Published CommPro.biz 2014.03.04

Walmart And The Tax Creators
 

Are you sure you are getting a bargain when you shop at Walmart? Are you sure that your Big Mac doesn’t cost more than the price on the menu board? Are you sure that the upfront low prices you pay wherever minimum wage jobs are part of the picture are all you pay? Don’t be too sure.

If you pay taxes of any sort, you probably help pay for food stamps. You definitely help pay for Medicaid and subsidized housing; even welfare might soak up some of your tax dollars on their way to help the working poor. So when, the working poor are paid minimum wage, you help make up the rest of their income. They are on your payroll. So even if you don’t shop at Walmart or eat fast food, you are still not only picking up part of their workers’ paychecks, you are cutting their customers’ bill.

The largest recipient of welfare in America is Walmart. It’s their business model, along with reported bribery, to smooth out their growth. Walmart is America’s largest employer, so you are not just subsidizing some mom and pop outfit; you are subsidizing a huge enterprise controlled by the Walton family. They own a little over half the stock in Walmart, so whatever happens at Walmart is under the full control of these unbelievably rich folks. How rich are they? The Walton family riches equals the total riches of everybody in the bottom forty percent of Americans.

The first argument against raising the minimum wage is that it will cost jobs; that businesses paying minimum wages will lay people off. That assumes that these organizations have too many employees, or that they don’t want to give their customers quick efficient service. Or that they will have to raise their prices so much that they won’t have as many customers. Of course that falls apart if the competition has to raise their wages and prices too.

Then there’s the teen argument. That most of these jobs are filled by teens who are learning how to work and therefore should be paid a bit less. If that was ever true, it isn’t true today. Yes there are teens in minimum wage jobs, but the vast majority of those at this pay level are adults, most trying to support a family. So how about the teens? Perhaps a case could be made for a two tier minimum wage that would allow for a lower pay scale for teens during their first few months on the job until they become as productive as the adults.

In the end all the arguments against a decent wage level fall apart. And by the way, Walmart doesn’t skimp on payroll to offer lower prices; they do it to make the Waltons richer. In the end that’s what it’s all about, save on payroll, keep the extra bucks and let the taxpayers make up the difference with food stamps, Medicaid, and anything else it takes to help your workers scrape by.

"Am I wrong?"--"Am I crazy?"

"What do you think?"--"Do you agree?"

Published in CommPro.biz 2013.04.30

Whose $$$$s Anyway?

Two decades ago, John O’Shea, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientist at the taxpayer supported entity, was pursuing JAK3, a protein that attaches itself to immune cells. Dr. O’Shea and his team at the NIH thought JAK3 might be used to fight autoimmune disease, specifically arthritis. In 1993 the NIH contacted Pfizer to see if the Pharma giant might have an interest in partnering with Dr. O’Shea in this research. Pfizer said “no thanks” because under the rules in place back then they would have had to share any resulting revenue from the collaboration with the taxpayers who fund the NIH.

Big Pharma’s “K” Street lobbyists had that requirement removed in 1995 and so Pfizer signed on in 1996. Fast forward twenty years and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approves Pfizer’s new arthritis medication Xeljanz® (tofacitinib citrate). Three cheers all around says the NIH for the teamwork made possible by Dr. O’Shea’s discovery of JAK3, and his team’s collaboration over twenty years with the folks at Pfizer that led to Xeljanz®.

Big surprise, Pfizer doesn’t see it that way. They say that the good doctor’s work moved into the public domain when it was published in 1994, that anybody could have used it. So far as the cooperative research with Dr. O’Shea goes, Pfizer didn’t end up with anything they could patent, so it was of no value. It was all the work and the more than a billion bucks Pfizer invested that resulted in a new arthritis drug, Xeljanz®. Pfizer is charging Medicare over $2,000 a month for each and every patient on Xeljanz®, a mind-numbing $25,000.00 taxpayer bucks a year.

This whole scenario is so outrageous you wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t know it’s true. A private entity takes the work of a government researcher; brushing a deal aside they made to work with the NIH. They take all the credit for developing this drug, adding the standard boilerplate claim that they sunk a billion bucks into the effort, yada, yada, yada.

A figure debunked last year in a British Medical Journal study. All these billion plus drug development claims start with a half billion they might have earned had they invested in some once-upon-a-time index fund over the same twenty-year period. Then there is $300-$400 million they get in tax credits. At the end of the day Pfizer has maybe a couple hundred million in Xeljanz®, no small amount but nothing close to a billion. Talk about corporate welfare or voodoo economics. It’s time for this nonsense to stop. Without Dr. O’Shea’s team at the NIH there would be no Xeljanz®.  We want our share of the bucks.

The stranglehold Big Pharma has over the Congress is shameful. From endorsing the theft of taxpayer funded science to an outrageous ban that prevents Medicare and Medicaid from negotiating what they pay for drugs, the corrosive impact of corporate spending in our democratic process is overwhelming. It has to stop.