I agree with you here that Healthcare was not the correct agenda. There are like a million things wrong with the way they are handling the economy right now. First and foremost is probably the corporate tax rate which is astronomical at something like 35 or 40%. This is causing companies like Pfizer trying to merge with Astra Zeneca so that they can be incorporated under the UK and have a much lower tax rate. Seems like the right solution here is to have a tax holiday and drastically reduce the corporate tax rate seeing as you would probably collect more taxes in total and allow capital to flow back to the United States rather than being spent and invested overseas. That's just one of my gripes. I don't even know where to start with the rest so I guess I'll get a little meta. Maybe the issue is how do you align our political systems with the long term interests of our constituents.
No the right solution is to suspend the extension of Pfizer's patents, and tax them more for relying as heavily as they have on the basic research funded by the American taxpayers. Pfizer is a rentier corporation that has a dramatically shrunken pipeline because they have spent more money on marketing than they ever did on research. I don't really think we need to give tax breaks to marketing companies masquerading as research companies.
Also you've been a member of hubski for two hours and you only follow minimum_wage (who isn't my favorite person when it comes to discussing economics). You are either masquerading under an alternate account or you are truly new to the community. Either way, I kind of regret responding to this.
Oh yeah. That's it. We should tax them because its our right as a people to pull money out of every successful operation. Let's see how that works out.... So I waited and guess what I know how that works out because its happening right now. Pfizer is trying to merge with a British company so that it can avoid that American tax rate. Capital flows freely nowadays and their is labor everywhere so companies can relocate their business and tax obligations easily. Put your pitchfork away because if you keep crucifying businesses for trying to do their fiduciary duty to their shareholders you are going to drive them out of this country and we are going to have an economy that looks like France. I agree with you that Pfizer does a lot of marketing directly to consumers and improves their bottoms line trying to convince you that you need artificial tears, or your boner isn't hard enough, or you need to get on an aspirin regiment, but these problems could be solved more easily by making it illegal to advertise prescription medicines directly to consumers (like Europe).