"...But the main problem...is simple: They’re no longer getting paid enough to stay in business. In the multifront battle to cut costs in America’s expensive health care system, pharmacies say they are shouldering a disproportionate...burden.
“That traditional model of that corner drugstore that is just dispensing prescriptions is very difficult, if not impossible, to make work these days,” says Oftebro, adding that at his pharmacies, “reimbursement on the majority of prescriptions is now at or below the acquisition cost of the drugs.”
For this, many blame the middlemen: the pharmacy benefit managers. The three largest PBMs are owned by or affiliated with insurance companies—CVS’s Caremark (which shares a corporate parent with Aetna), UnitedHealth’s Optum Rx, and Cigna’s Express Scripts—and together they control how 80% of all U.S. prescriptions are processed..."
The concentrated ills of concentrated agribusiness, By Bart Hawkins Kreps, originally published by An Outside Chance May 31, 2024
"...Now that American consumers have learned to buy fresh – albeit nearly tasteless – fruit twelve months of the year, it’s essential for Driscoll’s to have suppliers in countries with different seasons. ...Frerick writes: “the Driscoll’s model is based on shifting farming out of the country to companies that don’t...worry about US minimum wage laws or environmental regulations.”
"...It matters not whether these products are truly nutritious. What matters is whether the products are cheap and, in line with WalMart’s directives to suppliers, cheaper year after year. Still, French explains, not cheap enough for WalMart’s own employees to afford – WalMart employees in many states require govt assistance just to feed their families..."
How extreme weather will affect the insurance and energy sectors - By Matthew Wright, Matthew Priestly, originally published by The Conversation May 29, 2024
"...Insurance companies evaluating risks must account for a combination of the most extreme weather systems, and those affecting built-up, developed areas. The most risk-prone areas are quantified by examining historical events and assessing other possible scenarios that are generated by models. Risk experts also consider what impact historical events would have today. Increases in risk may be due to increases in population, density of the built environment, or GDP. For example, Hurricane Katrina’s impact would be $40 billion higher if it occurred today..."
Neoliberal economics is killing the arts
By Tim Lutton, originally published by Red Pepper May 28, 2024
"...As a society, we must resist art-as-capital, where it is reduced to pure exchange value in a market of commodities. There, any politically-charged and counter-hegemonic content is rendered powerless, constituted as a stable harmonisation of the dominant socio-political order and drowning out all contradictions.
...In the present era, the tendency towards total marketisation of artistic production accompanies perpetual austerity and an atomised rentier economy that is shrinking public and social life. Without a rupture from neoliberal capitalism in general, the means to make new, generative and disruptive art disappears, and much else that is meaningful in our lives will follow after. The rest is silence."
A new and silent land grab is underway – we must stop it - By Ian Scoones, Angela Serrano, originally published by Open Democracy May 20, 2024
“For us peasants, land is not just an investment or something we own, but is part of our lives and our existence”, said...the Network of Farmers’ Organisations & Agricultural Producers of West Africa at a meeting co-convened by the Land Deal Politics Initiative...and activists concerned about the rise of land, water and green grabs.
...Participants of the meeting agreed that policy debates on land have...been stuck in the hallowed halls of the UN or government bureaucracies, where they are captured by market demands, such as offsetting. The subsequent ‘solutions’ then end up incompatible with local livelihoods, failing to consider food-provisioning, as well as people’s cultures, histories and intimate connections with nature..."
Markets - Where did all the stocks go?
Public Companies In Decline
The number of public companies has fallen fast by Matt Phillips, David Crowther 4/28/24
"...After analyzing the effects of mergers, private-equity investment, and regulatory costs, the paper suggests that M&A is the main culprit. (Though they do theorize that higher costs associated with regulation could be a less important contributing factor.)
“Mergers seem to be the biggest driver of this trend,” Ali Sanati told Sherwood. Sanati is a finance professor at the American University in Washington, DC, and a coauthor of the 2023 paper.
The authors categorized mergers according to various financial metrics, noting that mergers motivated around financing and innovation “are the ones that effectively reduce the number of U.S. listings.”
Apple workers are striking at a store in Maryland by Millie Giles 5/13/24
"...In the aftermath of its outrage-inducing object-crushing advert, Apple has been dealt another PR blow, as it faces its first retail employee strike in history.
...While Apple is currently in the firing line for its employee practices, with labor unions like the Communications Workers of America accusing the tech giant of union-busting, collective strike action has been gaining traction across the US more widely..."
By Mary Wildfire, originally published by Resilience.org May 14, 2024
"...A sociopath is by definition selfish, concerned only about getting what he or she wants and unconcerned about anyone else’s needs. And what is it that they want? Usually wealth. Some—the narcissists—also want the spotlight, want fame and adulation. Some crave power for its own sake, aside from the need to use power to get more wealth. Some don’t care about either of those. But mostly, it seems, what the billionaires want is more money. They have more money than they could spend in twenty lifetimes but they still are willing to sacrifice our children’s future to get even more money. This is remarkably narrow thinking, a fascination with numbers—you might even call it machinelike..."
Millions of people are priced out of internet already, and it's only going to get worse.
"...Given how essential the internet now is to modern life, America remains worryingly uneven in its adoption of home broadband. According to a set of surveys that Pew Research Center has been running for the last 23 years, just 1% of American adults had a home broadband subscription in 2000; last year, 80% said the same. However, that growth hasn’t been mirrored across all income groups, with only 57% of adults in households where annual income is below $30K reporting a subscription to broadband at home late last year… and that was with the ACP in place..."
Kids can't do homework on Mom's phone, class. Internet should be regulated as a utility and available to everyone regardless of ability to pay. You literally can't function in modern society without it. You can't pay bills, and you can't find work.
I think there are tons of people who would love a regular car, an EV or Hybrid, without all that other electronic junk. Purposefully making transitioning to cleaner options too expensive is a stupid policy.
Just another of the many reasons why we don't buy Nestle products at home, and I didn't allow them at our congregation back when I was head of the kitchen - they're a sh!t company, dumping sub-standard products in poor nations that they would never sell at home. (Not to mention stealing their water for pennies on the dollar.)
This is why it feels like it’s getting harder to live on our wages. This was done on purpose by big business. The Democratic Party wants to fix this. The Republican Party created this situation and wants to block all efforts to fix it. #politics #economics #PredatoryCapitalism #VoteBlue
By The Last Farm, originally published by Adapt : Survive : Prevail April 1, 2024
"...Art is trans-historical and trans-cultural: for as long as humanity has existed, we have found meaning and joy in its production. Were we to be liberated from the shackles of petro-capitalism and its productivist whip, we would inevitably dedicate some of our hard-won free time to making more art. And were we to do so in a world that finally steps away from its suicidal addiction to fossil fuels, the art we would make would necessarily look quite different than it does today.
So what might the art of the future look like? ...These directions assume that art—along with the rest of our material culture—will rely primarily on organic materials... They also assume that the labor currently done by wage slaves and fossil fuels will instead be done by free people working collectively..."
Another example of capitalism willing to sacrifice you on the altar of their profits...
UK Government Holds its Nerve on Heat Pumps as Clean Heat Policy Confirmed
By Phoebe Cook, originally published by DeSmog Blog on March 25, 2024
"...In recent months, some boiler companies preemptively raised their prices by £125 per unit in anticipation of fines...Claire Coutinho, who accused the boiler manufacturers of “price gouging plain and simple”...
[Legislators] asked Callanan whether he’d read the “excellent investigative journalism” article published...on the gas lobby-funded campaign...
“My Lords, I’m supportive of a sensible debate on competing technologies, but planting misleading and false stories about heat pumps to negatively affect public support for the technologies is frankly a disgrace. And the big boiler manufacturers who fund the EUA should be ashamed of themselves...”
The existential threat of artificial stupidity By Bart Hawkins Kreps, originally published by An Outside Chance March 15, 2024
Class, a corporation is never going to allow an AI to "decide" that predatory capitalism, planned obsolescence, wasting resources, pollution, or consumerism is wrong and must end.
There is no basis for trusting ANY decision made by AI, simply because for-profit corporations are not going to allow it to "decide" anything at all that will go against their profit-at-all-costs imperative.
Not to mention the surveillance issues.
"...With minor variations headline writers have posed the question, “What if AI falls into the wrong hands?”
But AI is already in the wrong hands. AI is in the hands of a small cadre of ultra-rich influencers affiliated with corporations and governments, organizations which collectively are driving us straight towards a cliff of ecological destruction..."
The modern predatory capitalist society completely ignores normal and natural cycles of nature and human biology. This expectation that people work like machines, this plantation mentality, is destructive and must be eliminated. We have to learn to live WITH nature, not in spite of it.
One of government's main responsibilities is to protect citizens; from outside enemies, to be sure, but on a day to day basis the protection most needed is from predators who call themselves capitalists. Instead of providing that protection, government collects its pay and takes its marching orders from them. #PredatoryCapitalism #Oligarchy