We all know how America has artificially inflated prices for prescription drugs, yes? Because the industry has a stranglehold with 17-year patents and the FDA defining anything that isn't the brand-name not as "generic" (if there's still a binding patent in the US), but rather as "counterfeit".
And I expect most of us know, albeit perhaps not the exact figure, that the US military budget is about four hundred billion dollars a year.
What you don't know is that the reason the US military budget is so huge is because the US military industrial complex also has a price stranglehold which it exploits even in dealing with its top customer, the government. How else could you explain that the US military pays many thousands of dollars for a single tank, and yet in Australia there are signs like this on the street, even in a relatively small city like Adelaide:
I know. It wasn't very funny.
[05:57]
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