Developing new drugs takes over a decade and costs billions. European countries are free loading of US drug research.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/how-other-countries-freeloa...
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/how-other-countries-freeloa...
Nope, drugs sales in the EU alone are enough to cover pharmaceutical R&D costs worldwide. What they aren't enough to cover is Marketing costs, but that's OK since most EU countries don't allow direct marketing of drugs.
That's what the US covers. Not quite so noble sounding that you're covering the cost of advertising though, is it?
Pharmaceutical R&D spending in 2015: USA $47B, Europe: $33B.
Total drug sales Europe 2015: $190B
A common claim by big-pharma defenders is that if you take away the gouging aspect, drug development will stop. Is there some way we can test this experimentally on a subset of the drug market?
It is totally possible to develop drugs without that moat, it just requires getting the money from somewhere.
I have no idea which method would produce better outcomes. Back when there was more science leadership at large pharma, I thought they would be more likely to take crazy bets that work out, that wouldn't necessarily happen at an NIH grant review panel. But last I checked most upper management in pharma are people that tout a PhD on their name, but it's for a field outside of a relevant science.
US taxpayers seem to be able to find hundreds billions for R&D of fighter jets and aircraft carriers. Perhaps this is not as necessary as developing medicine. Or not invading and occupying random countries.
1. Secure maritime trade for all. Protection against piracy and gone are the days when countries would just steal each other's cargo. 2. Global trading currency that is backed by the biggest economy in the world. 3. Establishment of a global trade network. Industrialised countries have access to more natural resources than ever without needing colonies.
Remember how the world was before the American Order. Colonies and hostility all over the world. Europe was in two world wars and would have probably been in another one with the Sovjets.
Generally speaking, people trust the American rule of law and trust that the US will help her allies. This only made relevant by having an ultra beefy military. It's hard to put a price on these things, and which portion the US tax payers have to pay.
Note that the current administration wants to cut back on these costs. European countries are benefitting a lot from the American Order, and should perhaps shoulder more of the costs.
There is zero valid reason the world’s mightiest military should need mercenaries.
A far better plan to remain as the world leader would be to court the world’s top minds and lure them into living in the US permanently. And all it would have required is handing out green cards at graduation. But that is another topic.
Look at China’s aggression in the past couple of months, especially with India. It would never have happened 10 or 20 years back with a strong America. Yes, the US does serve as the world’s policeman.
The only way for the US to have been able to threaten China without using force would have been to sow political discord and break it up into smaller countries. The US has 330M people, mostly getting older. China has 1.4B. Both have nukes so it’s not in anyone’s interest to engage militarily, and both have sufficient resources to not have to depend on someone else. And both need each other economically.
China has India right next door.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/business/gilead-truvada-h...
is corruption only explanation of how this happened?