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"In 2022, J&J made $17.9 billion in profits, and its CEO received $27.6 million in compensation. That year, the company spent $17.8 billion on stock buybacks, dividends, and executive compensation, while the company spent just $14.6 billion on R&D, the report states. "In other words, the company spent $3.2 billion more enriching executives and stockholders than finding new cures," it concludes.
In 2022, Bristol Myers Squibb also spent $3.2 billion more on stock buybacks, dividends, and executive compensation than R&D—$12.7 billion on executives and stockholders compared with $9.5 billion on R&D. That year, the company made $6.3 billion in profits, and its former CEO made $41.4 million in compensation."
It's pretty clear where these corporations' priorities lie. I wonder how much of their R&D was funded by US taxpayers.
I'm not going to defend the excess bonuses and buybacks etc, but it's difficult to say that they could have easily put that money into more cures.
You can't just throw excess money at things and suddenly it works out, there's diminishing returns and in the end you can just be throwing money into the incinerator vs doing any good.
The better option would be ditch the crazy bonuses and pay etc. and lower the god damn prices. The prices on some of these things are criminal.
They are rare diseases that dosen't get a buck spent on. They could start on those ones.
The reason those don't have money spent on them is because they'll never be profitable, or have million+ dollar treatment costs because so few people have them.
They'd need to be altruistic to spend money on those, or face huge backlash from the costs if successful.
If they lowered prices that made these insane profits, they'd get good press and help millions of people, instead of help thousands and bad press.
How could this ever be worse than throwing the money into the incinerator that is shareholders? At least the money spent on R&D won't be used by rich assholes to manipulate politics and public opinion.
It could actually slow research down.
Bringing more researches onto the same project doesn't always make it faster. It's the whole 9 woman can't have a baby in 1 month problem. Some things can't be sped up with more people or money.
And if you have too many projects going, things start to get mismanaged.
Bureaucracy breeds inefficiency
Edit: also I don't think you read my OP as I said they should lower prices instead of all the nonsense.
It could also speed research up. It is incredibly unlikely that the current amount of money spent is exactly the best amount possible.
And even if research were to somehow slow down compared to now, the world would still be a better place, since fewer rich assholes would have undue influence.
Do you even understand what I'm saying?
The world isn't a better place if research slows down because they charge you $7100 but it's $650 elsewhere.
Lower the god damn prices.
Bam there's fewer rich assholes now and millions of individuals are better off.
Do you understand what I'm saying? Don't just lower prices, also increase investments in R&D. We are not at peak R&D efficiency, so don't ignore it completely.
If they truly believed they could spend more money and get more out of it, they would be, because that would give them billions more in bonuses.
These multi billion dollar companies run efficiently until they don't because they expanded too much too fast and the bureaucracy and size becomes the problem.
Why do you think that they can get more money with more efficient R&D? Sometimes less efficient solutions result in more money.