Pharma execs in the US think it's reasonable to have multimillion dollar bonuses every year and mid-level managers wouldn't dream of flying economy class. Their executive management wouldn't dream of flying commercial. They wouldn't dream of living in less than a mansion (look what happened to real estate prices in Silicon Valley as a result, where needed workers like cops, teachers and fireman have to commute 4 hours a day to get to work now).
They've created a vicious model and consumers pay for this because we let them. And we can't stop them either because they own almost everyone who could.
I don't know what your definition of reasonable profit is but mine isn't Colgate's or Archer Midland Daniel's. And tax codes haven't been a great help. We swore for eons that was the answer but look where we are. Huge profitable multinationals like GE pay no taxes. They hide their money overseas, in GE's case [link:$108 Billion Overseas - priva|108 Billion] after you and I bailed them out, and gets excused with tripe like this "GE is often derided for its minimal or non-existent federal tax bill, yet it employees tens of thousands of people who all pay some income tax."
Granadillo explained that the 19 products had been chosen for regulation due to their importance for family budgets and after a study found that from 2007 - 2011 they had increased 400% in price, well above inflation.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6905
400% ? That's price-gouging. No responsible government can tolerate that. Tax codes don't work very well because of who writes the tax codes. I prefer what the Latin American governments are doing, negotiate fair prices or kick them out and do it yourself. Brazil, for example, regularly breaks US patent laws regularly on medication because drug manufacturer's idea of *reasonable profits* make no sense for the citizens it has a responsibility to protect (one case).
There was a time when people made huge discoveries, developments, without the profit motive.
If Polio was practically eliminated, it's because Salk was horrified at the idea of putting a patent on his vaccine. ( "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Same with the Curie's arduous R&D into radium. We're not all selfish and things weren't always like this. A very good biologist friend of mine, an old man with many discoveries and achievements once very sadly remarked that his field died out in the US when people started doing things for profit instead of doing them for the love of biology. Kill the profit motive. A reasonable profit ok, if we must, but not what's going on now.
While price controls already exist for some basic foods such as cooking oil and rice, the law taking effect Tuesday extends them to a wider range of goods and gives the government more enforcement authority.
...
Chavez accused large transnational companies and local monopolies of "exploiting the people" by unjustifiably boosting prices.
"Whenever we increase salaries, they immediately raise prices,"
http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=134352313
They have a tough battle ahead because the selfish ones, the greedy ones won't give up their profits without a fight. They'd rather see working class families before giving them out. They've made that clear all over the world. Including Venezuela where this charming attitudes is rife: (the caps are all Conchita's)
http://infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/features/saii/features/main/2013/03/22/feature-02
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