Makers and Takers

You heard it during the last few presidential elections.  You hear it bandied about by the soulless right all the time.  You know who I'm talking about, the ones who proclaim that anything the government might do to help anyone except the rich is socialism.

Well it really is true, there are makers and takers.  Except, the right has it backwards.

Over the past 50 years, the American worker has steadily increased productivity.  They are making more and more with less and less labor.  They are the makers.

The takers?  The CEO's who demand ever increasing salaries, bonuses that bear no relationship to their performance.  And let's not forget the 'investors' who drained the capital out of Sears before firing so many and declaring bankruptcy.

The new election cycle is just gearing up.  You can't sit this one out.

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Review: Mingling at the Market

I had a chance last week to spend a few hours walking around Paris, going into little shops and open air markets, trying meats and cheeses and bread and wine. And I was able to do this in the company of Natasha, a food writer, teacher of gastronomy, and a fun and knowledgeable hostess.

She only does this twice a week, and each group is limited to 6 people. We met on a street corner at 11 AM, introduced ourselves, and off we went. We learned about cheeses, how to identify the master butcher in a shop, and Natasha pointed out how the finest of their craft display the medallions won in competitions, indicating their superior products. At each stop was a lesson of some sort, and samples of the local fare.

 We spent three hours going to shops and marketplaces, listening, tasting. We ended up in this wine shop (not our first taste of wine on the excursion).

 I had the Côtes du Rhône, a personal favorite of mine, but everyone in our group was happy with their selection.  As we enjoyed our wine, members of the group were getting restaurant recommendations from Natasha.  She knows where to eat all over Paris.

For the rest of our trip, we more or less adopted the French model for our evening meals.  We were staying in a place with a full kitchen so we shopped for fresh food every evening.  And standing in line at our local boulangerie for a freshly baked baguette became part of our evening ritual.

So if you are bound for Paris, and would enjoy a wonderful introduction to French food with hints on how to shop, this is a great way to spend 3 hours.  You can find Mingling at the Market on AIRBNB.

Don't give them their 15 minutes of fame

Another mass shooting and a whole shitload of "thoughts and prayers" without any action. And as long as so much of government is beholden to the NRA, there will be no action. But I think there is something that can be done.

Let me be clear. This is not a substitute for sensible gun laws. It will not make the problem go away. But maybe, just maybe, we could be talking about this a little less often.

If news outlets stopped publishing the names and pictures of the perpetrators, telling us all about their family and upbringing, then I think at least a few people will find some other way to express their hatred and anger.

I am not saying that newspapers and television should ignore mass shooting. On the contrary, I think that we need to keep these in the public consciousness, to keep the pressure on our legislators. All I am suggesting is, don't show their pictures, don't name them. The victims deserve to have their stories told, the killer does not. And you know that part of the reason that they do these things is an "I'll show them" attitude. If you don't get your name and picture splattered all over, then you haven't really "showed" anyone.

When they go to trial, their names will probably come out. And if the victims are mostly black or brown then the alt right Nazi blogs will probably report it and praise the murderer's valiant defense of the white race. But that isn't the same thing as having your picture on the nightly news, and your pathetic story told over and over. It doesn't have the same payoff.

By not giving them that satisfaction, at least some people considering this may be dissuaded, because it won't have the same rush. Will they do something else horrible? Well, maybe. But I think it is worth a shot.

Getting off my ass to do something

I was introduced to Zaylore Stout, or Zee as we call him, by a mutual friend.  We were at the Soma Street Food Park and our conversation over lunch was mostly political.  I recognized that he is a bright and committed progressive.

Flash forward to the tragedy of last November, when the incoherent psychopath that is Donald Trump surprised so many of us by winning a majority of the electoral college.  In the days and weeks that followed, it became clear to me that sitting around and complaining isn't enough.  We need to do something.  But what?

Then I heard that Zee is running for a city council position in his adopted home of St. Louis Park Minnesota.  City council?  It is a starting point.  Ideas, movements, begin at the local level.  So do politicians.  And he is certainly young enough to begin at that level.

So I looked at my work schedule, I looked at my accrued vacation, and I decided that I could spare a week to knock on doors.  So that's where I am now.  I have been knocking on doors, and last night I was editing a video of the endorsement he received from the outgoing council member who's seat he is seeking.  That is now uploaded to his campaign Facebook and YouTube accounts.

It is time now to go out and knock on some more doors.  What are you doing to fight facism?
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Link the length of the patents to drug prices

First of all, we all know drug companies do not pour millions of dollars into developing new drugs out of the kindness of their cold, cold hearts.  They do it in order to make money.  And if they were not such assholes about it, that would be perfectly OK.

All of the stockholders deserve a return on their investment.   All of the employees deserve to be paid.  The millions of dollars the companies invest need to be recouped, as do the millions spent on drugs that are never successful.  Major advances are only made after many failures.  All that money has to come from somewhere, and the successes need to pay for that.

So my thought is this.  Let's start with a baseline 20 years for a patent.   That is the maximum number of years the company can have exclusive rights to their new drug, and it is 20 years after approval.  That can become a shorter period of time, based upon how much they charge for the drug.

Now I am not talking about what the price of the drug is, I am talking about the margin, the cost over the cost of manufacturing and the cost of amortizing all of the expenses incurred in developing it.  If you recover the cost in less that 10 years, then you lose a year off the patent life for each year before 10 that you pay off that cost.

And after the development costs have been amortized, you are allowed a markup over the cost of production and distribution (which may rise or fall) of 60 percent.  If you go over that for two consecutive quarters you lose another year, but you can only lose one year in any 4 quarters.  An exception might be if you go over 100 percent for 2 consecutive quarters some kind of tax kicks in.

In the cost that is being amortized, failed projects can be rolled in, but there are a few caveats.
1.  The company can split the cost of any failed development effort between more than one successful drug or pay for all of it from one drug.  But that total cost can only be assigned once.
2.  In order to write off the cost of a failed development effort, any patents on that drug go into public domain.
3.  Salaries of the 5 five highest paid employees are not included in those costs.  That means the shareholders pay for the CEO's 20 million dollar salary and plus stock options.

I know this isn't perfect and it isn't a complete plan.  But it is a new way of looking at things.  A patent is issued by the government granting exclusive rights to produce something.   Often the foundation of that something was paid for by government grants to basic research.   So you and I paid for some of the research and development that went into that drug.

Drug companies need to make a profit, and they need to be willing to fail.  They need to be willing to risk their shareholder's money on a possibility.   And when they do discover something that is worth bringing to market, they need to be able to recoup the losses of all the failures and somehow come out ahead.  The trick is to give them the incentive to do that and still make those drugs affordable.


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How much do they really believe in what they have created?

The right wing of America has finally achieved the holy grail of American politics.  They control the house. the senate, and the presidency.  Now they will attempt to remake America in their own image.

Of couse my take on this is, we are all screwed.  It is a return to the 'good old days' when there were no child labor laws, when the police would attack organized labor, and there were no standards for food or water quality, and whether you were injured by unsafe working conditions on the job or poisened by contaminated food or water, you had no recourse.

So as their signature accomplishment they are preparing to strip away health insurance from many and make it more expensive for many of the rest of us.  So if they want to prove to the American people that they are really working in our best interests, there is a very simple solution.

All of congress should make themselves participants in Trumpcare.  Eliminate the generous health plan granted to all members of congress and their families, and let them pay for insurance, as individuals, not in a group plan, the way many of the rest of us have been.

You think what you are doing is a great idea?  As part of the legislation, take your own medicine.

Can we finally admit that it didn't work?

The experiment has been going on for more than 50 years now.  It was obvious that it didn't work after the first 10.  I am talking about closing the state mental hospitals and dumping the mentally ill onto the streets.  Thus began a flood of homelessness.

The idea sounded good, release them to community based facilities, where they would receive care close to their homes and families, not in the snake pits that many state hospitals had become.  But in a short time those community based facilities first became for-profit businesses, squeezing out the treatment part to increase profit margins.  Snake pits worse than the state hospitals they were replacing. Then the funding for even those dried up.

What we have today is a patchwork of good, bad, and non-existent treatment, and none of it is designed to address truly long term problems.

There is no cure for schizophrenia.  For many, it can be managed with medication, but it doesn't go away.

So those with schizophrenia require life long treatment.  Not necessarily life long hospitalization, but neither can they be shoved out into the street with nobody checking in with them, making sure they are taking their medication.  We no longer have any system to do that.  Unless someone has a rich relative to pay for private hospitalization, they are out of luck.

Not all the homeless are mentally ill.  There are runaway teenagers.  There are people that used to have a decent job, but our economy has failed them.  There are people with substance abuse problems. And even among the mentally ill, there are probably many who with treatment could be re-integrated into society.

Rebuilding the state hospital system is not a cure-all.  It doesn't solve all the problems of homelessness and mental illness.  But it does something, which is much better than the nothing or almost nothing that we are doing now.

The old system had serious flaws.  I hope we have learned what we did wrong in that old system, so we can do better next time.  But even with all of it's flaws, it was better than what we have replaced it with.

We tried something else, and it didn't work.  Is there anyone who thinks what we are doing now is working better than what it replaced?  I mean really, anyone?

For all it's flaws, the state hospital system was a treatment of last resort for many.  It is time to bring it back.
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