I want to congratulate the pharmaceutical industry.

[Uncle Joe]

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

1. Tell it like it is, Bernie.

K&R

[KS Toronado]

2. Pharmaceutical industry made $50 billion in profits last year

Wonder how many of them are among the companies that pay zero in taxes?

[rickyhall]

3. Tax the rich or break out the guillotine.

[Vinca]

4. I heard one of the dumbest big pharma ads today ever. A woman is saying something about

how bad it is Congress wants to allow us to buy drugs from Canada because - and this is the really dumb part - she doesn't want to wait for her prescriptions. So buy your overpriced drugs in the US, lady.

[seta1950]

12. A real person

Actually told me the same thing, that she didn’t want to wait her turn because of , poor people to see a dr .☹️

[jalan48]

5. Thanks for keeping it real Bernie.

[gab13by13]

6. It's not just GQPers,

Senator Menendez, who received 1 million dollars from Big Pharma is opposed to lowering drug prices in the Build Back Better bill.

[George II]

8. That's false. Here are the top Senators in 2020; Menendez did NOT receive $1M from "Big Pharma":

Menendez is not on this list of the top 20 Senators, and in 2021 he's only received $62,000. Where did that "1 million dollars" number come from?

https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=pharmaceuticals

[niyad]

17. Except that Warnock, Ossoff and Hickenlooper were not Senators in 2020.

[TiberiusB]

18. He's received over $1 million over his career, not in a single year

Those numbers are from a presidential election year, which somewhat explains the numbers showing for Sanders and Warren, and even Ossoff, if you assume there was a desire to oust Trump (though listing Ossoff as a senator might be a stretch).

As for Menendez, he is a veritable saint on drug pricing...

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/25/not-just-sinema-sen-bob-menendez-took-1m-from-pharma-shoots-down-bill-to-lower-costs/

https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/05/pharma-menendez-rare-off-cycle-burst-of-campaign-cash/

https://www.nj.com/politics/2021/10/menendez-opposes-fellow-nj-democrat-pallones-plan-to-lower-drug-prices.html

https://money.yahoo.com/capitol-hill-drug-pricing-reform-110513269.html

[George II]

22. When he suspended his campaign he didn't give the money back. Some is still in his....

....presidential committee treasury and some has been transferred to his next campaign committee treasury.

As for Menendez, he's been in office for 28 years. That $1M over his career is an average of $35,000 per year, and it wasn't $1.3M in one year.

Now, do you know where many of the pharmaceutical manufacturing plants are in the US? New Jersey! There are roughly 50 in the state of New Jersey.

Do you know who works at those plants? Common every day people - clerical, secretarial, custodial, shop, warehouse, truckers, etc.
They make the donations that get lumped into that "$1M from pharma" number.

People tried to destroy Booker early last year with the same criticism. Thankfully it didn't work.

[70sEraVet]

7. Is there a typo there?

"The richest 2 Americans cannot continue owning more wealth than the bottom 40% of our country"
Should it have read, 'the richest two PERCENT'?

[Joinfortmill]

10. Ha, maybe not the way things are going.

[Celerity]

11. No typo, Musk and Bezos have more net worth than the bottom 40% combined

In fact, they very likely have more than the bottom half now, I am sure.

This is from 2019

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/03/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-target-saying-3-richest-have-much-w/

And 2020 and 2021 have stripped massive wealth from the bottom and shoved it to the top.

[Uncle Joe]

25. Thanks for the addition Celerity.

[70sEraVet]

26. I....HAD.....NO....IDEA!

[Joinfortmill]

9. We need reform.

[Orrex]

13. A civilized nation would recognize this as extortion

[CaptainTruth]

14. Also NB: Republican efforts to block national healthcare & efforts to allow the government...

...to negotiate drug prices.

Republicans are responsible for creating the environment in which this happens.

[George II]

15. Alas, I don't think those numbers are accurate, or are skewed:

Elon Musk net worth is $218B
Jeff Bezos net worth is $194B

Total net worth of American households is $141.7T

His "40%" of Americans includes 60 million children below 15 years old (20% of the population), whose net worth is essentially $0, and another 25 million who are below 20 years old, who also have $0 net worth or close to it.

[TiberiusB]

23. It's poverty, not children or young adults, that is dragging the numbers down for the lower 50%

https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/

Here are the numbers in trillions:

2021:Q2
Top 1% 43.27
90-99% 50.53
50-90% 37.25
Bottom 50% 3.03

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/18/business/black-wealth-mckinsey-study/index.html

Somewhere between 12-14% of the bottom 50% of households have negative wealth.

[George II]

24. In his tweet it said two people have higher net worth than 40% of Americans. Using that criteria...

....I probably have higher net worth than about 20% of Americans and I'm far from rich.

Repeat: roughly 20% of Americans have zero net worth and it's not because of poverty. It's because they are too young to work!!

That's how misleading those numbers are in that tweet.

[TiberiusB]

41. Well, in 2019, 3 people had more wealth than the bottom 50%

Are you assuming that Sanders is lumping all minors into the bottom 50% to pad his numbers for some reason? I think the numbers are bad enough without needing to be fudged.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/03/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-target-saying-3-richest-have-much-w/

That was in 2019 and their wealth has only gone up and Sanders was talking about the bottom 40%, not 50%, which makes his statement even more plausible.

There are 120 million full time employed in the U.S., 25+ million part time employed, and 73 million minors (some of whom are mixed into those two previous numbers, and are a population segment that is declining slowly).

[Tribetime]

16. Preach it Bernie we need more like you

Too bad we got people like Cinema and Mansion who only care about their self-interest and should be locked up for treason

[Evolve Dammit]

19. What really sucks is how it just keeps increasing. Co-pays, deductibles, "in-network" "preferred"

Health "care" is the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. I hate the entire "industry" but do value the dedicated professionals who are also squeezed by their employers. It is a "corporation" after all and the object is to make money for the corporation. That is all.

[leftstreet]

21. +1

[orleans]

20. so glad he's still kicking ass! nt

[Celerity]

27. Here is the latest data (for the end of Q2 2021) from the Fed in terms of HOUSEHOLD net worth

This data takes away the objections being raised about counting children as a big part of the bottom 40%, 50% of the population.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/

As of Q2 2021 there was $134 trillion total in household net worth.

The bottom half of all households controlled only $3.03 trillion of that.

The top 1% of US households controlled $43.27 trillion. That is over 14 TIMES more for the 1% of households than the bottom half of households. The top 10% of households have 31 TIMES as much net wealth as the bottom 50%.



The trend for the top 1% and top 10% gaining is MASSIVE. In Q1 2020, just 15 months before, they 'only' controlled $30.8 trillion.

The top 1% of households have gained an insane $12.27 TRILLION in net worth in that 15 months.

The top 10% of households have a combined net worth of $93.8 trillion.

The top 10% pf households have gained almost $23 TRILLION in that same 15 months, obviously driven by the top 1%, but the other 9% are gaining enough to keep them extremely happy and willing to lash out at anyone trying to stop their wealth extraction as well.

The bottom half of all households only gained a little over $1 trillion in that same 15 months.


https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/

By %




In USD

[George II]

29. The tweet mentions 40% of "our country", which one can reasonably assume is people.

Here are the numbers I used:

19% < 15, 60M people
4% 15-17, 13M people
4% 18-20, 13M people
32% 21-44, 103M people
25% 45-64, 80M people
16% 65+, 51M people

What would really be a reasonable comparison would be to compare Elon Musk (50 years old) and Jeff Bezos (57 years old) to Americans 50 or 57 and above, inasmuch as younger people have time to earn more and get richer. Who knows, a bunch of them might go zooming right past both of them by the time they reach Musk's and Bezos' age.

I certainly wouldn't consider me to be richer or more successful than my 12 year old niece.

[Celerity]

30. I never disputed that (and is is over 50%, probably more now that Musk has exploded to $281 billion,

if you are simply counting total people, as opposed to households). Children and non workers are a net economic burden however, (they have to be kept alive, housed, fed, clothed, etc) so hardly can be completely cut out of that equation.


I posted the household data to give further perspective.

They (total pops versus households) are two different ways of looking at things.

Even counting household wealth, the share for the top 1% (obviously that includes far more people's net wealth than just Bezos and Musk's half a trillion or so atm) is rapidly growing, and wealth inequality is exploding, which will cause massive socio-economic, socio-cultural, and socio-political problems.

The overall US economic system is producing ever larger gulfs in wealth inequality, which is by far (nothing else is even close) the number one interlocked, overarching meta-statistic that determines the overall social/political/economic health of a nation.

[George II]

31. I suppose my point (or two actually) should be that making these blanket statements about....

....some people compared to others should be based on a more analytical basis than just taking averages, means, lumping a very diverse population into large general categories, etc.

The other point is that neither Musk nor Bezos were born rich, and they didn't become rich illegally or outside the system.

Some people are more intelligent than others, some more willing to gamble (not at casinos or the ponies!), some more imaginative, some more industrious, and some more inventive.

[Celerity]

33. Yes, but a society has to contain wealth inequality or it will implode. I would say that is the

larger point, the truly big picture.

cheers

[George II]

34. True, but it's bad optics and bad politics for a Senator to continually call out Americans....

....by name when proposing (although not introducing and championing) tax code revisions.

We need serious revisions of the tax code, first to overturn the trump tax giveaway and probably going all the way back to the Reagan so-called "tax cut" (btw, I was unemployed the year that became law, my income tax went UP under Reagan's "cut"!)

But making it personal aimed at specific people is not the way to accomplish it.

I also think Warren's "wealth tax" is poorly titled, let's just go back to sensibly implemented graduated tax rates.

[Celerity]

35. I find nothing wrong whatsoever with Sander's messaging on this. It is all part of a bigger

picture, one that desperately needs to be addressed.

[TiberiusB]

44. Yes, it's far from bad optics

There is wealth, and then there is obscene wealth driven ever higher by the perverse influence of money on our political system.

Nobody is asking them to be poor. Imagine crying about unfair taxes when you have the means to spend a billion dollars a year for over 200 years with billions left over. Musk paid 0$ in taxes in 2018, I believe. He claims a pittance in income compared to his massive stock holdings and borrows against those holdings so he can live a lavish lifestyle without ever having to "earn" it. We're looking at dynastic wealth that leads to effectively re-instating the rule of kings.

Musk didn't invent Tesla or Space X. He isn't an engineering wizard or a rocket scientist.
Bezos didn't code Amazon.
Wall Street casino culture pumps up Tesla and Amazon valuations just like they inflate Bitcoin to ridiculous levels.
Millionaires that never have to work a day in their life if they don't want to? Sure.
Quarter trillionaires that can twist local, state, and federal governments around the world to warp the law to favor their interests?
HELL NO.

The system is rigged and it has been exhaustively documented at this point. Playing games to pretend it isn't really as bad as it looks something for deluded conservatives. Legalized bribery has to be banned from government.

[Zeitghost]

32. Did you expect...

Them to develop life saving vaccines, manufacture them for billions of people, distribute them worldwide in record time and not make a few bucks in the process?

Maybe we can go back to bashing big pharma (they do deserve. some of it) after this is all over, but while they're busy saving the planet, maybe we could allow them to profit. It might help to ensure they're still around next time...

[Celerity]

36. To use just one example, Big Pharma is not dependent on ripping off Americans for insulin

prices in order to make vaccines. That is but one of so many other examples of their avaricious business model that show their modus operandi is viciously flawed.

[Zeitghost]

37. Continuing to push the...

"Big Pharma is Evil" line during a pandemic plays right into the right wing anti-vax narrative. Maybe we should let that one go for a bit.

[Celerity]

38. No, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

[mvd]

39. Exactly

First of all, big pharma remains a deeply flawed part of our health care system.

Scientists have been working on a mRNA vaccine for a long time. It just didn’t magically come from big pharma.

We don’t need greed to produce vaccines, and the world has had an uneven vaccine distribution.

Finally, big pharma plans on hiking up vaccine prices at some point.

[PatrickforB]

40. Every billionaire is a failure in policy.

We waste trillions on forever wars, irresponsible tax cuts, and wars on drugs.

Where is our healthcare?

Where is the affordable college for my grandkids?

Where is our aggressive plan to rebuild infrastructure, and mitigate climate change?

It is a matter of priorities of how OUR tax dollars that WE pay in to this government that is supposedly OF, BY and FOR us the people are spent. (individual taxpayers contribute 86% of the federal government's tax revenue, while corporations only put in 6.8%)

When I call my US Senators and Representative, I have taken to leading off with the fundamental question:

WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU DID ANYTHING THAT MATERIALLY BENEFITS ME AND MY FAMILY?

[FakeNoose]

42. There's more truth in Sanders' tweets than in the entire output of the US media

Why aren't American journalists and pundits writing about the income disparity?
Or the staggering profits of Big Pharma?

Bernie Sanders puts it so succinctly, and yet none of the pundits get it, do they?

[spanone]

43. K&R