Covid-19 pandemic

[Etienne]

The Laffer Curve is utter bollocks, Paul. (I mean increasing tax doesn't always increase revenue commensurately, but the idea that it can be neatly mapped onto a curve is laughable - but as it exists as propaganda not science that doesn't really matter)

Balders, there's clearly a substantial difference between taking home 74k and 174k but it's a much less sizeable difference than earning 100k than 1m which is all I was saying - certainly enough to change behaviour.

[ad hoc]

When it comes down to it, if the chief executive of Pfizer, say, would sit there and make a calculation that his own bonus would not be sufficiently high in the billions to make it worth the company's while developing a vaccine which could save the world, then this tells you everything you need to know about capitalism.

[Etienne]

It's not really a hypothetical, we know that pharmaceutical companies research is massively skewed towards issues that affect rich Westerners rather than kill poor people in the global South, because it is far more profitable.

[Satchmo Distel]

I suspect the Biden admin has promised Big Pharma some sweeteners in exchange for the IP move but, even without that, I think the domestic market is still a big enough incentive for future pandemic work. There are also many ways that Big Pharma is subsidized by government, such as by funding the education that produces graduates.

OTOH I think some of the hostility above comes from the facile belief that an economy without incentives would work just as well. History suggests otherwise.

[Patrick Thistle]

Pfizer has its existing contracts so wouldn't lose out by licensing production in other territories that it isn't currently able to serve, as long as the product is only used there. What Pfizer don't want is to let producers in Africa and India produce vaccines at a much lower cost and then see those vaccine doses come back into the Western markets and flood them with cheap product. Which actually is fair enough. The West is rich enough to bear the brunt of the costs of vaccine development through Western governments paying higher prices for the products. It's also sensible to keep the vaccine factories in Europe and America producing vaccines because it keeps people in work.

[Balderdasha]

Belgium and Sweden have now recorded over one million confirmed cases of Covid-19.

For comparison to Sweden, Norway has only recorded 115,194 cases, and Finland has recorded 88,078 cases.

[Balderdasha]

The Seychelles currently has the world's highest rate of new cases per million population over the last seven days. They're reintroducing a two week lockdown despite having already vaccinated 60% of the population. Many of the new cases are in people who have received two doses of vaccine: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56992121.amp

[Nefertiti2]

Who is proposing an economy without incentives?

That said Cuba's vaccine production is pretty good, and covers diseases that aren't necessarily profitable

Also check out what "incentives" do to the price of insulin in the US

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1390128730576760833?s=20

[Patrick Thistle]

The Seychelles currently has the world's highest rate of new cases per million population over the last seven days. They're reintroducing a two week lockdown despite having already vaccinated 60% of the population. Many of the new cases are in people who have received two doses of vaccine: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56992121.amp

Shit.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Somebody with a little more time than I have might try explaining patiently to Nef why the US pricing of insulin, invented decades ago, and IP protection for brand new vaccines on which major R&D spend is needed are somewhat different from pretty much every single sodding perspective you can think of - commercial, ethical, legal or whatever, and why they might therefore merit rather different policy approaches from legislators.

Also why the public policy case for incentivising vaccine production doesn't depend on pharma corporations having a record of being good guys, or even on their being less than thoroughly ethically awful players.

[Balderdasha]

Worth noting that 60% of the vaccinations administered in the Seychelles were Chinese Sinopharm vaccinations, and there have been quite varied reports on how effective that vaccination is.

[Patrick Thistle]

I'm well versed with the scandal that is insulin pricing in the USA, through partner working with a USian nonprofit. It has nothing to do with the original patent for insulin and everything to do with the broken US medical system.

But even if it was linked the argument would be counter to the point Nef is trying to make because the original patent being made public for $1 and the current high prices of insulin would imply that giving away the IP of vaccines would mean vaccines end up costing a huge amount of money per jab. So it would be an argument against free access to IP if it was relevant.

[San Bernardhinault]

Yeah. There was a similar question related to the outbreak in Chile, I think, despite them having vaccinated many people early. Either the vaccination is ineffective or that - unlike some of the other vaccines - it genuinely is only effective a couple of weeks after the second dose

[Nocturnal Submission]

Yeah. There was a similar question related to the outbreak in Chile, I think, despite them having vaccinated many people early. Either the vaccination is ineffective or that - unlike some of the other vaccines - it genuinely is only effective a couple of weeks after the second dose

I think it was the latter, wasn't it. That, unlike Ox-AZ, Pfizer and probably Moderna too, which give substantial protection a few weeks after the first jab, Sinopharm requires both jabs and then a few weeks for a roughly equivalent level of effectiveness.

[Erskine Bridges]

The Laffer Curve is utter bollocks, Paul. (I mean increasing tax doesn't always increase revenue commensurately, but the idea that it can be neatly mapped onto a curve is laughable - but as it exists as propaganda not science that doesn't really matter)

Balders, there's clearly a substantial difference between taking home 74k and 174k but it's a much less sizeable difference than earning 100k than 1m which is all I was saying - certainly enough to change behaviour.

I didn’t know the Laffer Curve had been entirely discredited. I think it is accepted that there is a level beyond which less tax gets collected so very high taxes are counter productive.

The question is, what should the level be. And there are plenty other questions about capitalism but I’m not sure what we have right now in the West is really capitalism.

[San Bernardhinault]

As I understand it, the three key problems with the "laffer curve" are that:

Firstly, there's a suggestion that it's a curve, that there are precise inflection points, that it can be measured. It can't.

Secondly, it is monstrously misused by libertarians, including Laffer himself. That no matter what the current tax rate it is used to suggest that taxes should be lower. Even if the Laffer Curve were thing, it's clear that current tax rates are way below the inflection point. If you want to maximise government revenue you'd ramp the tax rates up a long way from where they are now.

Thirdly, of course, is that it suggests that the only thing you're interested in is maximising government revenue. Redistribution is a reasonable policy goal even if you are reducing overall net income. One person earning a billion a year and 100 people earning 10k a year is a horrible system; you'd have much less overall income in a system where that one person is earning 100 million and the 100 are earning a million each - you'd be down by 80% - but still have a much better society and overall outcome.

[Lang Spoon]

Yeah, wot SB said. The Laffer curve is pure rubbish.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

At the macroeconomic level, possibly. But at the microeconomic - individual and corporate - level which is what the thread was talking about when the concept was introduced here it surely and demonstrably isn't. Otherwise we wouldn't have tax havens, dodgy corporate structures with postbox office headquarters and companies and millionaires paying creative tax accountants to help them avoid paying even the 'standard' rates of tax that people at the bottom end of the 'curve' can't afford or be that bothered to avoid.

That, of course, is an argument for taking AWAY the mechanisms that allow tax avoidance, not what the Laffer Curve argument was used for by libertarians which was precisely the opposite, i.e. you're as well off not taxing rich people to begin with.

[ursus arctos]

But the very universality of that behaviour and its persistence irrespective of the tax rates in effect itself demonstrates the absence of any basis for the "curve"

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

There isn't 'universality of that behaviour' among those who can't avoid tax on their income or profit, though. Only among those who can. I agree it's then a political argument not an economic one.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Do people still punt that "Laffer curve" lie? Blimus.

[ursus arctos]

Hmmm

Perhaps our experiences differ considerably, but I have found the desire for tax avoidance to be rather universal, though the cost of achieving it can differ widely.

See, e.g., people subject to PAYE withholding wanting to work off the books or have another "side hustle" outside the system or those willing to go out of their way to avoid consumption taxes. The very size of the duty free sector strikes me as evidence of universality.

[ursus arctos]

Do people still punt that "Laffer curve" lie? Blimus.

It made a real comeback under "our" last president, who awarded the charlatan the Presidential Medal of Freedom

[Artificial Hipster]

https://mobile.twitter.com/JenWilliamsMEN/status/1390362774027571201

This is a bit of a worry..

[Balderdasha]

I would happily pay more tax if it went towards better schooling, housing, healthcare, etc, for the more disadvantaged sections of society and I was genuinely surprised the first time I had a debate with someone who thought the opposite (I remember it vividly, she was a friend of a friend, a lovely trainee doctor, but vehemently opposed to paying tax). I don't think tax avoidance is universal, but it is much more widespread than I'd hope.