Key Points
- President Joe Biden said the federal Medicare program should negotiate prices for at least 50 prescription drugs each year, up from the current target of 20 medicines.
- That proposal is one of several new health-care policy plans Biden will outline during his State of the Union address Thursday.
- But the fate of his new proposals will be in the hands of a divided Congress, making it highly uncertain whether they will pass into law.
Cool story, but wages are not the same as income
I never said anything about income. I said wages and you decided to talk about income so… cool?
I said GDP is the sum of all incomes. That’s a basic axiom of macroeconomics, but you disagreed.
Why are you talking about incomes?
Because it includes investments and so it is a better indicator of need than wage.
There are plenty of people who have small wages/salary, or even zero wages/salary, and instead rely on investment income.
For example, most landlords. Or retired people. Or the idle wealthy, like the various unemployed children of billionaires. Jeff Bezos has a salary of roughly $80K at Amazon. But he is way better off than someone with a salary of $90K.
If you look at wages instead of overall income, you might think some of those folks are struggling when they absolutely aren’t.
Sounds like you’re admitting a rising GDP doesn’t help people below the median. You completely lost the context of the conversation.
Some of those people are definitely below median, like many retirees struggling to live off their life savings.
But in general, a rising GDP does not target people below median income. That’s exactly why Democrats prefer additional spending that is specifically targeted towards those people.
Jesus you are obtuse.
I didn’t bring up the GDP. You did.
Yes, increasing median income amounts to increasing GDP.
And increasing median income is preferable to increasing median wages, because it also helps people who are struggling to survive off their life savings.
Everyone wants higher income, but an elderly retiree no longer cares about higher wages.