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Open thread October 19, 2018

Dan Crawford | October 19, 2018 8:55 am

Tags: open thread Comments (2) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
2 Comments
  • Arne says:
    October 19, 2018 at 11:21 am

    Paul Romer says:
    “To understand how persistent growth, even accelerating growth is possible, it helps to step back and ask where growth comes from. At the most basic level, an economy grows when whenever people take resources and rearrange them in a way that makes them more valuable.
    …
    Big discoveries–the transistor, antibiotics, the internal combustion engine–get most of the attention, but improvements in standards of living also spring from untold numbers of discoveries about something as simple as the shape to use when turning tree pulp into drinking cups.”
    https://paulromer.net/economic-growth/

    This seems too broad to me. To cause economic growth, something needs to be attention getting enough to create new demand, not just shift demand around.

    If I improve my standard of living while spending less, is that economic growth?

  • Denis Drew says:
    October 19, 2018 at 11:33 am

    Let me try this idea again:

    What would be the political result — and the eventual legislative result — if India or China decided to manufacture in violation of American patents enough of the (99%) cure for Hepatitis C, Gilead’s Harvoni, to wipe out the infection in the USA overnight, and offer to (under) sell it for $5 billion — about $1 billion above estimated manufacturing cost — about $2000 per patient.

    The VA manage to finagle a 75% discount out of Gilead’s usual hostage-taking price (perhaps reflecting that the crucial research was done with taxpayer supported research at the VA — guilt trip or something) and now all vets expect to be cured in one year.
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2018/03/01/the-va-will-eliminate-hepatitis-c-in-veterans-by-year-end/#4de8e0ef7d12

    At the usual $100,000 an 84 day treatment — which cost Gilead $1400 to manufacture — it would cost $300 billion to purchase enough to cure thre million Hep C sufferers in the US (the devil knows how much to cure the whole world) which it would cost Gilead $4 billion to make. Because of hostage holding price gauging Gilead gets $20 billion a year — to save death’s door patients only. Over 20 years of its patent run Gilead will cull $300 billion anyway — and have (millions?) more sick people left over at the end than at the beginning as the infection continues to spread.

    Again, what would be the likely public — and legislative! — reaction to these facts if India or China decided to make enough of the curative drug available at relatively next-to-nothing pricing (or build enough manufacturing capacity — perfectly legal as long as they didn’t use it) to make the Americans-as-hostages facts plain to all Americans?

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