How we got into this financial mess. At least 3 times.

Daily Kos: Three Times is Enemy Action.
We owe Mark Sumner (aka DevilsTower) a huge debt of gratitude for this piece. (No pun intended. Really.)

College students pay for tax cuts

The money has to come from somewhere. You can’t simply “cut taxes in the face of huge deficits”:http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/14695544.htm and expect no consequences. With the “ridiculousness of the Laffer curve”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve (or Bush’s implementation of it) being exposed every day and “record profits”:http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/14697409.htm&cid=1106753114&sig2=zbwt5vlhdMU7IGZMZcJ_Pw at oil companies, you’d expect some less mind-bogglingly stupid deficit reduction strategy.
But no. Here [...]

Drugs, costs, economics

The $800 million figure has been tossed around as the cost of making the first pill of a new drug. Derek Lowe, and some commentors, “discuss the topic”:http://www.corante.com/pipeline/archives/2005/04/26/knocking_opportunity_costs.php. (Definitely read the comments, also.)
The figure itself hides a lot of issues. As Ben Robinson points out, it is the oft-cited _economic_ cost of drug development, rather [...]

Do we have a free market?

I don’t “think so”:http://themodulator.org/archives/001725.html.

The oil crisis—what do you think?

James Kunstler of EnergyBulletin.net predicts “doom and gloom”:http://www.energybulletin.net/4856.html pretty soon due to fallout from falling energy production. The argument, as outlined, goes like this (and include natural gas in with oil here, where appropriate):
1. We don’t have to wait for the last drop of oil to have an energy crisis. The energy crisis starts when [...]

Yeah, what he said …

I usually enjoy the commentary of “Derek Lowe.”:http://www.corante.com/pipeline Today he has an especially pointed article about “capitalism and research.”:http://www.corante.com/pipeline/archives/2004/12/05/beg_to_differ.php Someone apparently made the comment that people in the pharma industry are like automatons producing science for the big profit machine. And it is true that the pharma _business_ is about profit, much the same as [...]