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Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas to everyone out there 🕎🕎🎄🎄🎅🏻
Here is a Christmas Eve post that will make the Grinch happy.
This may be one of the most astonishing things a finance guy has ever said with a straight face:
FOX: If you cut something by 100%, the cost goes down to 0. If you cut it by 600%, the drug companies are actually paying you LUTNICK: What he's saying is if a drug was $100 and you bring it down to $13, it's down 7 times F: Not a 600% cut L: But it's 700% higher price before. It's down 700% now
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)2025-12-18T20:10:25.908Z
The math is not only ludicrous, it’s just flat out wrong. And Lutnick knows this. Of course.
But there is another thing he ssaid that is even worse in some ways (if that’s even possible):
how did this guy run an investment bank?
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social)2025-12-24T16:16:12.316Z
Again, it’s not just that the math is flat out wrong, and the former head of a Wall Stret investment firm knows this (no - the change in GDP does NOT equal the change in take home earnings).
It’s the explicit statement that the increase in GDP is felt equally by everyone. Here’s the real scoop:
During the near-post war era (1950s-1970s, labor (~wages) received the majority share of increased GDP - in the 70% range - while corporate profits and investment capital received the rest.
Starting with the Reagan revolution into the 2010s, corporate/capital share of GDP (and GDP growth) increased significantly at the expense of individual labor
Into the 2020s, corporate profits continued to increase at the expense of individual workers income growth
The reality in today’s America is twofold:
Growth in GDP is not evenly distributed amongst everyone
Starting in the 1980s and continuing on through current times, the vast majority of GDP growth accrues to corporations, management compensation and capital income
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick knows this and is lying to the American people.
Any time GDP growth is mentioned, the follow-up[ question should be, “How much of this GDP growth is going to regular working people and how much is going to large corporations and their C-Suite?” Because as it stands today, far from being a force for societal cohesion, GDP growth in America is a driver of increased gross inequality.
Bah Humbug!
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