Tag Archives: political economy

Right Idea, but…

Posted on by
Reply

…details in the implementation will matter, also. Competition always drives costs to a level approaching the cost of production, and that’s to the good, not only of consumers but for competitors and others looking to enter the market, as well.

However.

On Monday, [Congresswoman and MD Mariannette (R, IA)] Miller-Meeks along with three of her colleagues introduced a bill titled the “Biologics Competition Act,” which seeks “to evaluate the process by which interchangeable biological products are approved to be used in pharmaceuticals.”
“So in essence, what we’re trying to get is biosimilar drugs that are the same chemically—that they have an equivalency to let those be prescribed as generic drugs, which would bring down the cost of medication[.]”

There’s a reason generics, in general, are delayed in getting authorization to be marketed: to allow the drug’s initial developer(s) time to recoup the costs of development and to begin realizing profit, and thereby encourage further drug development.

Such permission delays would need to apply to the biosimilar drugs, too. With a fillip: defining how much change is necessary while remaining biosimilar without leaving the required change so trivial that the new drug is an outright plagiary with only a token item grafted on.

That may well be the eye of a needle—passable, but with difficulty, especially when trying to write down a specific law. Worth going for, though, absolutely.

Manchin’s Permit Reform Legislation

Posted on by
Reply

It’s in serious jeopardy from House Progressive-Democratic Party members—70 of them—and Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) hasn’t even released the language of his permit reform proposal (but West Virginia’s other Senator, Republican Senator Shelly Moore Capito, has released hers). Despite this, Manchin blames Republicans for the jeopardy.

On top of that, Manchin says he’ll release his proposal in the coming days.

This, of course, is nonsense. Manchin, responsible Senator that he is, has had his proposal written since early in the days when he was negotiating with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) the price for which Manchin would sell his vote on the Progressive-Democratic Party’s then-latest spendthrift bill.

Manchin has no reason at all for withholding his proposal from public scrutiny for so long, much less from the other party’s scrutiny before demanding their vote on it.

Backdoor Guaranteed Income

Posted on by
Reply

The DC city council is getting ready to give holders of the city’s municipal bus and rail system fare cards a recurring $100 balance. Card holders will have that much fare money given to them, repetitively, by the taxpayers among the District’s residents (given to themselves to the extent there’s overlap between the two groups).

A slice of guaranteed income for council-approved persons. If Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) government were serious about lowering city transportation costs for its residents, those personages could, instead, simply lower the fares, so that all the residents could share in the program.

But, no….

Inflation? What Inflation?

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden (D) and his White House spokesmen have been bragging about what a strong economy we have.

Even CNN waved the BS flag at that. Here’s how strong our economy really is.

The Labor Department on Tuesday reported its consumer-price index rose 8.3% in August from the same month a year ago [albeit down slightly from the prior two months’ year-on-year inflation]

And

[C]ore CPI, which excludes often volatile energy and food prices, increased 6.3% in August from a year earlier, up markedly from the 5.9% rate in both June and July

And

Food prices continued to climb sharply this past month, rising 0.8% in August from July, as did those for new vehicles leapt 0.8%. Prices also rose last month for medical care, education, electricity, and natural gas

Inflation in energy cost is especially troublesome. That’s the price of heating and cooling our homes, our places of business, our schools, how we power our industrial facilities. The impact on our health and finances from that exacerbates our demand for/need for medical care.

That inflation is made the worse by the growth in wages that’s been occurring since inflation took off with Biden’s ascension to office (if not since his election). Wage growth had been at half the rate of inflation, meaning us Americans’ income actually had been shrinking relative to the prices we face. But last month, despite that 8.3%/6.3% inflation, our wages grew…not at all.

Median household income was essentially unchanged last year on an inflation-adjusted basis….

Our wage dollar buys ever less in the Biden version of a strong economy.

Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party are either wholly unaware of the real economy us average Americans face, or they’re blatantly lying about the situation.

Meanwhile, they partied on the White House lawn the day those numbers were released, celebrating this wonderful news.

Remember their obliviousness or their dishonesty this fall.

The IRS as Political Tool

Posted on by
Reply

It’s not the tax collection agency it’s made out to be. We all recall, for instance, the IRS’ Lois Lerner-run Exempt Organizations Unit targeting Conservative tax-exempt organizations, slow-walking or outright denying those organizations tax-exempt status purely for political reasons, without consideration of how well they met statutory criteria for the status.

It’s also been well-publicized that the IRS has been funded for next year to hire 87,000 agents for the ostensible purpose of increasing audits of the Evil Rich, and the agency is buying ammunition and hiring agents who are willing to use lethal force in the course of their “duties.”

This is not unique to the Progressive-Democrat administrations of ex-President Barack Obama and current President Joe Biden. As far back as Lyndon Johnson’s (D) and Richard Nixon’s (R) administrations, the IRS was used to interfere with government-disapproved organizations and citizens.

Today’s IRS is just as bad across a range of…matters.

  • The IRS has disproportionately audited poorer Americans in recent years
  • IRS auditing of wealthier Americans has been declining
  • Nonpartisan projections have found increased audits under the Biden plan will heavily impact middle- and working-class Americans
  • IRS customer service has been declining, and was rated “horrendous” by its own internal watchdog
  • IRS employees have egregiously leaked or failed to protect the privacy of taxpayers’ data
  • Amid backlogs and leaks, IRS paid tax relief to dead taxpayer, prisoners on death row

The solution to this isn’t more legislation for the IRS to ignore, with or without the tacit approval of the administration then in power. IRS history and current behavior means the agency needs to be vastly shrunk.

But shrinking the IRS would be difficult as a practical matter with the current byzantine and heavily biased against some economic strata Federal tax code. IRS size and performance, then, is an argument for greatly simplifying our tax code.

Eliminate the business revenue-centric taxes. Businesses don’t pay much of those taxes, anyway; their customers pay the taxes in the form of higher prices and reduced innovation rates, and business employees and potential employees pay the taxes in the form of slower wage increases and lessened hirings.

Eliminate the personal income tax as currently constructed and have only a single, flat tax rate charged on all income from any source. Do away with subsidies, credits, exemptions, social engineering gerrymandering altogether. The new 1040 could be reduced to the current taxpayer identifying information, a line for totting up all income and reporting the total, a line for calculating the [10%] tax on that total as the total tax due, and a line for the taxpayer’s [sic] signature.

That could fit on a postcard, but with the personally identifying and income data present, I wouldn’t recommend anything less than a sealed envelope. Such a tax regime, though, would allow an IRS-like function to exist with about 14 employees (I exaggerate, but not by much).

Tough to be a political tool with that reduced function and personnel complement, too.