Why do governments have to steal vaccine rights? Why not print more money to buy them?

by philg

“Taking ‘Extraordinary Measures,’ Biden Backs Suspending Patents on Vaccines” (NYT):

The Biden administration, siding with some world leaders over the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, came out in favor of waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines.

The United States had been a major holdout at the World Trade Organization over a proposal to suspend some of the world economic body’s intellectual property protections, which could allow drugmakers across the globe access to the closely guarded trade secrets of how the viable vaccines have been made. But President Biden had come under increasing pressure to throw his support behind the proposal, drafted by India and South Africa and backed by many congressional Democrats.

If we’re comfortable with borrowing and spending $trillions (i.e., printing money) every few months during coronapanic, why not print a little more money and buy, rather than steal, the rights to the vaccines that we think should be free and open-source? Surely there is some price at which at least one of the vaccine makers would sell voluntarily. Pick the one that is easiest to manufacture, buy the formula, put it on a web site, and pay the inventors additional $$ to help anyone who wants to make it.

From earlier today, “Federal judge vacates CDC’s eviction moratorium” (The Hill): A federal judge on Wednesday vacated a nationwide freeze on evictions that was put in place by federal health officials to help cash-strapped renters remain in their homes during the pandemic. … “The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not,” Friedrich wrote [full text].

Same question for that one. Why did the government, which can print as much money as it wants to (and where such printing has no cost, according to an MIT economist), need to steal from individual landlords? If the CDC wanted everyone to have a rent holiday, why didn’t the CDC pay the rent with borrowed/printed money?

Related:

8 thoughts on “Why do governments have to steal vaccine rights? Why not print more money to buy them?”

  1. Basically one of the tenets of the democratic platform is too fuck the rich. Why even raise taxes to increase spending? These days government revenue and spending have nothing to do with each other. The only reason is that democrats hate rich people and they want to fuck them. It’s very simple! Big Pharma…. fuck you! Landlord…. fuck you!

    • https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/business/biden-tax-increases-wealthy.html

      He railed against high-earning chief executives and promised that his plans were “about making the average multimillionaire pay just a fair share.”

      “We’re not going to deprive any of these executives of their second or third home, travel privately by jet,” Mr. Biden said after brief remarks on an economic aid program he signed into law this year. “It’s not going to affect their standard of living at all. Not a little tiny bit. But I can affect the standard of living that people I grew up with.”

      Mr. Biden has responded by amplifying his arguments: In recent remarks, he has focused almost as much on the tax increases as he has on the programs they would pay for.

    • In other words, high-income people will pay higher taxes and have less to spend, but “It’s not going to affect their standard of living at all. Not a little tiny bit.” This is a Christ-level miracle, I think. You can have exactly the same standard of living while spending less.

    • philg: If your taxes were to go up 5% across the board (income tax, property tax, and capital gains tax) tell us how your life would in fact materially change. How would your standard of living decrease? This is a real, honest question. I suspect it would not change at all.

      Unless you listen to right-wing theory that all CEOs who currently make $40M/yr and receive a pay cut of $5M/yr (or an tax increase of 10%) would right up and say “F*** you, I refuse to only make $35M, I’m outta here!” and corporations would be worse off because of it.

      So maybe quit your part-time jobs because of the horror of 5% higher taxes? Just to stick it to “the man”? Would that be the change in your life?

    • Mike: If my after-tax income falls by 5 percent I would spend approximately 5 percent less. I don’t like to dip into savings (which the kids will need in order to fight for decent real estate in a country with a population of 600 million, just as young Chinese people today must get parental assistance if they want an apartment in a reasonably nice neighborhood).

      I make decisions every day based on what things cost, e.g., hotel rooms (balancing luxury versus price), restaurants, etc. We got the Honda EX-L minivan rather than the top-of-the-line. If our spending power had been reduced we might have gotten the EX model.

      All of the rich people I know are careful with money and even when it seems that they couldn’t possibly spend what they have before they die they don’t always just buy the fanciest or more expensive item. I’m talking about people with assets in the neighborhood of $100 million.

      Highly paid CEOs are an unusual breed (maybe 1,000 people like that in the whole U.S.). They’re getting a lot of psychic value out of being the big boss and having everyone defer to them. The folks I know who made a lot of money quietly generally quit working as soon as there was an obstacle of any kind. The job wasn’t fun anymore. Their effective tax rate went up. If they already had $30-100 million they were always at risk of quitting (early retirement).

  3. Guess woke think that they have right on results of others labor that woke think they need.
    How would it not destroy vaccine industry? I think this is part of Democratic Party fight with capitalism and any manifestation of personal liberty and property including intellectual liberty and property. They want to cancel patents but will pay vaccine companies from public treasury as a handout without going through buy step taking them under complete control

Comments are closed.