a lab is actually that expensive?
And actually no, at our side of the pond we pay full price for the latest medications, only those that has past certain limitations becomes generic medicine which becomes so much cheaper. So humanity suffers from their greed as well
@berbatrick @Sky1981
I can't see those companies accepting significant reductions in turnover or profits. If US medications are reduced in cost the shortfall will have to be found from somewhere as it won't be stomached by shareholders/management.
There would only be a few ways for them to maintain profitability whilst significantly reducing US drug prices (reduction in R&D, higher medication costs in other countries, heavy redundancies etc).
That's if we work from a position of accepting the commercial realities of the world as we know it.
Take UK insurance for example. When they were told they couldn't charge more simply because of sex (men more risky than women) all it meant was women paying more; not men paying less and the companies being less profitable
I can't see those companies accepting significant reductions in turnover or profits. If US medications are reduced in cost the shortfall will have to be found from somewhere as it won't be stomached by shareholders/management.
There would only be a few ways for them to maintain profitability whilst significantly reducing US drug prices (reduction in R&D, higher medication costs in other countries, heavy redundancies etc).
That's if we work from a position of accepting the commercial realities of the world as we know it.
Take UK insurance for example. When they were told they couldn't charge more simply because of sex (men more risky than women) all it meant was women paying more; not men paying less and the companies being less profitable
They're.... to put it mildly robbers, you don't negotiate with them, you just have to put them down by installing new rules and regulations. How/what is a very simple thing for the legislation to pull. for example
1. Cap the amount of sales
2. A 3rd party audit to make sure the cost doesn't get inflated
They just don't want to, because they're in it for the money, and the government are in bed with them.
This is why we need an uprising and to eat the rich. If they can't accept less profits for a fairer world then they accept something else.
Land of the free. You can do anything you want if you have money and power.
Imagine an election or potential election somewhere else and the incumbent president who doesn't like the USA says he doesn't know if he is going to accept the election results even if he lost?
Wait, it happened already in Bolivia where actually Morales won by all honest reports.
Imagine an election or potential election somewhere else and the incumbent president who doesn't like the USA says he doesn't know if he is going to accept the election results even if he lost?
Wait, it happened already in Bolivia where actually Morales won by all honest reports.
This is the problem:
2018 CEO pay: Entire group
| Company | CEO | Compensation, in $USD millions |
|---|---|---|
| Moderna | Stephane Bancel | $58.6 |
| Beigene | John Oyler | $27.9 |
| Rubius Therapeutics | Pablo Cagnoni | $27.1 |
| Regeneron | Leonard Schleifer | $26.5 |
| Gilead | John Milligan | $26.0 |
Hah! I see him and the gold digger both wore masks today. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
The video title is much funnier when you read "Trump booed" in the active voice.
Is there any truth to the notion that Trump wants to appoint the successor before the election so that he can fight any possible election defeat in the Supreme Court?
Using the right’s ‘logic,’ it’s evident that Biden has the election in the bag due to the decibel level of the people shouting at the event.
That is almost certainly what is going to happen.
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