Dean Baker has an interesting suggestion on how to boost the economy: Change the way in which patents are awarded

Jobs numbers are set to be released tomorrow morning hot off the heels of the FOMC announcing a fourth $10 billion reduction to quantitative easing. Janet Yellen and other Fed members are most likely betting that the unemployment rate will support their decision—but will it?

Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimates that the U.S. added a mediocre 180,000 jobs to the economy in April. “We have a little problem here, we still have the weather issue to be sorted out,” he says. He thinks it’s possible that the unemployment rate inches down to 6.6% but “we haven’t had any fundamental changes, you just always see a little bouncing around.”

The economy has seen more of the same lackluster growth month-over-month, says Baker, “We’ve seen this upward distribution of income, and we’ve seen a lot of bad jobs being created.” In order to break out of this cycle, Baker suggests changing the way the U.S. awards patents.

“People don’t realize this, but we spend a lot of money on prescription drugs,” he says. “The reason we do that is because the government is giving drug companies patent monopolies.” Without patent monopolies drugs would all cost between $5-$10 per prescription says Baker.

“That’s about 2% of GDP, the difference between what we pay now and what we would pay without those monopolies. I think that’s the sort of thing we should be looking into. It’s not going to get us jobs tomorrow, but it will get the economy on a more healthy growth path with more equality.”

According to Baker, this problem extends beyond drug patents. Telecom and cable monopolies also hurt the economy.

"We have situations where there are industries that in times past would have been heavily regulated," he says. "They were deregulated and there was competition for a time but it's getting increasingly hard to say that where you have so much consolidation and in many areas you have no choice." Unless we can find a way to create competition, says Baker, these industries have to be regulated to bring down prices which will free up money for people.

Finally, Baker believes that the value of the U.S. dollar needs to come down in order to bring better, higher-paying jobs back to the U.S. "If we got the dollar down we would see more exports, fewer imports and the jobs that we created would be disproportionately manufacturing," he says.

2seaoat wrote:Just start nationalizing shit already... we all know that's where we're heading... fascist collusion is too damn slow.


You are utterly confused with your political concepts and it is very difficult to converse with someone so uncertain of political definitions and concepts.  Fascist collusion......are you kidding?  We are addressing the harm to the economy by monopoly.  You know Teddy Roosevelt type trust busting.  If a spectrum of political comprehension of concepts corresponded to K-12 in school you are sadly at best in first grade.

I have watched for a year a cure to endocrine cancer sitting in a lab in Sweden which required a Phase 1 study to bring that cure to Baylor University for Phase 2 studies in America and ultimate approval of the drug.  I am very thankful for the Sandostatin which keeps me alive and cost 22k a month, but not one major drug company in the WORLD stepped up for this cure because the Swedes published this cure without wanting a patent on the same.....it is now completely available to the generic market, so why would a drug company get a modest return on their investment and spend 2.3 million pounds only to lose billions if current virus targeted remedies are found to cure endocrine cancer and kill the cancer with harmless viral infections which are not fatal to the host.  

Guess what happened......people started pooling resources and seeking white knights and raised 2.3 million independent of big pharm and big cancer charities which are self perpetuating and rarely get breakthroughs.  What if science was talking about bringing these cures to market for millions and not generating billions for a few tightly held corporations.

The model of shorter patent periods will free up tremendous resources to build our economy and rather than talking about fascism, talk about robber barons and the stealing of Americans wealth and health.   There are answers.

Markle wrote:

2seaoat wrote:Just start nationalizing shit already... we all know that's where we're heading... fascist collusion is too damn slow.


You are utterly confused with your political concepts and it is very difficult to converse with someone so uncertain of political definitions and concepts.  Fascist collusion......are you kidding?  We are addressing the harm to the economy by monopoly.  You know Teddy Roosevelt type trust busting.  If a spectrum of political comprehension of concepts corresponded to K-12 in school you are sadly at best in first grade.

I have watched for a year a cure to endocrine cancer sitting in a lab in Sweden which required a Phase 1 study to bring that cure to Baylor University for Phase 2 studies in America and ultimate approval of the drug.  I am very thankful for the Sandostatin which keeps me alive and cost 22k a month, but not one major drug company in the WORLD stepped up for this cure because the Swedes published this cure without wanting a patent on the same.....it is now completely available to the generic market, so why would a drug company get a modest return on their investment and spend 2.3 million pounds only to lose billions if current virus targeted remedies are found to cure endocrine cancer and kill the cancer with harmless viral infections which are not fatal to the host.  

Guess what happened......people started pooling resources and seeking white knights and raised 2.3 million independent of big pharm and big cancer charities which are self perpetuating and rarely get breakthroughs.  What if science was talking about bringing these cures to market for millions and not generating billions for a few tightly held corporations.

The model of shorter patent periods will free up tremendous resources to build our economy and rather than talking about fascism, talk about robber barons and the stealing of Americans wealth and health.   There are answers.

What would motivate a company to manufacture and/or create a drug if there is no shred of a possibility of making a profit by doing so?