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Big pharma profit margins really aren't that huge.

Pfizer is about 28% net margin, Procter and Gamble is about 19%, making rather prosaic stuff.  Apple is 27%.  Amazon is 7%, fairly typical for retailers.

J&J is 22%, Merck is 25%, Abbvie is 14%, Glaxo is 15%, Astrazeneca is near 0% for some reason, Lilly is 20%.

Morgan Stanley is 25%, wow.

Big pharma profit margins really aren't that huge.

Pfizer is about 28% net margin, Procter and Gamble is about 19%, making rather prosaic stuff.  Apple is 27%.  Amazon is 7%, fairly typical for retailers.

J&J is 22%, Merck is 25%, Abbvie is 14%, Glaxo is 15%, Astrazeneca is near 0% for some reason, Lilly is 20%.

Morgan Stanley is 25%, wow.

Lmao. Pfizer, J&J, Lilly, and Merck are all north of 20%. That is pretty high margin. Pfizer is at 28%- which is a higher margin than Apple- who have long had the most ridiculous margins you can have and oh yeah have more cash than f***king god.

Except, Apple makes phones and gadgets and toys off the backs of slave labor in China. Not essential to, you know, human life. Pfizer makes crap that we need to stay alive.

Call me f**king crazy but I feel like there should be caps on margins and profits and price controls for drug companies. Especially ones that get US gov't funded tech like mRNA vaccines handed to them- which they in turn use to make $1,000 profit every single second off of. They aren't selling gadgets and toys. They are selling essential medicines which we all need to live.

Moving this over here from the Olympics thread...


The reason that Comcast, and other government-granted monopolies, are hated is simple. They're monopolies. They don't have to compete on an even playing field, which means that they don't have to compete for consumers. The implications are simply--why work seriously on customer service if they have no other options?

Where I live, Cox Communications is the cable company, and obviously offers cable internet. AT&T provides landline phone service, and offers DSL for internet. As it relates to internet, those are my ONLY two options. And AT&T has a maximum 1.5 Mbps download speed for my address. That's not a typo. I'm an engineer and I know what Mbps means. It means I don't have two options; I have one. It's Cox or effectively no internet. I'm sure that other cable or phone providers are barred by law from attempting to compete...

Is it any surprise that I'm overpaying for internet here? I have good internet--200 Mbps download. But I pay >$100/month for that (w/o TV or anything else).

If at some point we get 5G coverage and I have access to a wireless home gateway, my guess is that it'll come in at reasonable speeds for less money than that. And at that point Cox will have to lower prices to compete.

But for now, nobody wants to put in fixed infrastructure wired to the home, so I'm stuck waiting for wireless that won't be subject to a government-granted monopoly.

Is that because they’re “granted” monopolies or because government declines to force them to allow others on their lines?

Is that because they’re “granted” monopolies or because government declines to force them to allow others on their lines?

imo - it's a little bit of both. obviously the utility aspect - that is 100% a granted monopoly. but Comcast aren't just a utilities company anymore. they are a conglomerate with their fingers in f**king everything from music, theme parks, movie studio, tv studio, mainstream news media, streaming services - f**king everything - that aspect of Comcast - is bc the government declines to enforce monopolies.

Yeah I don't get to Paris much either.  It's okay but I prefer the provinces.

Since 1995 when I first started going, France and Italy and the Netherlands and Belgium, the countries I've visited most regularly, and mostly for work, have most certainly gotten fatter.  They're not US-fat and won't be for a couple more decades, but they're trending poorly.

I don't think they'll ever get US fat or even close. If you go outside the main cities- you see less and less fat people. A lot of the small cities and towns in Europe flat out ban/restrict fast food joints. You really only see them in the bigger cities. You don't see fast food joints with drive-thru windows on every corner of every street in Europe like you do in the US. And I don't think you ever will. 

I don't think they'll ever get US fat or even close. If you go outside the main cities- you see less and less fat people. A lot of the small cities and towns in Europe flat out ban/restrict fast food joints. You really only see them in the bigger cities. You don't see fast food joints with drive-thru windows on every corner of every street in Europe like you do in the US. And I don't think you ever will.

Another of our problems is just cheap processed food in grocery stores, which they have quite a bit less of (but more than they did 25 years ago).  Maybe they won't end up US-fat, but they are definitely on a downward trend.

Ever look at a crowd photo from something in the USA... say... after WW2?  I can remember one from Times Square with all sorts of folks including a lot of men in uniform, and they're all super-skinny.  Then you look at something similar from maybe the 80s and the difference is remarkable.

That's the same thing I've noticed in Europe from 1995, to 2019 (I haven't been over there since COVID, we're planning a return trip in 2023).

Yeah, processed food tends to be really bad, often as not, along with soft drinks, and yes, fast food.

Convenience.

It's interesting to shop at a Carrefour in France, similar to a Target a bit, but with a lot more interesting food options and offerings.