It would be easy to be cynical about the claims made on You Tube or in blogs regarding pharamaceuticals and the inherent problems of drug development in a free market, but an article in The Independent featured in The Week cites the chair of the UK Government's antibiotic resistance working group, Peter Hawkey. Presumably mainstream enough?
An estimated 25,000 people a year die in the EU of antibiotic-resistant infections. Why are drugs companies not developing new drugs for this? No money it. Not as profitable as heart disease or cancer.
A direct example of profit before people. An RBE would be the potent drug against such evil.
Showing posts with label the independent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the independent. Show all posts
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Fat cats: do they deserve their pay?
In 'The Week' 5/11/11, the article "Fat cats: do they deserve their pay?" quotes Philip Hensher, writing in 'The Independent': "Do I care if their salaries are 60 times greater than mine? I do not". Thanks for that Philip. I do care that you don't care, though. You should read 'The spirit level' (see www.equalitytrust.org.uk), and maybe you would start caring!
Hensher continues "paying them less wouldn't make anyone else better off." This is a rhetorical and obviously true point. We know that paying people more makes them better off (to be equally obvious) and if The Equality Trust is right, more equal income leads to fewer social problems.
Hensher works out that reducing former Tesco top man Terry Leahy's salary from £1m a month to more like £10K a week (how would he have coped?) would only save enough to pay all the other 260,000 Tesco employees a further £3.68 a month. I agree it's not much, but as Tesco's say, "every litle helps".
I don't know what a typical Tesco salary is, but let's say it's £20K pa. This means that even with Hensher's putative reduction, Leahy would have been paid for 2 weeks what the typical employee gets in a year - the order of 25 times as much. At £1m a month, Leahy was getting the equivalent of 50 years' typical salary in just one month. Was he really as effective as 600 typical employees?
We don't know from 'The Week' (nor I asume from 'The Independent' about the other high earners at Tesco, who would logically have to take a pay cut to ensure that they weren't out earning their boss.
Hensher continues "paying them less wouldn't make anyone else better off." This is a rhetorical and obviously true point. We know that paying people more makes them better off (to be equally obvious) and if The Equality Trust is right, more equal income leads to fewer social problems.
Hensher works out that reducing former Tesco top man Terry Leahy's salary from £1m a month to more like £10K a week (how would he have coped?) would only save enough to pay all the other 260,000 Tesco employees a further £3.68 a month. I agree it's not much, but as Tesco's say, "every litle helps".
I don't know what a typical Tesco salary is, but let's say it's £20K pa. This means that even with Hensher's putative reduction, Leahy would have been paid for 2 weeks what the typical employee gets in a year - the order of 25 times as much. At £1m a month, Leahy was getting the equivalent of 50 years' typical salary in just one month. Was he really as effective as 600 typical employees?
We don't know from 'The Week' (nor I asume from 'The Independent' about the other high earners at Tesco, who would logically have to take a pay cut to ensure that they weren't out earning their boss.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Good old earthquakes and tsunamis
Sorry to be flippant about such natural disasters, but I have been provoked. Sean O'Grady has pointed out, in The Independent newspaper, that "the longer-term boost to spending from reconstruction and development can even help an economy". It's true, GDP will be helped, but an ounce of common sense show this up for how warped and stupid this claim that natural disasters have advantages is.
Are we so blinded by the need to increase GDP, that we cannot see that this paradox does not have to exist? The destruction of property is not a good thing and in no way should it be mistaken for growth in any positive way. OK, with it being a natural disaster, we could sustain an argument that the damage should be excluded from GDP/growth calculations, but if it were counted, in the negative direction, then all the warning systems, earth quake and tsunami proofing and general avoidance of destruction would limit the negative effect of the natural disasters on our sane GDP calculation.
Are we so blinded by the need to increase GDP, that we cannot see that this paradox does not have to exist? The destruction of property is not a good thing and in no way should it be mistaken for growth in any positive way. OK, with it being a natural disaster, we could sustain an argument that the damage should be excluded from GDP/growth calculations, but if it were counted, in the negative direction, then all the warning systems, earth quake and tsunami proofing and general avoidance of destruction would limit the negative effect of the natural disasters on our sane GDP calculation.
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