Saturday, March 5, 2016
The State of American Retirement
How 401(k)s have failed most American workers
Today, many Americans rely on savings in 401(k)-type accounts to supplement Social Security in retirement. This is a pronounced shift from a few decades ago, when many retirees could count on predictable, constant streams of income from traditional pensions (see “Types of retirement plans,” below). This chartbook assesses the impact of the shift from pensions to individual savings by examining disparities in retirement preparedness and outcomes by income, race, ethnicity, education, gender, and marital status.
The first section of the chartbook looks at retirement-plan participation and retirement account savings of working-age families. The charts in this section focus on families headed by someone age 32–61, a 30-year period before the Social Security early eligibility age of 62 when most families should be accumulating pension benefits and retirement savings. The second section looks at income sources for seniors. Since many workers transition to retirement between Social Security’s early eligibility age and the program’s normal retirement age (currently 66, formerly 65), the charts in the second section focus on retirement outcomes of people age 65 and older. (...)
Retirement wealth has not grown fast enough to keep pace with an aging population and other changes. The first chart offers what at first appears to be an encouraging picture, the growth since 1989 in retirement wealth—assets in pension funds plus savings in retirement accounts—relative to income. Unlike other charts in this section, this measure is for the entire population, not just working-age families. As Figure 1 shows, retirement wealth more than kept pace with incomes over the past quarter century, growing faster than income in the 1990s and rebounding after two stock market downturns in the 2000s. Retirement wealth nearly doubled as a share of personal disposable income between 1989 and 2013, with retirement account savings exceeding pension fund assets after 2012 (and briefly in the late 1990s and mid-2000s). The shift in wealth from pension funds to retirement accounts occurred years after participation in defined-contribution plans surpassed that in defined-benefit plans (Figure 2).
What Figure 1 does not show is that retirement wealth should have increased more to keep pace with an aging population, offset Social Security cuts, and serve as a hedge against the increased longevity risks and investment risks brought on by a shift from traditional pensions to individual savings. Retirement account savings increased before the Great Recession as the large baby boomer cohort approached retirement. However, retirement account savings by age group stagnated or declined in the new millennium even as traditional pension coverage continued to decline (Figures 2-5). Meanwhile, Social Security benefits are replacing a declining share of pre-retirement earnings due to benefit cuts passed in 1983 that are gradually taking effect (Reno, Bethell, and Walker 2011). The change in plan type should have been accompanied by an increase in retirement assets to account for the diminishing use of pooled pension funds, which benefit from economies of scale and risk pooling and are thus more cost-effective than individual accounts. In other words, in a retirement savings account system, people need to set aside more, because these accounts are not as efficient as pensions.
The shift from traditional pensions to individual savings has widened retirement gaps. In addition to retirement wealth not growing fast enough, retirement disparities have grown with the shift from traditional pensions to retirement savings accounts. These disparities are the main focus of this chartbook. As Figure 6 shows, high-income, white, college-educated, and married workers participate in defined-benefit pensions at a higher rate than other workers, but participation gaps are much larger under defined-contribution plans. The distribution of savings in retirement accounts is even more unequal than participation in these plans (Figure 7). There are large differences between mean and median retirement savings because mean savings are skewed by large balances for a few families (Figure 8). For many groups—lower-income, black, Hispanic, non-college-educated, and unmarried Americans—the typical working-age family or individual has no savings at all in retirement accounts, and for those that do have savings, the median balances in retirement accounts are very low (Figures 9–15).
by Monique Morrissey, Economic Policy Institute | Read more:
Image: Fiscal Times
Today, many Americans rely on savings in 401(k)-type accounts to supplement Social Security in retirement. This is a pronounced shift from a few decades ago, when many retirees could count on predictable, constant streams of income from traditional pensions (see “Types of retirement plans,” below). This chartbook assesses the impact of the shift from pensions to individual savings by examining disparities in retirement preparedness and outcomes by income, race, ethnicity, education, gender, and marital status.
The first section of the chartbook looks at retirement-plan participation and retirement account savings of working-age families. The charts in this section focus on families headed by someone age 32–61, a 30-year period before the Social Security early eligibility age of 62 when most families should be accumulating pension benefits and retirement savings. The second section looks at income sources for seniors. Since many workers transition to retirement between Social Security’s early eligibility age and the program’s normal retirement age (currently 66, formerly 65), the charts in the second section focus on retirement outcomes of people age 65 and older. (...)Retirement wealth has not grown fast enough to keep pace with an aging population and other changes. The first chart offers what at first appears to be an encouraging picture, the growth since 1989 in retirement wealth—assets in pension funds plus savings in retirement accounts—relative to income. Unlike other charts in this section, this measure is for the entire population, not just working-age families. As Figure 1 shows, retirement wealth more than kept pace with incomes over the past quarter century, growing faster than income in the 1990s and rebounding after two stock market downturns in the 2000s. Retirement wealth nearly doubled as a share of personal disposable income between 1989 and 2013, with retirement account savings exceeding pension fund assets after 2012 (and briefly in the late 1990s and mid-2000s). The shift in wealth from pension funds to retirement accounts occurred years after participation in defined-contribution plans surpassed that in defined-benefit plans (Figure 2).
What Figure 1 does not show is that retirement wealth should have increased more to keep pace with an aging population, offset Social Security cuts, and serve as a hedge against the increased longevity risks and investment risks brought on by a shift from traditional pensions to individual savings. Retirement account savings increased before the Great Recession as the large baby boomer cohort approached retirement. However, retirement account savings by age group stagnated or declined in the new millennium even as traditional pension coverage continued to decline (Figures 2-5). Meanwhile, Social Security benefits are replacing a declining share of pre-retirement earnings due to benefit cuts passed in 1983 that are gradually taking effect (Reno, Bethell, and Walker 2011). The change in plan type should have been accompanied by an increase in retirement assets to account for the diminishing use of pooled pension funds, which benefit from economies of scale and risk pooling and are thus more cost-effective than individual accounts. In other words, in a retirement savings account system, people need to set aside more, because these accounts are not as efficient as pensions.
The shift from traditional pensions to individual savings has widened retirement gaps. In addition to retirement wealth not growing fast enough, retirement disparities have grown with the shift from traditional pensions to retirement savings accounts. These disparities are the main focus of this chartbook. As Figure 6 shows, high-income, white, college-educated, and married workers participate in defined-benefit pensions at a higher rate than other workers, but participation gaps are much larger under defined-contribution plans. The distribution of savings in retirement accounts is even more unequal than participation in these plans (Figure 7). There are large differences between mean and median retirement savings because mean savings are skewed by large balances for a few families (Figure 8). For many groups—lower-income, black, Hispanic, non-college-educated, and unmarried Americans—the typical working-age family or individual has no savings at all in retirement accounts, and for those that do have savings, the median balances in retirement accounts are very low (Figures 9–15).
by Monique Morrissey, Economic Policy Institute | Read more:
Image: Fiscal Times
She Wanted to Do Her Research. He Wanted to Talk ‘Feelings.’
Over the past two decades as a professor, I’ve grown thousands of plants, studying how their biology shifts in response to our changing environment. Soon I’ll begin to design and build my fourth laboratory; I’ll teach classes and take on more staff members, as I do every year. Like all professors, I also do a lot of extra jobs for which I was never trained, such as advising former students as they navigate the wider world. Last year, after one of my most talented students left to start her next adventure, she would text me now and then: “This is such a great place,” “I am learning so much here” and “I know this is where I am supposed to be.”
Then, a month ago, she wrote and asked me what to do. She forwarded an email she had received from a senior colleague that opened, “Can I share something deeply personal with you?” Within the email, he detonates what he described as a “truth bomb”: “All I know is that from the first day I talked to you, there hadn’t been a single day or hour when you weren’t on my mind.” He tells her she is “incredibly attractive” and “adorably dorky.” He reminds her, in detail, of how he has helped her professionally: “I couldn’t believe the things I was compelled to do for you.” He describes being near her as “exhilarating and frustrating at the same time” and himself as “utterly unable to get a grip” as a result. He closes by assuring her, “That’s just the way things are and you’re gonna have to deal with me until one of us leaves.” (...)
The evasion of justice within academia is all the more infuriating because the course of sexual harassment is so predictable. Since I started writing about women and science, my female colleagues have been moved to share their stories with me; my inbox is an inadvertent clearinghouse for unsolicited love notes. Sexual harassment in science generally starts like this: A woman (she is a student, a technician, a professor) gets an email and notices that the subject line is a bit off: “I need to tell you,” or “my feelings.” The opening lines refer to the altered physical and mental state of the author: “It’s late and I can’t sleep” is a favorite, though “Maybe it’s the three glasses of cognac” is popular as well.
The author goes on to tell her that she is special in some way, that his passion is an unfamiliar feeling that she has awakened in him, the important suggestion being that she has brought this upon herself. He will speak of her as an object with “shiny hair” or “sparkling eyes” — testing the waters before commenting upon the more private parts of her body. Surprisingly, he often acknowledges that he is doing something inappropriate. I’ve seen “Of course you know I could get fired for this” in the closing paragraph; the subject line of the email sent to my former student was “NSFW read at your own risk!”
So much for the contents of the first email; now let’s picture its recipient. She’s shocked: Is this for real? She’s confused: Did she do something to make him think she wanted this? She’s worried: She has to see him tomorrow. Her thesis isn’t done, and she still needs his signature. What if he says no? She’s scared: If she rebuffs him, will he get angry?
The scientific method may be impartial, but the scientific culture is not. From grad-school admission on up through tenure, every promotion can hinge on a recommendation letter’s one key passage of praise, offered — or withheld — by the most recent academic adviser. Given the gender breakdown of senior scientists, most often that adviser is a man.
Perhaps she decides to ignore this first email — and this is often the case — knowing that she has little to gain, and a lot to lose, from a confrontation. Once satisfied with her tendency toward secrecy, the sender then finds a way to get her alone: invites her to coffee, into his office, out for some ostensibly group event. At said meeting he will become tentatively physical, insisting that if people knew, they just wouldn’t understand. At this point, any objection on her part wouldn’t just be professionally dangerous, it would seem heartless — and she’s not a horrible person, is she?
Then there are conferences, field trips, cocktail hours and retreats, whispering co-workers, rolling eyes and sadly shaking heads. On and on it goes, and slowly she realizes that he’s not going to stop because he doesn’t have to.
Then, a month ago, she wrote and asked me what to do. She forwarded an email she had received from a senior colleague that opened, “Can I share something deeply personal with you?” Within the email, he detonates what he described as a “truth bomb”: “All I know is that from the first day I talked to you, there hadn’t been a single day or hour when you weren’t on my mind.” He tells her she is “incredibly attractive” and “adorably dorky.” He reminds her, in detail, of how he has helped her professionally: “I couldn’t believe the things I was compelled to do for you.” He describes being near her as “exhilarating and frustrating at the same time” and himself as “utterly unable to get a grip” as a result. He closes by assuring her, “That’s just the way things are and you’re gonna have to deal with me until one of us leaves.” (...)
The evasion of justice within academia is all the more infuriating because the course of sexual harassment is so predictable. Since I started writing about women and science, my female colleagues have been moved to share their stories with me; my inbox is an inadvertent clearinghouse for unsolicited love notes. Sexual harassment in science generally starts like this: A woman (she is a student, a technician, a professor) gets an email and notices that the subject line is a bit off: “I need to tell you,” or “my feelings.” The opening lines refer to the altered physical and mental state of the author: “It’s late and I can’t sleep” is a favorite, though “Maybe it’s the three glasses of cognac” is popular as well.The author goes on to tell her that she is special in some way, that his passion is an unfamiliar feeling that she has awakened in him, the important suggestion being that she has brought this upon herself. He will speak of her as an object with “shiny hair” or “sparkling eyes” — testing the waters before commenting upon the more private parts of her body. Surprisingly, he often acknowledges that he is doing something inappropriate. I’ve seen “Of course you know I could get fired for this” in the closing paragraph; the subject line of the email sent to my former student was “NSFW read at your own risk!”
So much for the contents of the first email; now let’s picture its recipient. She’s shocked: Is this for real? She’s confused: Did she do something to make him think she wanted this? She’s worried: She has to see him tomorrow. Her thesis isn’t done, and she still needs his signature. What if he says no? She’s scared: If she rebuffs him, will he get angry?
The scientific method may be impartial, but the scientific culture is not. From grad-school admission on up through tenure, every promotion can hinge on a recommendation letter’s one key passage of praise, offered — or withheld — by the most recent academic adviser. Given the gender breakdown of senior scientists, most often that adviser is a man.
Perhaps she decides to ignore this first email — and this is often the case — knowing that she has little to gain, and a lot to lose, from a confrontation. Once satisfied with her tendency toward secrecy, the sender then finds a way to get her alone: invites her to coffee, into his office, out for some ostensibly group event. At said meeting he will become tentatively physical, insisting that if people knew, they just wouldn’t understand. At this point, any objection on her part wouldn’t just be professionally dangerous, it would seem heartless — and she’s not a horrible person, is she?
Then there are conferences, field trips, cocktail hours and retreats, whispering co-workers, rolling eyes and sadly shaking heads. On and on it goes, and slowly she realizes that he’s not going to stop because he doesn’t have to.
by A. Hope Jahren, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Irene Rinaldi
Friday, March 4, 2016
Understanding American Authoritarianism
As part of his PhD research for UMass Amherst, Matthew MacWilliams surveyed the psychological characteristics of authoritarians -- not the people who lead authoritarian movements, but the followers, those who defer to them.
His work echoed the independent research of Vanderbilt's Marc Hetherington and UNC's Jonathan Weiler, whose 2009 book Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics concluded that a sizable fraction of the US voting public were authoritarian: people who wanted to be controlled, and wanted their neighbors to be controlled, because they were afraid the status quo was slipping away and they didn't believe that anything better would replace it.
They all posit that there are really three American parties, not two: the Democrats, the Republicans, and the authoritarian Republicans, who aren't conservatives in the sense of wanting tax cuts for the rich or caring about specific religious or moral questions. Rather, they want strong leaders who'll fight change, preserve hierarchies, and talk tough.
Vox's Amanda Taub recounts the long struggle to understand authoritarianism, something social scientists have struggled with since the rise of fascism in the mid-twentieth. She describes many authoritarians as latent, waiting to be "activated" by threats -- demographic and economic shifts, messages of fear and terror.
Vox did its own polling and research to complement the earlier experiments on authoritarianism, concluding that Trump is merely the "symptom": "The rise of American authoritarianism is transforming the Republican Party and the dynamics of national politics, with profound consequences likely to extend well beyond this election."
Back in 2009, I wrote about Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians", a free/open text that summarizes 30 years of research into the authoritarian mindset. I recommend reading it now.
His work echoed the independent research of Vanderbilt's Marc Hetherington and UNC's Jonathan Weiler, whose 2009 book Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics concluded that a sizable fraction of the US voting public were authoritarian: people who wanted to be controlled, and wanted their neighbors to be controlled, because they were afraid the status quo was slipping away and they didn't believe that anything better would replace it.
They all posit that there are really three American parties, not two: the Democrats, the Republicans, and the authoritarian Republicans, who aren't conservatives in the sense of wanting tax cuts for the rich or caring about specific religious or moral questions. Rather, they want strong leaders who'll fight change, preserve hierarchies, and talk tough.Vox's Amanda Taub recounts the long struggle to understand authoritarianism, something social scientists have struggled with since the rise of fascism in the mid-twentieth. She describes many authoritarians as latent, waiting to be "activated" by threats -- demographic and economic shifts, messages of fear and terror.
Vox did its own polling and research to complement the earlier experiments on authoritarianism, concluding that Trump is merely the "symptom": "The rise of American authoritarianism is transforming the Republican Party and the dynamics of national politics, with profound consequences likely to extend well beyond this election."
Back in 2009, I wrote about Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians", a free/open text that summarizes 30 years of research into the authoritarian mindset. I recommend reading it now.
But both schools of thought agree on the basic causality of authoritarianism. People do not support extreme policies and strongman leaders just out of an affirmative desire for authoritarianism, but rather as a response to experiencing certain kinds of threats.
The third insight came from Hetherington and American University professor Elizabeth Suhay, who found that when non-authoritarians feel sufficiently scared, they also start to behave, politically, like authoritarians.
But Hetherington and Suhay found a distinction between physical threats such as terrorism, which could lead non-authoritarians to behave like authoritarians, and more abstract social threats, such as eroding social norms or demographic changes, which do not have that effect. That distinction would turn out to be important, but it also meant that in times when many Americans perceived imminent physical threats, the population of authoritarians could seem to swell rapidly.
Together, those three insights added up to one terrifying theory: that if social change and physical threats coincided at the same time, it could awaken a potentially enormous population of American authoritarians, who would demand a strongman leader and the extreme policies
necessary, in their view, to meet the rising threats.
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing | Read more:
Image: Vox
The rise of American authoritarianism [Amanda Taub/Vox]
Fashion Week’s popularity on Instagram
The event has been gradually transforming into a digital attraction for everyday shoppers rather than just a cloistered spectacle for industry insiders, with legions of people now getting a peek at the shows, clothes and models via livestream or social media. In other words, Fashion Week increasingly serves as a snapshot of how digital-savvy customers get their shopping ideas and interact with their favorite brands.
That’s why a new research report on Fashion Week social media engagement is especially revealing about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for retailers as they try to use social media to sell you clothes and other types of goods.
L2, a research firm that studies brands’ digital impact, analyzed the social media posts of 192 fashion houses from Feb. 1 through 18. That time period covered the shows and the immediate lead-up to them, when retailers would likely be in overdrive working to drum up anticipatory buzz. In particular, L2 studied “engagement,” a measure of how many users were enticed enough by the social media post to take an action such as “liking” a post, commenting on it or re-sharing it from their own account.
There is a striking, even extraordinary, difference between customer engagement on Instagram versus on Facebook and Twitter. On Instagram, the women’s brands posted an average of 20 times and generated an average of 92,000 interactions. The engagement numbers seen on the other social platforms are paltry by comparison: On Twitter, where women’s brands posted an average of 26 times, tweets averaged 490 likes and 1,117 retweets. On Facebook, brands posted an average of eight posts each that generated 8,000 interactions.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, men’s fashion brands generated significantly less social engagement overall than did women’s brands. But the pattern remains the same: Instagram accounted for the vast majority — some 89 percent — of social engagement for men’s fashion.
“Instagram really is dominating the field,” said Liz Elder, the L2 research associate who produced the Fashion Week study.
Also notable is how much the social engagement mix has changed over the last three years of fashion shows. As the chart below shows, Facebook has lost quite a bit of ground, not only in its share relative to Instagram, but in overall engagement volume. And that sends a clear message: Fashion conversation and inspiration-seeking is moving at an astonishing speed from Facebook to Instagram.
by Sarah Halzack, Washington Post | Read more:
Image: Ze Takahashi/MCV Photo
Swarm
[ed. Tranquil and slightly hypnotic simulation of swarming behavior in animal populations.]
Swarm Simulator
via:
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
The Open Refrigerator
A few decades ago I was sitting in a college seminar room listening to the professor discourse quite penetratingly on Thomas Mann’s monumental and once ubiquitous novel The Magic Mountain when my mind wandered to the question of just how this novel came to be published. Presumably, that callow and ignorant undergraduate in the basement of Goldwin Smith Hall thought someone — some editor — must have read the thing and recognized it for the great book that it was. And how hard could that have been anyway? Hell, even I knew it was a great book, if a bit long and occasionally opaque in meaning. I was a senior and the unpleasant prospect of graduation and the necessity to find some paying work was weighing on my mind. Why couldn’t I become that guy? I loved books, loved them even more than my other obsession, basketball. That might be a satisfying line of work. (...)
At the simplest, most basic level, I’ve been reading for a living for 37 years. I arrived at New American Library with a literary and intellectual sensibility formed by the unruly rebellions of the ’60s and the spiritual deflations of the ’70s, with a taste for the novelists and thinkers who had either helped to cause or best reflected and interpreted those rebellions and deflations. I’ve read thousands of books and proposals since then, and I believe I am a better reader than I was at age 27 — I know more because I’ve read more and my judgments are (I sure hope) better informed and more mature. But at the primal level where reader meets text and experiences emotions ranging from boredom and impatience to I-love-this-and-have-to-have-to-publish-it excitement, I think I am still that young man in the hunt and on the make, always searching for the big wow. This process takes place in the private arena of the mind and is entirely unrelated to the corporate arrangements of my employer. It is, quite literally, where I live, where I feel I am most myself.
As for the editing of those books that wow me when happy circumstances dictate that I get to acquire them, that process too takes place in a private arena. When I encounter a sentence that is inelegant or ungrammatical or inefficient or ambiguous in meaning, or a scene in a novel that is implausible or overdone or superfluous, or a plot that drags or goes off course or beggars credulity, or a line of exposition that falls short of the necessary clarity, or feel that some subject is missing and requires coverage, I point those things out to the author and with a carefully calculated mixture of firmness and solicitude suggest ways they might be remedied. I do this usually at nights and on weekends, sometimes on my bus ride to and from work, very occasionally in my office on slow days with my door closed (yes, I have an office with a door that closes), with a complete absence of business calculation beyond the largest context — that a book that is bad or just not good enough is a book that will embarrass me and my employer and be poorly received and will not sell.
But as I read those submissions and edit those manuscripts, on another cognitive plane I am reality testing what I am reading. What other books — the fabled and often tiresome “comp titles” — are like this one, and how did those books sell? (We are always fighting the last war.) Is it too similar to something we published recently or are publishing in the near future, or to a book some other house has or shortly will publish? Are there visual images in the book that might be utilized on the cover? What writers of note can I bug for prepublication blurbs? Is there something about the author, some intriguing or unusual backstory, some charisma radiating off the page (and maybe the author photo? Don’t act so shocked) that suggests that he or she will be a publicity asset? What might a reasonable advance be, given the amounts that have been paid recently for similar books, or might reason for some reason be thrown out the window? (A friend and colleague of mine refers to this feeling as “Let’s get stupid.” More on this matter shortly.) What colleagues in the company, in the editorial department, in marketing, publicity, and sales, could I ask to read the book to drum up support for it? What is my “handle” going to be — the phrases or brief sentences that briskly encapsulate a book’s subject matter and commercial appeal? These and all sorts of other questions will be popping up in my brain, and inevitably there is some crosstalk and bleed-through between the two cognitive spheres. If you want total purity in these matters, go join an Irish monastery and work on illuminated manuscripts, not a New York publishing house. Or at the very least a quiet and scholarly and well-endowed university press.
Nobody really knows how an editor works besides his or her authors and possibly his or her assistant. Yet I am quite certain that, allowing for differences in personal style — some editors go for close-in textual work, some prefer to hover somewhere above the text and make broader observations and suggestions — the process described above is close to the way that my fellow New York editors operate. And there really are not too many of us. I would say that, taking in the six major corporate houses and the handful of sizable independents, that there might be something like 250 editors at a rough count working in adult trade publishing. It’s a fairly clubby group. Most of us know each other either personally or by reputation, and we watch each other’s activities, especially acquisitions, obsessively, aided by our very own digital town crier, the website Publishers Lunch. The society of editors has, of course, its doppelgänger or shadow world in that of the literary agents with whom we deal and whose functions — chiefly the discovery and care and feeding of writers and creating the market for their wares — overlap considerably with ours. Let’s put the number of agents who count (sorry, but we think that way in this town) at 150, and you can grasp how really small-town and incestuous and ingrown the literary ecosystem of New York publishing is. In such a small and hyperconnected world, fueled by the twin forces of ego (our sense that we are at the top of the heap) and insecurity (our sense that we might vanish any year now under some technological Anschluss, that we are in economic terms pissants compared, to, say, the computer-game industry, and how many people in this country care about books anyway?), the arrival of a literary property that holds the promise of both review and publicity glory and substantial sales, can instantly engage the forces of irrational exuberance. And that brings me to the subject without which no consideration of the work of the New York trade editor can be complete: money.
Lord, we have a lot of it. And lord, we need a lot of it. I work in a 50-story mixed-use office and condominium complex in Midtown North, bordering on Hell’s Kitchen. When I approach this building arriving at work in the morning or returning from one of those storied publishing lunches, I look up at it and start doing calculations in my head as to what our offices must cost to rent, and to heat and light and air-condition, let alone the expense of paying the salaries and the benefits and the T&Es of all the people working here. Then I add on the cost of our humongous and totally up-to-the-minute warehouse and fulfillment center in semirural Maryland and all the folks who work there, and I ask myself what have I done to help my company cover the truly enormous nut that one day’s operation must entail and try to avoid the obvious answer that, whatever it is, it is not enough. So I head through the revolving door and up the elevator and tank up on the not-at-all-bad Flavia coffee in the common area that looks like it was decorated with fixtures from the set of some late-’60s Polish science fiction film and start answering the e-mails that have piled up since the day before. Welcome to my world.
At the simplest, most basic level, I’ve been reading for a living for 37 years. I arrived at New American Library with a literary and intellectual sensibility formed by the unruly rebellions of the ’60s and the spiritual deflations of the ’70s, with a taste for the novelists and thinkers who had either helped to cause or best reflected and interpreted those rebellions and deflations. I’ve read thousands of books and proposals since then, and I believe I am a better reader than I was at age 27 — I know more because I’ve read more and my judgments are (I sure hope) better informed and more mature. But at the primal level where reader meets text and experiences emotions ranging from boredom and impatience to I-love-this-and-have-to-have-to-publish-it excitement, I think I am still that young man in the hunt and on the make, always searching for the big wow. This process takes place in the private arena of the mind and is entirely unrelated to the corporate arrangements of my employer. It is, quite literally, where I live, where I feel I am most myself.As for the editing of those books that wow me when happy circumstances dictate that I get to acquire them, that process too takes place in a private arena. When I encounter a sentence that is inelegant or ungrammatical or inefficient or ambiguous in meaning, or a scene in a novel that is implausible or overdone or superfluous, or a plot that drags or goes off course or beggars credulity, or a line of exposition that falls short of the necessary clarity, or feel that some subject is missing and requires coverage, I point those things out to the author and with a carefully calculated mixture of firmness and solicitude suggest ways they might be remedied. I do this usually at nights and on weekends, sometimes on my bus ride to and from work, very occasionally in my office on slow days with my door closed (yes, I have an office with a door that closes), with a complete absence of business calculation beyond the largest context — that a book that is bad or just not good enough is a book that will embarrass me and my employer and be poorly received and will not sell.
But as I read those submissions and edit those manuscripts, on another cognitive plane I am reality testing what I am reading. What other books — the fabled and often tiresome “comp titles” — are like this one, and how did those books sell? (We are always fighting the last war.) Is it too similar to something we published recently or are publishing in the near future, or to a book some other house has or shortly will publish? Are there visual images in the book that might be utilized on the cover? What writers of note can I bug for prepublication blurbs? Is there something about the author, some intriguing or unusual backstory, some charisma radiating off the page (and maybe the author photo? Don’t act so shocked) that suggests that he or she will be a publicity asset? What might a reasonable advance be, given the amounts that have been paid recently for similar books, or might reason for some reason be thrown out the window? (A friend and colleague of mine refers to this feeling as “Let’s get stupid.” More on this matter shortly.) What colleagues in the company, in the editorial department, in marketing, publicity, and sales, could I ask to read the book to drum up support for it? What is my “handle” going to be — the phrases or brief sentences that briskly encapsulate a book’s subject matter and commercial appeal? These and all sorts of other questions will be popping up in my brain, and inevitably there is some crosstalk and bleed-through between the two cognitive spheres. If you want total purity in these matters, go join an Irish monastery and work on illuminated manuscripts, not a New York publishing house. Or at the very least a quiet and scholarly and well-endowed university press.
Nobody really knows how an editor works besides his or her authors and possibly his or her assistant. Yet I am quite certain that, allowing for differences in personal style — some editors go for close-in textual work, some prefer to hover somewhere above the text and make broader observations and suggestions — the process described above is close to the way that my fellow New York editors operate. And there really are not too many of us. I would say that, taking in the six major corporate houses and the handful of sizable independents, that there might be something like 250 editors at a rough count working in adult trade publishing. It’s a fairly clubby group. Most of us know each other either personally or by reputation, and we watch each other’s activities, especially acquisitions, obsessively, aided by our very own digital town crier, the website Publishers Lunch. The society of editors has, of course, its doppelgänger or shadow world in that of the literary agents with whom we deal and whose functions — chiefly the discovery and care and feeding of writers and creating the market for their wares — overlap considerably with ours. Let’s put the number of agents who count (sorry, but we think that way in this town) at 150, and you can grasp how really small-town and incestuous and ingrown the literary ecosystem of New York publishing is. In such a small and hyperconnected world, fueled by the twin forces of ego (our sense that we are at the top of the heap) and insecurity (our sense that we might vanish any year now under some technological Anschluss, that we are in economic terms pissants compared, to, say, the computer-game industry, and how many people in this country care about books anyway?), the arrival of a literary property that holds the promise of both review and publicity glory and substantial sales, can instantly engage the forces of irrational exuberance. And that brings me to the subject without which no consideration of the work of the New York trade editor can be complete: money.
Lord, we have a lot of it. And lord, we need a lot of it. I work in a 50-story mixed-use office and condominium complex in Midtown North, bordering on Hell’s Kitchen. When I approach this building arriving at work in the morning or returning from one of those storied publishing lunches, I look up at it and start doing calculations in my head as to what our offices must cost to rent, and to heat and light and air-condition, let alone the expense of paying the salaries and the benefits and the T&Es of all the people working here. Then I add on the cost of our humongous and totally up-to-the-minute warehouse and fulfillment center in semirural Maryland and all the folks who work there, and I ask myself what have I done to help my company cover the truly enormous nut that one day’s operation must entail and try to avoid the obvious answer that, whatever it is, it is not enough. So I head through the revolving door and up the elevator and tank up on the not-at-all-bad Flavia coffee in the common area that looks like it was decorated with fixtures from the set of some late-’60s Polish science fiction film and start answering the e-mails that have piled up since the day before. Welcome to my world.
by Gerald Howard, The Millions | Read more:
Image: Wikimedia Commons
The Collective Insanity of the Publishing Industry
[ed. I can't attest to the veracity of this, but it sounds just dumb enough to be true.]
Actually, entertaining isn’t the right word. It’s been insane, but the kind of insane that’s unreasonably fun to watch from a safe remove. Like watching a man stop traffic to cross against a green light by shouting, “I’ll bite your car!” As long as it isn’t your car he’s threatening, it’s sort of funny.You might imagine that as an author with published works for sale, I am not at a safe remove when it comes to the publishing industry. That’s sort of true, but only sort-of.
Here’s a superb example of the madness of which I speak, and why I’m not concerned that anyone will be biting my car.
In 2014, there was a drawn-out dispute between Amazon, and Hachette. The latter is one of the largest publishers in the world, and Amazon is a company that sells things, such as books. The essence of the dispute was that Hachette—and all the other publishers we affectionately refer to as ‘the Big 5’—wanted more control over the list price of their e-books on Amazon.
That sounds thoroughly reasonable, and it sort of is, but please let me explain because the crazy is in the details. What was happening was that Amazon was discounting the price of the ebooks, and it may seem like this is something the Big 5 would want to stop, except the markdown was coming off of Amazon’s end. In other words, if Hachette wanted to charge $15.99 for an ebook, and Amazon marked it down to $9.99, Hachette was still paid their cut of the full price of the book.
More people will buy a book at $9.99 than at $15.99, so essentially, the Big 5 was coming out ahead in this arrangement in every conceivable way. They collected royalties at an unreasonably high price point while moving the number of units that corresponded to a lower price point.
So of course that had to be stopped right away.
Hachette fought for, and won from Amazon, the return to something called the Agency Model, whereby they set their price and Amazon wasn’t allowed to reduce that price. So that $15.99 book stayed at $15.99 until Hachette decided to change it.
Soon after that contract was signed, the other Big 5 contracts came due, and they all asked for the same Agency Model arrangement. Thus, the finest minds in publishing—or one might assume—negotiated themselves out of an arrangement whereby they sold more units at a lower cost without suffering the financial impact that comes with a lower unit cost.
On purpose.
This isn’t even the crazy part.
by Gene Doucette | Read more:
Image: Gene Doucette
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Strangers Drowning: Voyages to the Brink of Moral Extremity
Good people make us feel uncomfortable; they remind us that practising consistent generosity and selflessness isn’t nearly as impossible as we like to think. And so it is not at all surprising that we try our best to find ways of softening the embarrassment, looking eagerly for hypocrisy, inconsistency, mixed motivation or reductive explanations. Larissa MacFarquhar’s excellent book is, among other things, a bracingly sceptical examination of our scepticism. As well as giving us a series of vivid portraits of spectacularly altruistic individuals (and families), she offers a sketchy but highly intelligent overview of the various ways in which we set out to diminish those we like to call ‘do-gooders’, and concludes that these evasions won’t do: the hard question remains. If selfless devotion to relieving the pain or need of others is possible, why don’t more of us get on with it?
The book’s title relates this to the conundrum in moral philosophy that focuses on the limits of ‘disinterested’ care for others. Given the choice between rescuing a drowning relative or a total stranger in a situation of disaster, which do we go for? Does a thirty-year-old mother of four have more claim on me than my own ageing parent or unmarried sibling? It seems at first sight that a truly disinterested, truly generous love would make no fundamental differentiation between those who happen to be close to us and anyone else, so any decision about which one to give priority to would have to be made on grounds that had nothing to do with accidents of connection or instinct. MacFarquhar, by setting her narratives of ‘moral extremity’ in the context of this dilemma, highlights the way in which her heroes and heroines of moral consistency have to find some kind of calculus by which to make decisions about their ethical priorities. And this, of course, is where the problems begin. (...)
MacFarquhar frequently discusses the ideas of Peter Singer, the Australian ethicist whose passionate insistence on a fully rational morality based on detailed calculations of the effectiveness of specific acts and policies has had a huge influence on popular movements such as the Oxford-based Giving What We Can network. Many of the people we meet in the book have been deeply marked by Singer and his followers, who offer a lucid and practical programme for maximising the effectiveness of charitable generosity through painstaking research and unsentimental assessment of results. There is a lot to be said for this as a basis for action. But two uncertainties remain, one fairly specific, the other larger and more elusive. Singer and others are clear that the most effective way you might help in – say – relieving global poverty or disease may not be to work as a grassroots development economist or a medical volunteer in South Sudan, but to take a highly paid job in your own country and donate a correspondingly large sum. There is much common sense in this and it usefully deflates the dramatic impulse that tempts us to think that we help best when we suffer most, even if this means we are largely ineffectual. But it leaves hanging the question of how there might ever be a world in which the coexistence of vastly (irrationally) paid jobs in the developed world – in the financial services sector, for example – and lethally fragile economies elsewhere is not just taken for granted. The model still seems to be bound up with the practice of the rich showing benevolence towards the poor, rather than any longer-term structural adjustment in the direction of greater equality or mutuality.
This connects with the broader point. There is often an assumption in all this that ‘goodness’ is about finding and enacting the most uncomplicatedly virtuous course of action, and that such a course of action is defined quite strictly in terms of the quantifiable relief of suffering. Once again, this is a helpful corrective to vagueness and self-serving fantasy. But what if ‘goodness’ also had something to do with a quality of relation with those who receive help, not just with the long-distance solving of their problems for them? What if morality had more to do with habit and character, with the grace of receiving as well as of giving, rather than being just the sum total of right actions? Singer and many (but not all) of the figures whose stories feature in Strangers Drowning are committed Kantians in their ethics: they believe that morality is about the quest for the unequivocally good action. But, as the dilemmas flagged in the title should tell us, there are choices in which there is no unequivocally good outcome. Talking as though there were one can imperceptibly encourage us to ignore certain kinds of suffering or pain in the way touched on earlier. As many moral philosophers have insisted over the last few decades, focusing on how to make infallibly right choices (and also on hard cases where this looks practically impossible) isn’t a very useful way of thinking about a good life as opposed to an ensemble of right answers. Part of the discomfort generated by some of MacFarquhar’s case studies is to do with a sense that some people are looking almost obsessively for a scheme of ideas that will assure them beyond doubt that they are doing what is right. The more sympathetic figures in this book are those who ruefully acknowledge that their moral maximalism cannot ever quite deliver this and that the human cost along the way may be disturbingly high; or those whose generosity has about it some dimension of warmth or joy as well as effectiveness.
The book’s title relates this to the conundrum in moral philosophy that focuses on the limits of ‘disinterested’ care for others. Given the choice between rescuing a drowning relative or a total stranger in a situation of disaster, which do we go for? Does a thirty-year-old mother of four have more claim on me than my own ageing parent or unmarried sibling? It seems at first sight that a truly disinterested, truly generous love would make no fundamental differentiation between those who happen to be close to us and anyone else, so any decision about which one to give priority to would have to be made on grounds that had nothing to do with accidents of connection or instinct. MacFarquhar, by setting her narratives of ‘moral extremity’ in the context of this dilemma, highlights the way in which her heroes and heroines of moral consistency have to find some kind of calculus by which to make decisions about their ethical priorities. And this, of course, is where the problems begin. (...)MacFarquhar frequently discusses the ideas of Peter Singer, the Australian ethicist whose passionate insistence on a fully rational morality based on detailed calculations of the effectiveness of specific acts and policies has had a huge influence on popular movements such as the Oxford-based Giving What We Can network. Many of the people we meet in the book have been deeply marked by Singer and his followers, who offer a lucid and practical programme for maximising the effectiveness of charitable generosity through painstaking research and unsentimental assessment of results. There is a lot to be said for this as a basis for action. But two uncertainties remain, one fairly specific, the other larger and more elusive. Singer and others are clear that the most effective way you might help in – say – relieving global poverty or disease may not be to work as a grassroots development economist or a medical volunteer in South Sudan, but to take a highly paid job in your own country and donate a correspondingly large sum. There is much common sense in this and it usefully deflates the dramatic impulse that tempts us to think that we help best when we suffer most, even if this means we are largely ineffectual. But it leaves hanging the question of how there might ever be a world in which the coexistence of vastly (irrationally) paid jobs in the developed world – in the financial services sector, for example – and lethally fragile economies elsewhere is not just taken for granted. The model still seems to be bound up with the practice of the rich showing benevolence towards the poor, rather than any longer-term structural adjustment in the direction of greater equality or mutuality.
This connects with the broader point. There is often an assumption in all this that ‘goodness’ is about finding and enacting the most uncomplicatedly virtuous course of action, and that such a course of action is defined quite strictly in terms of the quantifiable relief of suffering. Once again, this is a helpful corrective to vagueness and self-serving fantasy. But what if ‘goodness’ also had something to do with a quality of relation with those who receive help, not just with the long-distance solving of their problems for them? What if morality had more to do with habit and character, with the grace of receiving as well as of giving, rather than being just the sum total of right actions? Singer and many (but not all) of the figures whose stories feature in Strangers Drowning are committed Kantians in their ethics: they believe that morality is about the quest for the unequivocally good action. But, as the dilemmas flagged in the title should tell us, there are choices in which there is no unequivocally good outcome. Talking as though there were one can imperceptibly encourage us to ignore certain kinds of suffering or pain in the way touched on earlier. As many moral philosophers have insisted over the last few decades, focusing on how to make infallibly right choices (and also on hard cases where this looks practically impossible) isn’t a very useful way of thinking about a good life as opposed to an ensemble of right answers. Part of the discomfort generated by some of MacFarquhar’s case studies is to do with a sense that some people are looking almost obsessively for a scheme of ideas that will assure them beyond doubt that they are doing what is right. The more sympathetic figures in this book are those who ruefully acknowledge that their moral maximalism cannot ever quite deliver this and that the human cost along the way may be disturbingly high; or those whose generosity has about it some dimension of warmth or joy as well as effectiveness.
by Rowan Williams, Literary Review | Read more:
Image: Strangers Drowning
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
One week ago we showed a clip by Google-owned Boston Dynamics in which a 5'9", 180lbs humanoid robot called Atlas engaged in various human activities, such as walking, picking itself up, opening doors, and carrying heavy loads. The robot in question, clearly an old prototype (which prompted many to wonder just how far advanced is the underlying technology now if Google has no industrial espionage concerns with this particular specimen) was not only this close from putting millions of workers in menial, repetitive occupations out of a job, but could easily serve as a solider in any army that has a "lower" standard of acceptance.
It was the latter which led to visceral reactions among viewers, some of whom complained that the clip was "disturbing", "frightening" and outright "terrifying", and if there is anything Google does not want, it is to scare the general public with its arsenal of "disturbing" robots.
Which may explain the resulting attempt at damage control, because one week after GOOG shocked the public with the eerie-looking "Atlas", it has now gone the cuteness route and released another clip, this time of Spot, Google's electronic dog, which is seen in the following clip in "the wild", engaged in a close encounter with an actual terrier belonging to Android cofounder Andy Rubin.
The terrier's less than enthusiastic reaction is about what one would expect. (...)
We can't wait to see the "uncute" military version out in the wild next.
Thanks Bank of America
[ed. I just got another VISA card in the mail today so thought I'd repost something I'd written less than two years ago. I know they're changing over to the new embedded EMV chip technology, but the notice with my card didn't mention any of that. It's the same old form letter.]
We have learned that your Bank of America® credit card information may have been compromised at an undisclosed merchant or service provider. This does not mean fraud has or will occur on your account, but we are taking precautionary steps to help protect your account.
We're mailing you a new credit card with a new number and deactivating your old card on 05/14/2014. Your new card should arrive within 5-7 business days in an unmarked envelope. Upon receiving it, please:
Dear Bank of America,
Thanks for the heads up. I'd like to ask a few questions, though:
How is it that an "undisclosed merchant or service provider" could compromise my credit card account? What does "undisclosed" mean, and undisclosed to whom? Don't you have standardized security measures in place for all merchants and service providers that use your services? Was it just me, or is this a systemic BoA problem that affects millions of other customers? What was the nature of the compromised activity, and how are you dealing with the issue (other than making me jump through these hoops?)
How can I properly evaluate this risk and possibly avoid similar situations in the future when the only statement provided is "this does not mean fraud has or will occur"? Don't you have algorithms and monitoring systems designed to red flag purchases that are inconsistent with my history? (You certainly did when I drove through Canada and suddenly found my card inactivated so I couldn't buy gas, or call you with my cell phone. That was a good one, thanks!). What does it mean if other "compromised" activites occur again? Are you going to just keep replacing my cards? And what does this say about the rigor of your monitoring systems?
Lastly, and most importantly, do you have any idea what it takes to change all the autopay accounts most cards are currently registered under? (rhetorical question, I'm sure you do and don't really care). It's not insignificant. Utilities, banks, brokerages, Netflix, Amazon, PayPal, cable tv... on and on and on (I'm sure other customers have more accounts than I do, things like smartphone and computer apps, music services, etc. Maybe even country club memberships like your executives enjoy). The time and aggravation involved in calling, emailing, and simply trying to remember all these accounts is, well, let's just say it again, not insignificant, and doesn't enhance anyone's productivity. In fact, it occurs to me to ask: why don't YOU call and update all my accounts? You have all the information.
So Bank of America, I'm asking you, please explain your Total Security Protection package and how this makes my life better? I was under the impression that you had tighter controls on your services than you actually do? What about your claims that unwarranted purchases can be identified quickly and won't be credited to my account? If all that can be undermined by one "compromised merchant or service provider" what does that say about your service?
Since it looks like I'll have to change the information on all my accounts anyway, maybe it's a good time to start looking at other card options.
by markk
Image via:
[ed. Tried responding to this, but here's the reply: "Because email is not a secure form of communication, please do not reply to this email. If you have any questions about your account or need assistance, please visit http://www.bankofamerica.com and select the Contact Us link."
[Thanks again, BoA!]
We're mailing you a new credit card with a new number and deactivating your old card on 05/14/2014. Your new card should arrive within 5-7 business days in an unmarked envelope. Upon receiving it, please:Activate your new card immediately so you may continue making transactions without interruption
Destroy your old card and start using your new card
If you've set up recurring payments with a store or service provider, provide those companies with your new credit card number and expiration date
Keep in mind that if you have a Personal Identification Number (PIN) it is secure and remains unchanged
Remember, your account has the Total Security Protection® package which provides you with greater defense against theft, loss and fraudulent use of your card.-----
Dear Bank of America,
Thanks for the heads up. I'd like to ask a few questions, though:
How is it that an "undisclosed merchant or service provider" could compromise my credit card account? What does "undisclosed" mean, and undisclosed to whom? Don't you have standardized security measures in place for all merchants and service providers that use your services? Was it just me, or is this a systemic BoA problem that affects millions of other customers? What was the nature of the compromised activity, and how are you dealing with the issue (other than making me jump through these hoops?)
How can I properly evaluate this risk and possibly avoid similar situations in the future when the only statement provided is "this does not mean fraud has or will occur"? Don't you have algorithms and monitoring systems designed to red flag purchases that are inconsistent with my history? (You certainly did when I drove through Canada and suddenly found my card inactivated so I couldn't buy gas, or call you with my cell phone. That was a good one, thanks!). What does it mean if other "compromised" activites occur again? Are you going to just keep replacing my cards? And what does this say about the rigor of your monitoring systems?
Lastly, and most importantly, do you have any idea what it takes to change all the autopay accounts most cards are currently registered under? (rhetorical question, I'm sure you do and don't really care). It's not insignificant. Utilities, banks, brokerages, Netflix, Amazon, PayPal, cable tv... on and on and on (I'm sure other customers have more accounts than I do, things like smartphone and computer apps, music services, etc. Maybe even country club memberships like your executives enjoy). The time and aggravation involved in calling, emailing, and simply trying to remember all these accounts is, well, let's just say it again, not insignificant, and doesn't enhance anyone's productivity. In fact, it occurs to me to ask: why don't YOU call and update all my accounts? You have all the information.
So Bank of America, I'm asking you, please explain your Total Security Protection package and how this makes my life better? I was under the impression that you had tighter controls on your services than you actually do? What about your claims that unwarranted purchases can be identified quickly and won't be credited to my account? If all that can be undermined by one "compromised merchant or service provider" what does that say about your service?
Since it looks like I'll have to change the information on all my accounts anyway, maybe it's a good time to start looking at other card options.
by markk
Image via:
[ed. Tried responding to this, but here's the reply: "Because email is not a secure form of communication, please do not reply to this email. If you have any questions about your account or need assistance, please visit http://www.bankofamerica.com and select the Contact Us link."
[Thanks again, BoA!]
How to Sell a $1,000 Pill for $10 Without Losing Money
Gregg Alton has what seems like a disorienting job at Gilead Sciences Inc. He’s paid to figure out how to sell the drug Sovaldi, which infamously retails in the U.S. at $1,000 a pill, for relatively next to nothing.
The instructions for pricing the cure, which wipes out hepatitis C in just 12 weeks, basically go like this: “Get to as many patients as possible in low-income nations --and not lose money,” Alton says. “It’s very simple.”
Actually, it’s not so simple, but it is controversial. Decisions about what to charge around the world for life-saving remedies have spurred debate ever since Big Pharma began offering some discounts after a backlash in the ’90s, when groundbreaking HIV treatments reduced deaths in wealthy countries and not poor ones. Criticism has been harsh with Sovaldi, one of the most expensive and best-selling drugs in history.
“We make a good target,” says Alton, Gilead’s executive vice president of corporate and medical affairs.
He offers a rare look at how a pharmaceutical giant walks the line between shareholder expectations on the one hand and global public health needs on the other. It starts with his team looking at the map through the lens of per-capita income. Countries that are well-off go into one bucket. The rest are sorted by wealth and rate of hepatitis C infection.
Then come negotiations with governments. Whatever the price settled on in lower-income nations, Alton says, it usually brings complaints about why the therapy isn’t cheaper -- or why it’s so much cheaper than in the U.S.
by Caroline Chen, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: Forbes
The instructions for pricing the cure, which wipes out hepatitis C in just 12 weeks, basically go like this: “Get to as many patients as possible in low-income nations --and not lose money,” Alton says. “It’s very simple.”
Actually, it’s not so simple, but it is controversial. Decisions about what to charge around the world for life-saving remedies have spurred debate ever since Big Pharma began offering some discounts after a backlash in the ’90s, when groundbreaking HIV treatments reduced deaths in wealthy countries and not poor ones. Criticism has been harsh with Sovaldi, one of the most expensive and best-selling drugs in history.“We make a good target,” says Alton, Gilead’s executive vice president of corporate and medical affairs.
He offers a rare look at how a pharmaceutical giant walks the line between shareholder expectations on the one hand and global public health needs on the other. It starts with his team looking at the map through the lens of per-capita income. Countries that are well-off go into one bucket. The rest are sorted by wealth and rate of hepatitis C infection.
Then come negotiations with governments. Whatever the price settled on in lower-income nations, Alton says, it usually brings complaints about why the therapy isn’t cheaper -- or why it’s so much cheaper than in the U.S.
Sovaldi Versus IPhone
“People say, ‘Why does Egypt pay 2 percent of the price?’ But it’s something we should do,” he says. He contrasts Sovaldi with the iPhone: “It costs the same everywhere, but it’s not a human need.”
At the moment there are 101 countries in Gilead’s most-needy category, including Egypt, Cuba, Pakistan and the Philippines, and they’re all on the company’s generic-approved list. Gilead has given 11 manufacturers in India licenses to make knockoffs, with sales strictly limited to the list; Gilead gets a 7 percent cut of sales. A generic pill is going for as little as $4.29 in India.
But it could take years for generics to reach all 101, and in the meantime Gilead is cutting deals with some for branded Sovaldi, and also for Harvoni, a formulation that combines Sovaldi with another drug and can reduce treatment times. Typically it’s $900 for a 12-week regimen, or $10 a pill, Alton says, with governments footing all or part of the bill. Gilead has received or applied for the OK to sell Sovaldi in 29 countries, including 16 on the most-needy list. (...)
“People say, ‘Why does Egypt pay 2 percent of the price?’ But it’s something we should do,” he says. He contrasts Sovaldi with the iPhone: “It costs the same everywhere, but it’s not a human need.”
At the moment there are 101 countries in Gilead’s most-needy category, including Egypt, Cuba, Pakistan and the Philippines, and they’re all on the company’s generic-approved list. Gilead has given 11 manufacturers in India licenses to make knockoffs, with sales strictly limited to the list; Gilead gets a 7 percent cut of sales. A generic pill is going for as little as $4.29 in India.
But it could take years for generics to reach all 101, and in the meantime Gilead is cutting deals with some for branded Sovaldi, and also for Harvoni, a formulation that combines Sovaldi with another drug and can reduce treatment times. Typically it’s $900 for a 12-week regimen, or $10 a pill, Alton says, with governments footing all or part of the bill. Gilead has received or applied for the OK to sell Sovaldi in 29 countries, including 16 on the most-needy list. (...)
‘Sophisticated Strategy’
“We can’t price to the poorest person,” Alton says. For one thing, there’s the don’t-lose-money mandate. What’s more, he says, Gilead doesn’t want “to create an artificially low price for the generic companies coming in after us.”
There’s another set of calculations for middle-income nations. In Brazil, for instance, Gilead charges $6,875 for 12 weeks -- 8.2 percent of the U.S. retail price but, according to critics, too much for a nation where per-capita income is about $15,838.
Gilead has a “very sophisticated strategy,” says Tahir Amin, co-founder of the nonprofit group Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge. The company has excluded Chinese generic-makers that could have hastened delivery but would have cost Gilead profits, Amin says. And Gilead “could certainly do more” for middle-income countries not among the 101, he says, singling out China, Brazil and Ukraine, where the disease-burden is high.
Hepatitis C related liver diseases kill about 500,000 annually, most of them in middle- and low-income countries. Until Sovaldi, treatments were marginally effective and often had brutal side effects. When the drug hit the U.S. market in 2013 it was a stunner, for its efficacy and list price: $84,000 for 12 weeks.
That kicked off a new round in the argument over how to reward the innovation that produces cures while not throwing up hurdles for those who need them.
Some public and private U.S. insurers have limited prescriptions to only the sickest. A bipartisan U.S. Senate Finance Committee report chastised Gilead, saying it was focused more on profits than patients. Gilead responded that it priced Sovaldi thoughtfully, based on existing treatments on the market.
Most in Big Pharma make the lion’s share of their money in the U.S., where prices aren’t regulated and insurers negotiate discounts, so hardly anyone pays full freight. Still, Sovaldi’s U.S. sales have made the company and some shareholders rich, but Alton says that’s fair. Gilead is “incentivizing investors -- otherwise they would invest in social media or something else.”
“We can’t price to the poorest person,” Alton says. For one thing, there’s the don’t-lose-money mandate. What’s more, he says, Gilead doesn’t want “to create an artificially low price for the generic companies coming in after us.”
There’s another set of calculations for middle-income nations. In Brazil, for instance, Gilead charges $6,875 for 12 weeks -- 8.2 percent of the U.S. retail price but, according to critics, too much for a nation where per-capita income is about $15,838.
Gilead has a “very sophisticated strategy,” says Tahir Amin, co-founder of the nonprofit group Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge. The company has excluded Chinese generic-makers that could have hastened delivery but would have cost Gilead profits, Amin says. And Gilead “could certainly do more” for middle-income countries not among the 101, he says, singling out China, Brazil and Ukraine, where the disease-burden is high.
Hepatitis C related liver diseases kill about 500,000 annually, most of them in middle- and low-income countries. Until Sovaldi, treatments were marginally effective and often had brutal side effects. When the drug hit the U.S. market in 2013 it was a stunner, for its efficacy and list price: $84,000 for 12 weeks.
That kicked off a new round in the argument over how to reward the innovation that produces cures while not throwing up hurdles for those who need them.
Some public and private U.S. insurers have limited prescriptions to only the sickest. A bipartisan U.S. Senate Finance Committee report chastised Gilead, saying it was focused more on profits than patients. Gilead responded that it priced Sovaldi thoughtfully, based on existing treatments on the market.
Most in Big Pharma make the lion’s share of their money in the U.S., where prices aren’t regulated and insurers negotiate discounts, so hardly anyone pays full freight. Still, Sovaldi’s U.S. sales have made the company and some shareholders rich, but Alton says that’s fair. Gilead is “incentivizing investors -- otherwise they would invest in social media or something else.”
by Caroline Chen, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: Forbes
That Was How He Was
For Ethan Canin, the author of A Doubter’s Almanac, Saul Bellow’s short story “A Silver Dish” is a masterwork. The protagonist is a businessman named Woody Selbst who’s unsure of how to mourn his con artist father. Pop didn’t just abandon the family when Woody was a teenager. He tricked his son into becoming an accomplice in his escape—a cruel ruse that permanently thwarted Woody’s ambitions in the process.
In our conversation for this series, Canin explained that his favorite part comes at the very end. As Pop pulls off one last con on his deathbed, Woody’s coming-to-terms is expressed in a simple final sentence: “That was how he was.” We discussed how Bellow infuses five ordinary words with such uncanny power; why endings should make us feel, not think; and what “A Silver Dish” teaches about dialogue, plot, and character.
A Doubter’s Almanac is a family saga about the destructive power of genius, and like “A Silver Dish” it concerns a complex father/son legacy. It’s the story of a groundbreaking mathematician from northern Michigan, whose brilliance is only equaled by his capacity for betrayal and violence. A cast of long-suffering characters support the celebrated work, including the son who fears he’s inherited his father’s gifts and penchant for self-destruction.
In 1998, Ethan Canin left medicine to teach fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where he was my professor). The best-selling author of the story collections Emperor of the Air and The Palace Thief, and novels including America America and For Kings and Planets, his fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Best American Short Stories. We spoke at a coffee shop in downtown Manhattan.
Ethan Canin: When I went for my medical school interview, I had an old paperback of Henderson the Rain King in the pocket of my coat. I was wearing the best clothes I had, a pair of cords and a sport coat—but when I got to the office, all the other interviewees were lined up in their black suits. As they stood there talking about whether they preferred intravenous versus oral chemotherapy, I thought, “Oh my god, I’m about to get myself into the wrong line of work.” But when I went in for the interview, the guy noticed I had a book in my jacket pocket. He asked what I was reading, and when I took it out, he said, “Oh, that’s my favorite book.” All we did was talk about Henderson the Rain King. I think that’s how I got into medical school.
I think Bellow’s the greatest American writer of his century, personally. When I read him, I’m in awe.
One of my favorite works is the great short story “A Silver Dish,” a story not too many people seem to know. It ends with, for me, one of the most memorable lines in fiction:
It’s an amazingly restrained line from Bellow, who was a poet of the first order. I think he was intentionally restricting his palette. Compare it to some of his other great sentences, like the famous first line of The Adventures of Augie March:
But the last line of “A Silver Dish,” is nothing like that. I can’t tell you what any single one of those words means. Imagine you’re a lexicographer and you have to define the word that, or how. And on top of this, there’s none of Bellow’s typical play with rhythm and language—it’s almost a non-sentence. And yet, when I get to it in the story, I weep. I’ve read the story three times in the past few weeks, and each time I arrived at that sentence, tears came to my eyes.
How does Bellow pack so much emotion into those five ordinary words?
I think it’s their very blankness that allows them to channel so much emotion. Because they don’t bring anything specific to mind, they allow us to feel without thinking. At the end of a story or novel, you do not want the reader thinking. Endings are about emotion, and logic is emotion’s enemy. It’s the writer’s job to disarm the reader of his logic, to just make the reader feel. You’ll often see this in the final moments of a film: The camera tilts up, and the movie ends with a non-distinct image of the sky, or the sea, or the coast. Something the eye can’t quite focus on, which allows you to focus on everything that’s come before. That’s how “that was how he was” works, too. It brings nothing else to mind. This sentence would be a non-sentence if it began the story—but, placed at the end, it’s packed with the charge of everything that precedes it. Each of those non-words is nitroglycerin, and the story that precedes it is the fuse.
To me, this line also shows that content trumps style. I have a theory about writing, which is that you cannot simultaneously write something true about character and, at the same time, write something linguistically beautiful. There are too few words to express both truth and beauty, so most empathetic—or another way to say this might be character-driven writers—tend to naturally reserve their beautiful constructions for when the content is less urgent. You’ll see Bellow get poetic when he’s writing about the scenery, like when Woody and his dad take that streetcar ride. But when he’s trying to write something that really gets to the narrator’s deep emotional experience, the prose is mostly very simple: That was how he was. Five plain words. At the crux of the story it pays to write what’s true, rather than try to write what’s true and then dilute that by making the prose beautiful. It’s a continuum, of course, but I don’t think you can be at both ends of the continuum.
For me, I should also say, this story answers almost every question a young writer could have about fiction writing. (...)
When “A Silver Dish” begins, it’s remarkably static: Woody, pierced by the sound of church bells all over Chicago, is mourning his father, a lifetime of old memories and impressions washing over him. But the story snaps into sudden focus when he recalls one of his father’s transgressions, a betrayal that’s haunted the younger man all his life. It’s that individual transgression—that memorable instance of bad behavior—that gets the story rolling.
I think of that moment as the story standing up. The moment when the black lines on the page suddenly become a story.
I’ve heard [the Deadwood creator] David Milch say (though I might be butchering it slightly) that it’s easier to plot your way into an idea than it is to idea your way into a plot. And I think a lot of writers start out making the mistake of trying to write a novel about something. Novels are discussed as though they are intentionally about something, but they’re not. They’re stories. We’re taught to think about them that way by literary critics, or by English teachers, who are, in their defense, generally trying to teach you to write a paragraph rather than a novel. But to be a writer, I think, you have to abandon the idea that fiction is “about” something. This concept is bad enough in your reading life. But it’s fatal in your writing life.
I’ve seen plenty of students come in and say, I want to write a novel about blah blah blah. But you just can’t do it. You can only write a novel about a character who does something wrong, and see what happens from there. Novels are compendiums of bad behavior, and literature is the gossip about it.
In other words, if you’re writing a piece of fiction, I’d urge you not to try to show anything—instead, try to discover something. There’s no way to write anything powerful unless your unconscious takes charge.
In our conversation for this series, Canin explained that his favorite part comes at the very end. As Pop pulls off one last con on his deathbed, Woody’s coming-to-terms is expressed in a simple final sentence: “That was how he was.” We discussed how Bellow infuses five ordinary words with such uncanny power; why endings should make us feel, not think; and what “A Silver Dish” teaches about dialogue, plot, and character.
A Doubter’s Almanac is a family saga about the destructive power of genius, and like “A Silver Dish” it concerns a complex father/son legacy. It’s the story of a groundbreaking mathematician from northern Michigan, whose brilliance is only equaled by his capacity for betrayal and violence. A cast of long-suffering characters support the celebrated work, including the son who fears he’s inherited his father’s gifts and penchant for self-destruction.In 1998, Ethan Canin left medicine to teach fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where he was my professor). The best-selling author of the story collections Emperor of the Air and The Palace Thief, and novels including America America and For Kings and Planets, his fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Best American Short Stories. We spoke at a coffee shop in downtown Manhattan.
Ethan Canin: When I went for my medical school interview, I had an old paperback of Henderson the Rain King in the pocket of my coat. I was wearing the best clothes I had, a pair of cords and a sport coat—but when I got to the office, all the other interviewees were lined up in their black suits. As they stood there talking about whether they preferred intravenous versus oral chemotherapy, I thought, “Oh my god, I’m about to get myself into the wrong line of work.” But when I went in for the interview, the guy noticed I had a book in my jacket pocket. He asked what I was reading, and when I took it out, he said, “Oh, that’s my favorite book.” All we did was talk about Henderson the Rain King. I think that’s how I got into medical school.
I think Bellow’s the greatest American writer of his century, personally. When I read him, I’m in awe.
One of my favorite works is the great short story “A Silver Dish,” a story not too many people seem to know. It ends with, for me, one of the most memorable lines in fiction:
That was how he was.There are five words in that sentence, each one essentially meaningless: That was how he was. Two of them are the same word: “was” and “was.” Hardly any sounds even, in those words, there’s no tilt, no break, no angle to the rhythm—just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Of all those words, only “he” and perhaps “was” have any sort of meaning. “How” is technically an adverb the way it’s used here but feels more nounish to me, in the sense that I get a little visual spark when I read it, entirely from what has come before in the story. The whole sentence uses only seven distinct letters, and contains only 15 letters total: three a’s, three h’s, three w’s, two s’s, two t’s, an o, and an e.
It’s an amazingly restrained line from Bellow, who was a poet of the first order. I think he was intentionally restricting his palette. Compare it to some of his other great sentences, like the famous first line of The Adventures of Augie March:
I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.You can open that book up to page 400 and find the best sentence you’ve ever seen. It’s an astonishing, volcanic eruption of ideas and language. (...)
But the last line of “A Silver Dish,” is nothing like that. I can’t tell you what any single one of those words means. Imagine you’re a lexicographer and you have to define the word that, or how. And on top of this, there’s none of Bellow’s typical play with rhythm and language—it’s almost a non-sentence. And yet, when I get to it in the story, I weep. I’ve read the story three times in the past few weeks, and each time I arrived at that sentence, tears came to my eyes.
How does Bellow pack so much emotion into those five ordinary words?
I think it’s their very blankness that allows them to channel so much emotion. Because they don’t bring anything specific to mind, they allow us to feel without thinking. At the end of a story or novel, you do not want the reader thinking. Endings are about emotion, and logic is emotion’s enemy. It’s the writer’s job to disarm the reader of his logic, to just make the reader feel. You’ll often see this in the final moments of a film: The camera tilts up, and the movie ends with a non-distinct image of the sky, or the sea, or the coast. Something the eye can’t quite focus on, which allows you to focus on everything that’s come before. That’s how “that was how he was” works, too. It brings nothing else to mind. This sentence would be a non-sentence if it began the story—but, placed at the end, it’s packed with the charge of everything that precedes it. Each of those non-words is nitroglycerin, and the story that precedes it is the fuse.
To me, this line also shows that content trumps style. I have a theory about writing, which is that you cannot simultaneously write something true about character and, at the same time, write something linguistically beautiful. There are too few words to express both truth and beauty, so most empathetic—or another way to say this might be character-driven writers—tend to naturally reserve their beautiful constructions for when the content is less urgent. You’ll see Bellow get poetic when he’s writing about the scenery, like when Woody and his dad take that streetcar ride. But when he’s trying to write something that really gets to the narrator’s deep emotional experience, the prose is mostly very simple: That was how he was. Five plain words. At the crux of the story it pays to write what’s true, rather than try to write what’s true and then dilute that by making the prose beautiful. It’s a continuum, of course, but I don’t think you can be at both ends of the continuum.
For me, I should also say, this story answers almost every question a young writer could have about fiction writing. (...)
When “A Silver Dish” begins, it’s remarkably static: Woody, pierced by the sound of church bells all over Chicago, is mourning his father, a lifetime of old memories and impressions washing over him. But the story snaps into sudden focus when he recalls one of his father’s transgressions, a betrayal that’s haunted the younger man all his life. It’s that individual transgression—that memorable instance of bad behavior—that gets the story rolling.
I think of that moment as the story standing up. The moment when the black lines on the page suddenly become a story.
I’ve heard [the Deadwood creator] David Milch say (though I might be butchering it slightly) that it’s easier to plot your way into an idea than it is to idea your way into a plot. And I think a lot of writers start out making the mistake of trying to write a novel about something. Novels are discussed as though they are intentionally about something, but they’re not. They’re stories. We’re taught to think about them that way by literary critics, or by English teachers, who are, in their defense, generally trying to teach you to write a paragraph rather than a novel. But to be a writer, I think, you have to abandon the idea that fiction is “about” something. This concept is bad enough in your reading life. But it’s fatal in your writing life.
I’ve seen plenty of students come in and say, I want to write a novel about blah blah blah. But you just can’t do it. You can only write a novel about a character who does something wrong, and see what happens from there. Novels are compendiums of bad behavior, and literature is the gossip about it.
In other words, if you’re writing a piece of fiction, I’d urge you not to try to show anything—instead, try to discover something. There’s no way to write anything powerful unless your unconscious takes charge.
by Joe Fassler and Ethan Canin, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Doug McLean
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