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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy doesn't what Martin Shkreli does qualify as wealth redistribution?
It's funny to me how self-appointed defenders of the top 0.1% always castigate taxes for penalizing those who are "productive" and "create wealth" by redistributing their "hard earned" money to the "welfare class."
Martin Shkreli is the poster boy for the highly "productive" top 0.1% they champion. He took a drug that has been on the market for nearly 70 years that a small number of unfortunate people's lives depend on and jacked up the price 5000% to exploit a market inefficiency. This does not create wealth. It merely REDISTRIBUTES wealth from the poor and sick to the rich and sociopathic.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)mhatrw
(10,786 posts)asymmetrical and unilateral.
sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)at his "pharmaceutical company" and what you say actually pretty much seems to be his companies entire business model.
The scumbag claims that he and Turing want to discover and develop drugs for rare and crippling conditions.
If you look at his careers section there are no openings for scientists period. You don't discover medicines without scientists. I hunted around for where they could possibly be doing all this important work and found out that they don't even seem to have a lab facility.
This piece of shit seems to be just buying up old drugs that have very limited manufacturers and jacking the price up because he knows nobody else is making the drug so he can't be undersold.
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)Because, like almost everything Wall Street does, it "creates wealth" for top 1%. And this now seems to be the accepted definition of "productivity."
sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)The entire market is based on this. Not one thin dime is actually produced by stock trades.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)That is NEVER class warfare.
ETA - I am generally a peaceable person but this fucker needs to meet a rope and the nearest lamppost, and NOW. It was good enough for Mussolini, it's good enough for this crawling shit.
GeorgeGist
(25,321 posts)and no one bats an eye.
Taitertots
(7,745 posts)And any laws/actions that change that distribution are "redistribution".
There is no default distribution of wealth.