Gouging the Sick: Hightower on TPP

[PosterChild]

11. Well, when I mentioned that...

...trade deals like the TPP tend to move our economy away from low paying unskilled labor and to increase high skilled higher paying jobs, I was rewarded with a rant about how we fund research and development efforts and that the TPP would give it away through trade, rather than us keeping it all to ourselves.

Well, that's what the TPP patent and copyright provisions are all about, making sure our high tech, creative efforts can't be ripped off by other countries. That includes drugs and medicine.

If American taxpayers support medical research and American pharmaceutical companies come up with novel therapies, why should asian countries get the benifit without paying back on our investment and reducing our balence of trade deficit?

Sure, their citizens should get cheap medicines - at the expense of their taxpayers, not ours. Patent and copyright protections ensure that our public and private investments in scientific research, software and creative endeavors cannot be ripped off. And it is our high level of scientific, technology, engineering and math that makes our economy the most productive in the world.

The TPP, specifically the patent and copyright protections, will work to our advantage because we are the scientific, technological, engineering and math leaders of the world.