Trump is an idiot, but you do yourself no favors by not understanding math yourself. 1500% as a decimal is 15. In your example 10 times 15 is $150. If you pay for the 10 med you would get back $140 in cash. Remember you must move decimal point two places to the left. For example, 1500% the decimal point is at the end, 1500.00%. Moving it two places to left gives you 15.00 as a decimal.
It's Trump's "dumb salesman" talk. It's the only kind of salesman he can do, really. I guess it goes along with just firing the person who tells you the truth about how the economy is doing.
You’re right about not being very good at math. $10 x 1500% = $150.00, not $15,000. In fact, as I typed the equation my keyboard automatically answered it correctly. My comment does better math, by itself! lol
Stock traders and finance seers like a degree of stability and predictability, and depend on economic statistics in designing strategies.
My understanding is that they're alarmed that it's going to be really hard to get reliable readings on what's happening. They really, really don't like uncertainty.
BLS economists are known for aggressivly NOT spinning the numbers they report. As a joke put it, if you ask them if the glass is half full or half empty they’ll tell you that there are four ounces of water in an eight ounce glass.
Now they’re all on notice that the truth will get you fired. Going to be hard to trust any data coming out of this administration. We’re in Soviet territory here.
I'm sure some other nerd pointed this out downthread, but a 1500% discount on a $10 item would be a $140 check, not $15,000. Every hundred percent is the full cost; the first hundred drives the price to zero, and the next 14 hundred count fot 14 x the price, so $140.
Math wasn't my best subject in school either, but it was close, and I *did* major in astronomy.
Yeah, I just retired after 44 years as a professor of astronomy at Dartmouth, and have soaked all my life in the incredibly rich empirical foundation of this ancient science. Would you like me to explain why every credible scientist thinks the observable universe expanded from a very hot, dense state, starting around 14 billion years ago?
No need. You've long provided rich commentary drawing from your academic background.
I've gotten really tired of all the headlines that scream "this new observation violates the laws of physics!" I know the scientists aren't responsible for that stuff, but it gets really tiresome. Plus, all of the unproveable postulates that seem to fascinate a subaet of physicists: we're in a black hole, this is a simulation, etc.
By the way, Pexas, the answer to the question I posed is (a) the Hubble expansion, which gives a rough age simply by interpolating backward; (b) the cosmic background radiation has exactly the right spectral distribution for thermally-generated radiation in equilibrium -- naturally explained by an early hot phase, and so far impossible to understand otherwise; (c) the abundance of the light elements matches very well with that generated by the temperature/density development of a radiation-dominated universe cooling from an arbitrarily high temperature; and (d) the angular fluctuation spectrum observed by the Planck satellite is exactly as expected for flat initial density spectrum evolving under gravity and radiation pressure.
There's a lot of ferment these days over the "Hubble tension", and no one knows that dark matter or dark energy are. Even so, their characteristics have been narrowed down pretty well. They're fudge factors, but the speculation is tightly constrained.
I lost you at (d). My knowledge of astronomy is basically that of an interested layperson with a lot of distractions.
I'm a geographer by training, and my native tendencies are for shallow breadth in terms of natural history. So on hikes, I know a few plants, a few minerals and rock types, a few birds and mammal tracks/scat, etc.
I COMPLETELY agree about the sensationalistic speculation. There's a subset of physics/astro folks who are really, really into self-promotion - a little bit is healthy, especially when backed up by real substance, but the razzle-dazzle stuff is counterproductive, I think.
These "most favored nation" letters are even more full of shit than most of what Trump does. Which is infuriating, because actually lowering Big Pharma prices should be a policy everyone can get behind (yet almost everyone in the GOP opposed even much more limited pricing controls in the ACA and IRA).
The biggest issue is Medicare is banned by law from negotiating prices (which should but wouldn't have to help lower private insurance costs) except under very specific conditions Biden pushed though in the IRA act - and which take years to implement. Medicaid and CHiP don't even have this power. Tricare can try to use its market share to negotiate prices but that's about it. There are limited provisions to try new types of payment systems as "demonstration projects" but a) making those permanent and nationwide defies the whole concept of "demonstration" b) is so far beyond what Congress has approved, especially in light of the clear, narrow pathway to negotiation in the IRA, that I am guessing even the Trump friendly 6 on the Supreme Court would knock this down as unauthorized and c) would still only be limited to directly run government plans like Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare and Chip.
I also wouldn't expect the GOP to get behind the new legislation it would take to make this actually happen. Between being fundamentally antithetical to everything they claim to stand for, it would threaten both a whole lot of money that flows their way and a lot of jobs in red states.
The only other elements of the EO on this are him threatening to turn the FTC/DOJ on big pharma over antitrust and/or having the FDA suddenly find that importation of drugs is hunky dory. Good luck with that - the Big Pharma companies have much better lawyers than the government at this point, and they have written the laws (specifically areas like patent law and the limits on generic drugs and importation) to make it damn hard to sue them successfully.
Under existing law, this is about as effective as King Cnute ordering the tide to lower. I'm sure Pfizer and Lilly will find some way to make nice/mollify him over something lest he try to pull some bullshit with the FDA/FTC/DOJ, but it will be as meaningless as Japan and Europe's alleged "intent" to invest in the US.
Here's an explainer from the Congressional Research Service that is less definitive in its conclusions than I am being but lays out how this is crap:
GodDAMN he’s dumb!
Trump is an idiot, but you do yourself no favors by not understanding math yourself. 1500% as a decimal is 15. In your example 10 times 15 is $150. If you pay for the 10 med you would get back $140 in cash. Remember you must move decimal point two places to the left. For example, 1500% the decimal point is at the end, 1500.00%. Moving it two places to left gives you 15.00 as a decimal.
It's Trump's "dumb salesman" talk. It's the only kind of salesman he can do, really. I guess it goes along with just firing the person who tells you the truth about how the economy is doing.
And yet, they still believe him.
Then how can they short stock by %125 (BlackRock)( GameStop )
You know what would really help bring our drug prices down?
Releasing the Epstein Files.
That would bring them down eleven thousanty percent.
You’re right about not being very good at math. $10 x 1500% = $150.00, not $15,000. In fact, as I typed the equation my keyboard automatically answered it correctly. My comment does better math, by itself! lol
Plus the first 100% goes towards the cost of the product, so you actually receive medicine + $140.
Since comments are not allowed, the only thing we can give you for all your hard work is this commemorative tin of canned clams.
Borowitz is suggesting George Santos for Trump's pick as new BLS statistician
Stock traders and finance seers like a degree of stability and predictability, and depend on economic statistics in designing strategies.
My understanding is that they're alarmed that it's going to be really hard to get reliable readings on what's happening. They really, really don't like uncertainty.
They aren't going to do anything about it, so no one cares what they think.
In truth, trumpy does do math like no one does math.
Either that, or drug manufacturers are now going to pay us lots of money to "buy" their products.
BLS economists are known for aggressivly NOT spinning the numbers they report. As a joke put it, if you ask them if the glass is half full or half empty they’ll tell you that there are four ounces of water in an eight ounce glass.
Now they’re all on notice that the truth will get you fired. Going to be hard to trust any data coming out of this administration. We’re in Soviet territory here.
A single person doesn't control that information. Forty people put those numbers together, and the Chump administration leaks like a sieve.
trumpy's economists are more like this"
If you ask them what 4 plus 4 is, their answer is "What do you want it to be?"
Tariffs are proof the big orange idiot doesn't understand even basic math.
Nobody can make Donald Trump look bad more effectively than he does it himself.
I'm sure some other nerd pointed this out downthread, but a 1500% discount on a $10 item would be a $140 check, not $15,000. Every hundred percent is the full cost; the first hundred drives the price to zero, and the next 14 hundred count fot 14 x the price, so $140.
Math wasn't my best subject in school either, but it was close, and I *did* major in astronomy.
astronomy = theology
Not really, but the cosmology comes close.
Yeah, I just retired after 44 years as a professor of astronomy at Dartmouth, and have soaked all my life in the incredibly rich empirical foundation of this ancient science. Would you like me to explain why every credible scientist thinks the observable universe expanded from a very hot, dense state, starting around 14 billion years ago?
No need. You've long provided rich commentary drawing from your academic background.
I've gotten really tired of all the headlines that scream "this new observation violates the laws of physics!" I know the scientists aren't responsible for that stuff, but it gets really tiresome. Plus, all of the unproveable postulates that seem to fascinate a subaet of physicists: we're in a black hole, this is a simulation, etc.
By the way, Pexas, the answer to the question I posed is (a) the Hubble expansion, which gives a rough age simply by interpolating backward; (b) the cosmic background radiation has exactly the right spectral distribution for thermally-generated radiation in equilibrium -- naturally explained by an early hot phase, and so far impossible to understand otherwise; (c) the abundance of the light elements matches very well with that generated by the temperature/density development of a radiation-dominated universe cooling from an arbitrarily high temperature; and (d) the angular fluctuation spectrum observed by the Planck satellite is exactly as expected for flat initial density spectrum evolving under gravity and radiation pressure.
There's a lot of ferment these days over the "Hubble tension", and no one knows that dark matter or dark energy are. Even so, their characteristics have been narrowed down pretty well. They're fudge factors, but the speculation is tightly constrained.
I lost you at (d). My knowledge of astronomy is basically that of an interested layperson with a lot of distractions.
I'm a geographer by training, and my native tendencies are for shallow breadth in terms of natural history. So on hikes, I know a few plants, a few minerals and rock types, a few birds and mammal tracks/scat, etc.
I COMPLETELY agree about the sensationalistic speculation. There's a subset of physics/astro folks who are really, really into self-promotion - a little bit is healthy, especially when backed up by real substance, but the razzle-dazzle stuff is counterproductive, I think.
My own work tends to be very empirical.
Yeah, well, Fiorella Terenzi is prettier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiorella_Terenzi
Yup!
Living his fantasy life
These "most favored nation" letters are even more full of shit than most of what Trump does. Which is infuriating, because actually lowering Big Pharma prices should be a policy everyone can get behind (yet almost everyone in the GOP opposed even much more limited pricing controls in the ACA and IRA).
The biggest issue is Medicare is banned by law from negotiating prices (which should but wouldn't have to help lower private insurance costs) except under very specific conditions Biden pushed though in the IRA act - and which take years to implement. Medicaid and CHiP don't even have this power. Tricare can try to use its market share to negotiate prices but that's about it. There are limited provisions to try new types of payment systems as "demonstration projects" but a) making those permanent and nationwide defies the whole concept of "demonstration" b) is so far beyond what Congress has approved, especially in light of the clear, narrow pathway to negotiation in the IRA, that I am guessing even the Trump friendly 6 on the Supreme Court would knock this down as unauthorized and c) would still only be limited to directly run government plans like Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare and Chip.
I also wouldn't expect the GOP to get behind the new legislation it would take to make this actually happen. Between being fundamentally antithetical to everything they claim to stand for, it would threaten both a whole lot of money that flows their way and a lot of jobs in red states.
The only other elements of the EO on this are him threatening to turn the FTC/DOJ on big pharma over antitrust and/or having the FDA suddenly find that importation of drugs is hunky dory. Good luck with that - the Big Pharma companies have much better lawyers than the government at this point, and they have written the laws (specifically areas like patent law and the limits on generic drugs and importation) to make it damn hard to sue them successfully.
Under existing law, this is about as effective as King Cnute ordering the tide to lower. I'm sure Pfizer and Lilly will find some way to make nice/mollify him over something lest he try to pull some bullshit with the FDA/FTC/DOJ, but it will be as meaningless as Japan and Europe's alleged "intent" to invest in the US.
Here's an explainer from the Congressional Research Service that is less definitive in its conclusions than I am being but lays out how this is crap:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11319
What is important is that Big Pharma isn't behind it and they have lot more power in our government than their customers do.
Pharma hires attorneys from Ivy League, Stanford and USC.
DoJ prefers Liberty U. grads since Bush the Lesser