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Bettawrekonize -> RE: IT'S ALREADY STARTED FOLKS.. (11/24/2008 2:47:46 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: P31W
I watch too many middle class people think it's important for their children/themselves to have TV's with cable, cell phones, computers with internet service and so on. Too many also decide "as in make the choice" to have these things over medical insurance, life and/or disability insurance. One accident and the family is thrown into poverty.
Those who have mismanaged the banking industry and who have mismanaged GM and Ford and all these other companies have all of the stuff you mention and yet they still have millions on top of that. They ask for things like bail outs and government intervention to manipulate the market into funding them (instead of allowing the free market to choose what to fund without manipulating the government to intervene) and that's how they attain their wealth. Then they turn around and blame everyone and everything but themselves for the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. First they blame it on laziness, but if that's refuted, they go on to say it's a lack of savings, if that's refuted, they make up other excuses and hope that something sticks. They come up with every possible excuse but they never want to take responsibility for their misbehavior (why should they, they get rewarded for their misbehavior, it increases their wealth). Just like the government claims that the reason they take take away our health freedoms is to protect us, but the real reason governmental officials choose to do so is because of existing conflicts of interest involving financial gains (otherwise, they would ban cigarettes, a substance that has killed millions, but every step of the way their actions are in favor of big business and pharmaceutical corporations).
The cost of medical insurance and health care are increasing, not decreasing, and that's partly why the gap is becoming larger. Part of the increase is a result of the increase in the prices of specialty drugs.
quote:
Specialty drugs — often sold by biotech companies, and used to treat complex conditions such as cancer — are some of the most expensive medicines on the market. As it turns out, their already high prices are rising much faster than inflation, and even faster than the prices of other prescription drugs.
The Most Expensive Drugs Are Getting Even More Expensive
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The United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world and the health care costs continue to rise. Government figures show that in 2004 health care spending reached 1.9 trillion dollars, equaling 16 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.
U.S. Health Care: World's Most Expensive
Those wealthy entities that benefit from charging high prices are part of the reason for the increasing gap. The fact that there is such a huge gap indicates that the wealthy entities can afford to charge lower prices, but they choose not to because they want to keep the status quo. They influence the government (ie: by lobbying it) to help them maintain their status quo, instead of allowing the free market to choose what companies survive and which ones don't.
quote:
WASHINGTON, April 1, 2007 — Manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and other health products spent nearly $182 million on federal lobbying from January 2005 through June 2006, a Center for Public Integrity study of disclosure records shows. Power of Many
Of that total, drug companies and their trade groups spent most of it, or $155 million, lobbying on a variety of issues ranging from protecting lucrative drug patents to keeping lower-priced Canadian drugs from being imported to the United States Drug interests employed about 1,100 lobbyists to do their bidding in each of the past two years.
...
Big Pharma’s drug lobby machine (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) increased its financial arm-twisting of Congress by 25% in 2007 – in an effort to ward off competition and lock in bogus psychiatric medication sales to children.
http://forums.christianity.com/m_3795161/mpage_2/tm.htm (Post 30)
Instead of allowing the free market to determine whether or not they want to fund these entities, they lobby for government intervention to manipulate the market into funding them (if they didn't get anything in return, they wouldn't spend so much money lobbying). The amount of money that pharmaceuticals have been putting into their lobbying efforts has been increasing, and this is partly responsible for the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. They manipulate the market to fund them by influencing government intervention instead of allowing the free market to choose what to fund without government intervention, then they turn around and blame the social problems they cause on everyone and everything else.
Most of the stuff I post, for instance, on the FDA hardly ever makes it on mainstream television. The reason for this is probably that the entities who gain from the corruption they cause unethically suppress such information from being distributed. The corruption of the wealthy is strongly responsible for the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and I don't expect corrupt entities to take responsibility for their misbehavior (I would like them to, but I don't think they would).
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