CNN host and Time columnist Fareed Zakaria is no doubt a wealthy guy. He reportedly gets paid $75,000 for one hour speeches. Who has that kind of money? As CJR recently noted:
Over the years, he has been retained for speeches by numerous financial firms, including Baker Capital, Catterton Partners, Driehaus Capital Management, ING, Merrill Lynch, Oak Investment Partners, Charles Schwab and T. Rowe Price, according to the website of the Royce Carlton speakers bureau.
All of which brings us to his new column in Time magazine, where he rails against the cushy pensions of public sector workers and slams the Democratic party for protecting this class of allegedly privileged workers.
Zakaria uses the recent Wisconsin recall election to argue that “on the central issue of the recall–the costs of public-sector employees–the Democratic Party is wrong on the substance, clinging to its constituents rather than doing the right thing.”
Yes, it turns out that public sector pensions
are the single biggest threat to the U.S.’s fiscal health. If the U.S. is going to face a Greek-style crisis, it will not be at the federal level but rather with state and local governments. The numbers are staggering. In California, total pension liabilities–the money the state is legally required to pay its public-sector retirees–are 30 times its annual budget deficit. Annual pension costs rose by 2,000 percent from 1999 to 2009. In Illinois, they are already 15 percent of general revenue and growing. Ohio’s pension liabilities are now 35 percent of the state’s entire GDP.
That’s a lot of numbers. You’ll notice that the comparisons keep shifting. Why is California’s deficit the relevant comparison, while in Illinois the comparison is to the state’s general revenue? Economist Dean Baker tries to sort out the math at his Beat the Press blog (6/14/12), noting that the California system is currently more than 75 percent funded– slightly less than ideal, but nothing like the calamity envisioned by Zakaria.
Baker writes:
The long and short of the story is that some pension systems clearly do have problems, but most are in reasonably good shape and none threaten to turn a state into Greece. The hit that state budgets incurred from a mismanaged national economy, and are still experiencing from an economy that is operating 6 percent below its potential level of output, dwarfs the problems that states will face dealing with their workers retirement pay.
There are also other considerations; many public sector workers are not in the Social Security program, which means a pension is likely their primary source of retirement income.
Zakaria’s problems with math are one thing. But that’s probably not his main point, which is strictly political. Zakaria, like so many overpaid center-right pundits, wants the Democratic Party to punish workers and the labor unions that form a key part of its base:
Public-sector unions are strong supporters of the Democratic Party, so their clout has drowned out the voices of the poor, the young, students and average citizens. That is why real credit for courage should go to those few Democrats who are taking on these issues, even at the cost of losing support from one of their key constituencies. That includes mayors like Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Reed as well as governors like Andrew Cuomo and Pat Quinn. Sadly, they are too few and too isolated. Democrats should take note: the ideals of liberalism are now being sacrificed for the interest groups of liberals.
If you think about it, I guess what he’s saying is that the lesson to be drawn from Wisconsin is that Democrats should be more like Republican Scott Walker. I guess there are bankers that might pay $75,000 for that kind of wisdom.
Maybe that old saying should be changed to:
The poor will always be used as an excuse to ensure that the poor are always with us.
I wonder how much of those speaker’s fees go to help “the poor, the young, students and average citizens”.
You probably don’t have to be terribly good at math to figure it out.
So what is your point? If someone makes $75,000 speeches to bankes among others that disquailifies them from analyzing the pension conditions of the states and concluding that there have to be reforms? It is true — not made up — that Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, says if the pension program in Illinois is underfunded and reforms are needed. You imply that because Zakaria makes a lot of money his analysis is biased against public sector workers. And that’s FAIR analysis (pun intended)? Hardly.
It is very unlikely that the average public sector worker has it as easy as people like Rahm Emanuel or Zakaria would have the gullible believe. People like them have a very flexible definition of binding contrats and obligations. If companies and states and other entities should be free to abrogate pension obligations which are perfectly legal and have been written into legally binding contracts, why can’t homeowners do the same to banks and other financial institutions when the mortgages on their over-priced homes become too onerous? In this country, it is incredibly easy for the wealthy to lecture those who are not wealthy about how THEIR greed and sense of entitlement threatens the well-being of the society while that of the elites does not. It doesn’t matter whether Rahm calls himself a Democrat or a Republican, both parties slavishly serve the interests of the 1% while supporting policies of austerity which harm nearly everyone else. The real question should be: if this crisis is so real and so pressing, what do the Rahms and Zakarias and others like them plan to give up in order to save America?
As a CA public employee (tenured English instructor at a community college in the Bay Area), I mush echo the author’s reminder that many public sector employees contribute to our state retirement funds rather than to the national soc. security system–which is extremely important to understand in light of the way the top six investment banks sold our pension fund managers toxic mortgage-backed securities (CDO’s) while betting against them with “credit default swaps”.
On top of screwing the state pension funds in this way, and losing–for CA public workers–nearly HALF of our fund’s value in two years (2008-9), the same banks sold public institutions on the idea of refinancing variable-rate bond debt with a stable interest rate, just before the bailout made the variable rate plummet to nearly zero–the bailout rate. So after taxpayers bailed out the banks, drastically changing the loan/debt markets, the banks are fighting tooth and nail to keep from re-negotiating the interest-rate “swaps” they sold to city governments, college districts, and other public institutions under the previous market conditions. Clearly, Wall Street loves institutional investors as clients; why are they so hostile to those institutions and workers and retirees in their regular, valuable functions?
Our contracts might look “cushy” through the eyes of union-busting racers-to-the-bottom, and apparently to corporate-owned commentators like Zacharia, who are well paid as long as they sing the 1%’s song; in fact, we are working hard for low wages, and paying into our own retirement funds just like most people who work for a living.
Yet honest progressives must acknowledge that many public institutions have managed their funding poorly, and wasted lots of money–not on pension funds, but on administrative costs. A grand-scale audit of our public institutions is overdue. The public sector should be all about “sunshine” and “transparency”, so let’s get on with it! But corporate-biased commentators should stop demonizing public employees in general, and start scrutinizing institutional management, the mega-bloated defense budget, and the illegal practices of the mortgage lenders and investment banks.
Give me a break. Public sector workers are not to blame for our budget woes. Half our budget woes are the same hyped up woes we had under Bush-Cheney. We have a military budget that is larger than the next 10 countries combined! We have our heads up the butt of a drone if you ask me.
Chris Weidenbach, please forward your excellent comment to Fareed Zacharia.
Pensions are not “entitlements” or “welfare” – they are wages that workers have earned, have foregone in the present and paid into the pension account so that they can use them after they retire. They are not a “handout”. There is no way pensions are the problem for anyone, unless they have been poorly managed and the workers’ money is no longer in the account. This is certainly not the workers’ fault – it’s probably a Republican’s. Let’s do look to the obscenely-bloated military killing budget for the problem, along with the equally obscene welfare payments to obscenely wealthy corporations and the billionaires.
The message is clear. Public employees should pay more into their pension funds and then die early to avoid draining money back out.
Soulscompanion is exactly right in saying that pensions are wages that are deferred, not a handout or a charitable gesture from the employers of public sector workers — the public.
I guess I could help the system if I just go and shoot myself (and my wife, as she would draw a percentage of the pension after my death).
Dear Mr. Zakaria:
I don’t think that public sector workers and their pensions are the problem. I think it’s the banks and Wall Streeters that are robbing the pensions that are the real threat. I think that the banks and the Walls have obviously failed in their abliity to TEACH the American public how to use their banking and investments systems.
If the banks actually knew what they were doing, then surely, all those citizens that used the banks wouldn’t have FAILED! All those bankers and walls should be fired immediately, especially those CEOs! Oh wait…that’s what they said about those public sector teachers and oh…they did fire them or lay then off.
Wow, if students fail, and it’s all blamed on the teachers, then surely, if the nation fails and all those homeowners are failing, then the bankers obviously don’t have the skills to be bankers and should be fired, OR at least have their pay cut, benefits cut, hours cut.
Whats good for the teachers should apply to the bankers, after all they have that big word FIDUCIARY attached to them ( FID mening TRUST) and if the nation is failing, how is that the teachers fault? You, Mr. Zakaria, and your bank friends, need to look at bankers the same way you look at teachers and public sector workers.
Yes, my logic does seem a bit weird, but there appears to be no logic at all in banking, so all those big banker people who get any kind of pensions at all need to lose theirs, and I guess, that means you too Congress should feel some pain too. I don’t suppose that will matter because so many of you have so many bank investments now. We need to start looking at that as conflict of interest, I think.
If the banking users fail, then it’s obviously the fault of the bankers and their poor teaching skills in educating the public as to how any of their products and how any of those bank systems work.
Also, I think that since CEOs can fail so often and lose so much money, and then get big raises, how can any banking employee ever be fired if their bosses don’t know what they are doing either? This trickle down stupidity is ruining the nation, and as the banks have all the money, they ought to pay for it.
First of all, Dean Baker notes 80% of the pension troubles vanish without the sub-prime mortgage frauds.
Then, putting the entire thing in context, Robert Reich mentions the statistics (here). For example, average public sector pensions are $22K, and only 14% of those, on average, come from the public’s contribution. The remaining 86% are savings contributed by the employees themselves.
But these are the last remaining defined-benefit pensions — which pay roughly twice as much as the defined-contribution / 401K -type pensions. Used to be 70% of the American workforce had such good, defined-benefit pensions, too. The last ones standing are public sector workers’… How did such a tiny sliver of the workforce retain their pensions? Big firms like GE, Verizon, AT&T, etc. stole the bulk of those DB pensions to goose corporate profits or CEO compensation. See Ellen Schultz’ Retirement Heist for the complete story.
Public sector unions are the last workers standing with good jobs. After they’re gone, expect “Sweatshop America” to stage a comeback.
If credit default swaps & hedge funds collapsed this economy, please explain why we keep allowing the discussion to be directed at fixing it by taking more from the union workers? Wages for the American worker has been stagnant since 1973. We made up for that stagnaton by working overtime and using credit cards which gave us the illusion of keeping up with the American Dream and maintaining the status as middle class Americans. Free trade hit us hard and credit and overtime eased the blow. Productivity is at an all time high. Yet the constant drive in trying to convince the poor that your trouble is unions and those who are poorer than you as the reason you can’t get ahead, continues. The top 1% are making record profits, 124 million dollar CEO salaries and stock options are normal among the elite. The American worker does the work, while the CEO spends a small fortune in cable shows and hosts, such as Fareed, convincing them that they are actually worthless and if the “government” would get off their backs, they would give you even less. You didn’t work hard enough to have a home, send your kids to college without owing huge amounts of debt, or go on vacation each year. You the worker who made all of the monies that the wealthy then used to play poker with in the stock market, are branded each and every day as the problem. The worker did the work and the Ceo got the pay! They create these systems that enrich the already rich and make the poor even poorer, then blame you for being poor while claiming you get paid too much. None of those public or private union members could ever buy a yacht with what they make or retire in the Riviera. The average public sector worker is more educated than its private counter part. The average salary is still around $53,000.00. With rents, food, gas, electric, water, property taxes, etc… going up & up, while wages stagnate….the 99% became the working poor. These salaries spend like its 1974! Wake up. The union workers nor the private workers are the problem. Anyone who works or is trying to work deserves a salary that will keep them in comfort and food on the table. They are not what caused ANY recession or depression. It was always government policy, wars and pure unchecked GREED. We are in the 2nd guilded age!
Let’s see..
1. No pensions.- Check.
2. No universal health care. – Check.
3. Get rid of Medicare as we know it. – Check.
4. Privatize Social Security for the benefit of Wall St. – Check
5. Outsource jobs. – Check
6. Smash evil unions and collective bargaining rights. – Check
7. More visas to bring in foreign workers. – Check
8. Pay highest drug costs and highest health care costs as compared to other industrialized nations. – Check
9. Weaken Medicaid, food stamps, college subsidies, and any other program that helps the poor or middle class. – Check
10. Keep fighting wars that nobody understands. – Check
11. Reduce corporate taxes as they sit on two trillion dollars. – Check
12. Reduce taxes for the uber rich. Check
13. Increase corporate welfare. – Check
14. Convince the ordinary worker that the real problem lies with pensions and that he has more in common with Wall St. bankers and multinational corporations than he has with other working people. – Check
15. Keep repeating: We’re # One! – Check
Elaine, i love you. Fareed, i hate you.
Your calling Zakaria a “center-right pundit” is amateurish and incorrect. If anything, he is generally “center-left”. Granted his tirade against public sector pensions is a bit too shrill, but his foreign policy and many domestic views are at least slightly liberal; I generally like his writings.
It appears the solution to impoverishing a country is to impovrish the country.
Emmett: I used to believe as you do about Zakaria but my opinion has changed. First, he supported the war in Iraq (at least initially) and believed “……America’s involvement in the region is good” and now we get to see just how good it was.
Secondly, he is an ardent support of free trade, and more specifically corporate driven trade agreements, as well as the World Trade Organization and NAFTA and has characterized those who don’t as “anti-democratic.” He believes the benefit to the U.S. from globalization has been enormous but, in my humble opinion, globalization is doing exactly what it was intended to do–reduce wages of First World workers, trash environmental laws, and health and safety laws, etc., for corporate profit in the hands of a small elite. When corporations can run to the nameless, faceless WTO to challenge and overturn domestic laws that interfere with their profits–THAT is anti-democratic.
He rails against high U.S. corporate taxes when the truth is that the effective tax rate for U.S. corporations (when loopholes, subsidies, etc.) are factored in, is one of the lowest as a share of GDP when compared to other wealthy nations.
So maybe he has some positives going for him but there are some real negatives. Frankly, collecting a $75,000 an hour speaking fee while railing against pensions makes me sick.
At least get your facts straight. Pensions are generally considered easier to manage than 401(k)s due to their aggregate/average nature. As for these “wealthy” retirees, feel free to fact check any of the following stats:
http://www.seiu.org/a/publicservices/fact-check-on-public-sector-pensions.php
Great comment Elaine!
I’m a public sector employee and find it frustrating to sit back and watch as year after year wages are frozen or lowered, and now one of the few decent benefits (my pension) is on the chopping block. Why? It’s not because I haven’t worked hard for the citizens of my county. I’ve done my share, contributed my portion. Accepted the low salary, on the promise of a little something when I retire. Just like most Americans used to expect – before corporations figured out that pensions were cutting into executive bonuses. And if the job market weren’t so horrible, maybe I could consider looking for a private sector job – but wait, I wouldn’t get a pension there either; just a 401(k) that would be devalued the next time the stock market drops again.
I’m soooooo tired of the 1% controlling the conversation – and even more tired of the Tea Partiers who are willing to vote against their own economic self-interest, because Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity tell them to.
Penny: The problem, as you know, is that politicians like Scott Walker in league with the many of the uber rich have brilliantly played the “divide and conquer” card. They have succeeded in pitting worker against worker when we should be standing in solidarity with each other.
They have hammered home the message that if you’re poor, it’s your fault. You could be rich but you prefer to be poor because you’re lazy. You like living in squalor and working hard for $8 an hour. You like having a heater or a toilet or a washing machine that doesn’t work because you can’t pay to fix it. If you’re unemployed, it’s your fault. -You could get a good-paying job, with benefits, but you prefer to collect unemployment and support yourself, your wife, and your kids on that. They have convinced people that pensions, unions, (the 12% of the public sector workforce and the 7% of the private that are still in one) and even collective bargaining itself are the problem–not a lack of good, employment opportunities for Americans. And as we keep bickering with each other over who has what, the wealth keeps flowing to the top.
So, as I said, the Scott Walkers of the country have convinced American workers that other American workers are the enemy. Now there may be people out there who are lazy but I believe that most don’t like being down and out and poor, but it sure takes the heat off the real reasons we find ourselves where we are today.
We need to get the media to tie their articles on the burden of public pensions to the fact that the burden was caused by the failure to fund over decades and bad investments…..this was done deliberately to make them seem burdensome.
Nothing better than some CFR & 1%er propaganda to suggest that American workers caused the catastrophes in Washington and on Wall Street. And what better proof than that they will be paying for the bail outs for both for decades if not centuries. Where is Ralph Nader when we really need him?
I retired from the Post Office 20 years ago and qualified for a 2% per year of service (since changed to 1%) pension at age 64 with 29 years of service after paying in 7 1/2% of my gross pay My wife and I now receive about $3,000 per month and adding $10,000 a year in Social Security we have lived comfortably in our retirement years. Without the pension I would have worked ’till I dropped and spent my last years in a hospital bed … What is the best policy for the country? a reasonable retirement or sick or starving elderly? Social Security has lifted millions of elderly out of poverty ,,, reasonable pensions do the same. What would reasonable Americans choose for their grandparents” ? … for themselves? Zakaria probably gets $75k a speech because there is no pension attached …how do his grandparents get by?
Zakaria was on PBS, a weekly half-hour world news show ‘Foreign Exchange’ in 2005. For the USA it represented a pathetic outreach. In a developed nation of over 250 million people it shamefully compared with the much older 24/7 ‘SBS’ broadcast station of foreign content cherrished by Australians with a population of only 17 million. Zakaria’s show was bundled up on Friday nites with another current affairs show, and Bill Moyers Journal. Zakaria gleened credtials here with the Moyer’s mix, but which looks now like a ride to the bank, literally! Moyers wont really talk about why his show was axed, but at least he remains steadfast in delivering truthful media. What would a bank pay him for a dinner speech I wonder? Looking back – only six or so years, we see the shift of Zakaria and PBS formed to fit national and global fascism. PBS is obliged to provide alternative views but does not.
Im a big supporter of Elaine’s comments.
Thanks, Mr Greene, and thanks Elaine–your list is spot on. Don’t worry, Mr Greene; just remember, you live in the greatest country in the history of the whole world (maybe even the history of the galaxy!), so just remind your fellow workers that we’re number one!
Talked to a union boss about 2 weeks ago after he did a radio show I spoke on.Said how would you feel about unions loosing the pensions, and going to 401Ks?Blood shot from his eyes as he shot holes into that type of plan.We ended in this way……He said “If the government/the people don’t guarantee my retirement fund ,we will all end up morons watching our 401ks rise and fall like a yo yo.
I said but all in all this is what most people have.It is a free market system.He said(and I quote)They are all morons!
I have never understood ANY government involvement in unions.Not to pull their dues …. or to pay away their blues.This collusion is unhealthy.President Obama has a room reserved in the white house for SEIU leader Andy Stern,who visited more than anyone else during Obamas first six months.,Other union leaders are also carrying VIP status.Let them build their living wage, and benefits,and retirement funds the old fashion way.Honest competition free of government intrusion.Unions should rise or fall on that.If they can fully fund a pension that allows their workers to retire rich at 40 …I say God bless them,and God bless the USA.I just done want tax payers or our government involved.Elaine want the good wages that unions have to be the law of the land.But at what cost?If every step along the way that made a hot dog were unionized ,what do you think a dog would cost?A CD?A loaf of bread?The car you just paid 25K for(if every part made, and every action accomplished were unionized without free market competition)would be through the roof in cost.Lets unionize gas stations.Only they can pump your gas,though it will now cost $3.00 more.And God help the scab who tries to open his own, and pass on savings.Look unions sound great.And have been great for a long time. They force people to pay high costs because really they have no choice in the matter.Threaten competition.Get tax payers to fund your pensions.Collect dues and vote in the man who promises to use the government as a strong arm for union leaderships.All well in good when their is wiggle room in budgets.But that wiggle room was sold down the river long ago.Now your lost in the world of real competition where we sink or swim on our own devices.Welcome to the real world Greece.Hey is that the US at the door?Come on in the water is fine.
@ michael e:
There is no such thing as “honest” competetion or a pure free market. There never has been any such thing anywhere. CEOs in the United States make hundreds of times what their counterparts who run similar, or in many cases even larger companies, in Germany, Japan, or the UK do. Not surprisingly, few of those who are so outraged by “over paid” union workers in America are equally disturbed by over paid American CEOs, or by their huge severance and pension packages. There is no movement among conservatives, libertarians, or in the so-called Tea Party to bring the compensation of American CEOs in line with “global standards.” They prefer to make class warfare against workers by pitting one group of workers against another, instead of encouraging workers to unite and organize for a better deal. In the good old days, of unbridled free market capitalism before the rise of labor unions, this country was filled with firms large and small which used everything from slave labor, child labor, sharecroppers, peonage labor, and immigrants to make vast sums of money while keeping the vast majority of workers poor, powerless, and dependent. The United States was much like places like modern China or Haiti. For many decades, corporations have used “their” money to buy beneficial legislation on everything from taxes, to labor laws to environment protection in hope of getting back to those good old days. They do not take polls of either their shareholders, or of those who buy their products, or of those in communities which will be affected by their actions before they engage in political activities. CEOs and their boards of directors are simply assumed to be acting in the best interests of the firm as a whole. If nothing else, the recent series of incidents of insider trading, etc. on Wallstreet should call such assumptions into question. In spite of their libertarian rhetoric, anti-union types appear to be seeking to establish a hierarchy in which corporations alone have access to government protection and intervention. This would restore the traditional situation in which corporations held overwhelming power not only over unions and labor, (both union and non union), but over all sectors of society. That sounds a lot like some form of facism or feudalism. Both systems have been tried and found wanting.
the failure of 401ks
http://theweek.com/article/index/226886/how-401ks-are-failing-millions-of-americans
Since the bankers crashed the economy it makes perfect sense to get rid of unions.
Ah the path to feudalism is being marked ! The current leaders are providing the death of Representative democracy. The replacement is quite hard to predict. Let us guess what the future will be; meaner and more unpredictable for everyone.
Well pleasehead I grew up in a large family where one uncle skipped college .He rose from being a simple worker to a leader in one of our largest unions.I know the good ,the bad, and the indifferent concerning union structures and results.I am not saying union workers should in any way have a glass ceiling.Sky is the limit, and God bless them.If their Union gets the jobs and funds their pensions and they make more than i do before, and after retirement…. fantastic.Good call id say.But they shall not force those jobs through threats.They shall not get those pensions through tax payer subside.Right to work must not be infringed upon.Work shall come their way by only one conduit…..competition!If a Union carpenter will do the job for 100 an hour and non union for 50 the choice is to the consumer.Reverse that and the same goes.There shall be NO INTERFERENCE WITH OPEN COMMERCE!
As for CEO’s.If i own apple and decide to pay Jethro Bodine 20 mil a year cause i like his cousin Ellie May …..so be it.Its my call to overpay who ever i damn well please.It MY MONEY.!!!
In my life I have never envied, or begrudged anyone success.I have friends who are 60 and retired from unions.Fantastic.I went the med school rout and probably will retire when im forced to.But Im sure if i go early i can be sure you lot will say “damn him that lucky SOB.
Woodward……Of course 401Ks have failed.Not the point.The point is …Id love to have taxpayers on the hook for my retirement at close to my pay.How we gonna do that?
The drug/health care system–a closed, for-profit system. No interference with open commerce there!
@michael e:
Most unions were Whites only, racially exclusive clubs prior to the civil rights movement. My family were sharecroppers until the 1960’s. They had no protection from anyone, no health care, no pension, and no money or property. They did have plenty of hard work. Whites became quite wealthy off of their labor. Envy? Really? Should I love or respect those people or the system which enabled and protected them, while it harmed my family? Your slogans about “competition” and “one’s right to work not being infringed upon” belong to a world that did not and does not exist for millions of people.
And conversely, if I own a company and I want to pay slave wages, I should be able to, ’cause it’s my money!
Tim I was an unpaid intern in one endeavor.Started there and moved way way up.My choice.(By the way Dems have moved to end unpaid internships.We pay to go to a tech school.I know a guy who will teach air conditioning repair free- with an unpaid intern.Not allowed anymore.)If I offer one shlub a million a week to jump on a pogo stick ….yeah it is MY MONEY!And if I offer a guy min wage to do my gardening in the hot sun hey dems the breaks.Im not forcing anyone to do anything.If you want to sell your car for 10 thou,should the gov step in and say no no no you must sell it for two so a poor man can buy it?
Pleasehead…what is your point?Very few Americans came here rolling in money.Most came to leave a horrible situation.Often they found the same here.Am I to show anger because my ancestors came here and saw Irish need not apply signs everywhere?Unions fought to get honest wages for honest work.Now they fight against anyone who offers competition.Who wants the right to just work.We have a disconnect here.Unions offer professionalism.That is that.Past that they can not demand.I worked in a store where the owners got picketed for doing their own construction!We need to meet in the middle.
In my city there is a black kickback against asian mom and pop stores.They work like dogs and save,and by generation two have all their kids in college.THAT is seen as the enemy!I asked one union leader if he wished every industry and action in America was unionized.He smiled and said…Hell no….. everything would be too expensive.Not funny dude.And that is the point.Im sure unions want great pay…lots of jobs…no competition….. pensions(tax payer funded),early retirement ,complete adherence to shop steward rules bla bla bla.Yeah dont we all.And if that is there hope….more power to them.As long as they dont interfere with right to work.
Elaine the drug healthcare system is nothing if not over regulated.It is what keeps cost so high.
“Elaine, the drug healthcare system is nothing if not over regulated. It is what keeps costs so high.”
You claim to be a doctor but yet are unaware of how many drugs are now made in China and exported to the U.S. In the next 10 years or so, it is predicted that about 80% of generics will be made in China. Perhaps brand names as well. Quality control in China doesn’t begin to compare with FDA quality control here and it is impossible for the FDA to inspect the overwhelming amount of drugs, now coming from China. No over-regulation in China because it’s all about the money, not over-regulation. That’s why companies want to be in China–no regs, slave wages, horrible working conditions, and that’s what they want for us. A return to the Guilded Age. No middle class. How will we ever pay your doctor’s salary?
Congress just voted to forbid the re-importation of drugs from Canada. Where’s the competition? Was it done because of safety? Where’s the concern for safety regarding drugs from China? Further, these re-imported drugs were made in the U.S.A. Competition does not exist when it interferes with somebody’s bottom line.
This is the hue and cry coming from multinational corporations and their Tea Party backers. Too much regulation. Well, I want my drugs regulated and it’s interesting that other industrialized countries regulate their drugs as well and don’t pay the prices we pay here, the highest in the world.
Jamie Dimon, who just lost at least two billion of somebody’s money (not sure whose) was able to it because, despite the financial meltdown, Congress has yet to put tough regulations in place. I want the banking system “over-regulated” too. If you want loose-goosey games played with your money, go for it. I want tough environmental regs as well because I value clean air and clean water and because a polluted environment effects our health. Don’t you, as a doctor, know this?
You don’t understand Peasehead’s point? History is replete with the exploitation of labor and, as unions wane in power, that exploitation is rearing its ugly head once again. I have family totally stressed out from having to do the work of two or three people but do it to keep their corporate jobs.
We are, from my view, circling the toilet and the Tea Party and otheres are yelling, “Me, me, me!” instead of seeking solutions that will benefit this country as a whole.
@michael:
You get the point. You just don’t allow facts or reality to get in the way of your cherished beliefs in the infallabilty of corporations and in the basic goodness of a system with a lot of innocent blood on its hands. Asian immigrants work harder than slaves, sharecroppers, or those trapped in peonage labor did? Not likely. Also, they did come running here, and they knew the rules. They are not compelled to give up their language or culture. How many of them have been lynched? Thousands of Black have been. For hundreds of years, policies were in place to suppress and destroy Black business, and to prevent blacks from owning land or accruing anything of value. Whites like to ignore this and blame welfare, because its an easy cop out which makes White America’s role in creating this country’s racial problems appear to be insignificant. The people who oppressed Blacks in America were not just the rich White. The so-called oppressed Irish, Jews, Italians, etc. etc. etc. who came running here “for a better life” included all economic classes. All of them were just as bad as the rich Whites were. This behavior was justified by business, government at all levels and all of the main line churches. There is absolutely no comparison between the Black experience of sustained racial oppression in America and that of any of the so-called hardships of immigrant groups who benefitted from White privilege while making empty speeches about freedom, opportunity, fair competition, and fair play, none of which existed for the Black population.
Peasehead, beautiful. Especially the point about black oppression coming at the hands of so-called oppressed whites as well. I can only add that we also remember it came at the hands of white males AND white females.
“Elaine, the drug healthcare system is nothing if not over regulated. It is what keeps costs so high.”
u.s. drug companies spend almost twice as much on marketing and promoting medications than on research and development.
Well pleasehead I would never say the plight of any one person was worse than another.Certainly black’s had a tough rode.Slaves in Africa many.Became slaves here.Then prejudice and so on.Chinese died by the trainload building our railroads.Irish indenture servants were simply glorified slaves.Native Americans.Japanese put in camps.Jews.Mormons,Italians,Mexicans,Gipsies,Germans.All have had their time in history that” time” landed on them with both feet.But time has changed.We are here today.It is not 1776 or 1865 or 1945 or even 1999.This class envy ,prejudice(based on imprinted memory),this divisiveness you are peddling will soon be taking a step back thank God.Come November we work on building a coalition.It will not be based on the disempowering democratic model.
Elaine you said a mouthful.Too much so in fact to open that can of worms.Suffice it to say that you hit on a few problems in one huge industry.There are many more.And yes generics are monitored .And yes some are not trustworthy.China……..Do you have a couple nights to set aside to talk over that problem?make that weeks.
Drug companies need competition to keep prices down.That is economics 101- not medicine.Monitors on that product must be first class.It is not at this time.We can do much better.You seem to want to monopolize drugs under one heading…the government.A little confused there.That sounds liberal and anti liberal all at once.
Woodward…marketing and promotion are open costs on drug company budgetary sheets..Research and development is so diffused.Hard to quantify .Your numbers on that are not hard and fast.Probably only a percentage point on what is actually spent developing new drugs.Research is farmed out.Or farmed in.Written into the profit margins.My guess is there are still research and Development costs on penicillin.Probably aspirin too.Talk about a hustle.Look I am a fan a free markets.(Not illegal, or lets make a bad deal free markets).Your belief that that means I like the way things are now done in the drug industry is wrong.The industry is rife with corruption,and needs reform.But your belief that a free market cant accomplish that any better than a government take over- is not true.
woodword: Are you reading about the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Agreement? The countries in it, so far, are the U.S. (of course), Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Brunei, and Singapore. It remains an open agreement, however, so that any country that wants to join after it’s approved can do so. Nothing like global governance.
FAIR–please write about this and soon. This agreement has been negotiated in secret with hundreds of lobbyists but leaks are starting to come out. I mention it because it will extend patents and increase the cost of medication. As I understand it, if a patent on a brand name was to expire next year and replaced with a generic, the patent can be extended for another 10 years, as an example, to keep the cost high. It can also challenge formularies.
No local preferences can be shown. Therefore, no “Buy America.” New corporate powers granted. More offshoring privileges. Risky, financial services or products can’t be banned either. Regulations challenged. As I read about it, if what I’m reading is accurate, it is worse than NAFTA. Aren’t free markets for the 1% just grand?
Please call your rep and ask for transparency in this agreement. We,the ordinary people who will be most impacted, want to see the draft agreement. We want to know what’s going on now!
In bed with the rich. No wonder there are so many slums in India.
Very good website you have here, but I was wondering if you
knew of any message boards that cover the same topics talked about in this article?
I’d really like to be a part of online community where I can get responses from other experienced people that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Kudos!