Weekly Indicators for July 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The high frequency data, like the personal income and spending report, continue to show a strong consumer. Some of the long term negatives have also gotten “less bad” as well. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the data, and reward me a little bit for organizing it...

1. Introduction Elsewhere on the internet, I have been explaining my understanding of some rudiments of the political economy of Karl Marx. Marx's concept of surplus value is a generalization of the concept of profit, in some sense. Surplus value takes in all returns to ownership, whether they be profits, interest, rent, and so on. Surplus value arises from the distinction between the use value and the exchange value of labor power, a peculiar commodity. Because capitalists own the means...

A follow-up to the much longer report on Insulin (test on this later) and how PBMs impact pricing on other drugs. “Insulin A Drug Pricing Analysis,” Angry Bear. “Drug manufacturers alone set and raise drug prices, and PBMs are holding drug companies accountable by negotiating the lowest possible cost for drugs, including insulins, on behalf of patients.“ According to 46brooklyn, this is an overly simplistic view on drug pricing. It should be...

Another add-on from yesterday as to why people should take precautionary actions when confronted with a pandemic such as Covid-19, the flu, or other contagions. There was much resistance to taking precautionary measures under the guise of a freedom to do what they wish to do mentality. Thousands of people paid with their lives after contracting Covid-19. Many of them decided they did not need to take any precautionary actions. Masks, social...

Ever since I graduated high school, I’ve been associated with one or another research university, either as a student, a postdoc or a faculty. And during nearly all of that time, I was engaged in some form of research.William Rouse wrote a book in 2016 entitled “Universities as Complex Enterprises: How Academia Works, Why it Works These Ways, and Where the University Enterprise is Headed.” He updated and summarized his research in a paper published...

We’ve lots of evidence from different times and places that the elasticity of output with respect to capital is indeed small. In his famous paper which kickstarted this approach to thinking about economic growth, Robert Solow estimated (pdf) that only one-eighth of the increase in US GDP per worker between 1900 and 1949 was due to increases in the capital stock. The rest, he said, was due to technical progress. In Fully Grown, Dietrich Vollrath estimated that from 1950 to 2000...

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like Loading...

The most economically consequential event of the past decade was the COVID pandemic. It saw countless heroic actions that will be forever unrecognized. Among those who were recognized were Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines. A more controversial figure during that period was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH Institute of Allergy and...

Money from Sick People Part IV: Paying a Premium for Drug Pricing Irregularity — 46brooklyn Research Starting with the Q1 2023 Drug Pricing file (all of this information was knowable before the 2024 Medicare plan bid process was completed). Within the files are the five insulin products we identified as taking large price decreases. 46 Brooklyn identifies each of the specific drug products (i.e. dosage form and strength) at the NDC-level, the...

As taken from The Atlantic’s David Frum to which I subscribe. Bidens address explains why he was relinquishing power by marking himself as a modern Cincinnatus in actions . . . and his Republican rival as a new Catiline. Two political myths inspired the dreams and haunted the nightmares of the Founders of the American republic. Both these foundational myths were learned from the history and literature of the ancient Romans. The story?...