I haven’t commented much on Israel’s acceptance into the OECD, but I should have.
I would think that one indication of Israel’s economic success is the success of Teva, the world’s largest generic drug manufacturer. Teva’s success is nicely described in a NYT article, that pill you took? It may well be Teva’s. Here’s a taste:
“We’re kibbutzniks,” says Mr. Marth, 55, an Irish Catholic who grew up in Chicago and not on a citrus grove in the Negev. “Frugality doesn’t mean doing less. It means doing as much or more with less.”
Teva, in fact, does quite a bit. Last year, the company’s medicines filled nearly 630 million prescriptions in the United States, making it a larger domestic supplier than such pharmaceutical heavyweights as Pfizer, Novartis and Merck — combined. And as low-cost generics continue to make inroads with consumers, Teva occupies a pivotal position in a health care industry undergoing seismic changes that will give millions of more patients access to medicine.
Dozens of popular drugs are also about to lose their patent protections, opening the door to a generic boom. Already the generic industry’s leader, Teva is likely to capture even greater market share, analysts say, because it has cultivated a reputation for producing high-quality, low-cost drugs.
“When you are producing 60 billion tablets a year in 38 different locations in the world,” says Shlomo Yanai, a former major general in the Israeli army who is Teva’s chief executive, “you have to be very aware that quality is the No. 1 priority.”
The quote from Willam Marth, the CEO of Teva’s North American division, about frugality is illustrated throughout the article. In some ways, it sounds like Teva is run much the way Wal-Mart is, a devotion to cutting costs to keep prices low. (In Teva’s case that’s cutting costs but not quality.)
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
This brings up an interesting question for Israel haters. When they propose a ‘boycott’ of Jewish products do they include the generic medications made by Teva? It becomes especially interesting because many of those whose profession is described as something called ‘public health’ are also anti-Semites wishing to punish the Jewish citizens of Israel.
It becomes downright funny when they post such ideas from computers running Microsoft Operating Systems being processed on Intel chips. Both companies have huge research centers in Israel.
Which, I suppose, is yet another proof that Jew Hatred, or anti-Semitism, is a mental disorder.