-- Luke
Quoting Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za>:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <lweiger at umich.edu>
> > This is really stupid. Carl called Summers a "pig." As support, he
> > linked to
> > an article in which folks complained about Summers' abrasive manner. Why
> > is
> > Summers' manner abrasive? Because he has beliefs about controversial
> > issues
> > and isn't afraid to express them. I don't think that's a minus in and of
> > itself. The views Summers expressed weren't repugnant, and he might even
> > be
> > right--relevant distinctions between him and your idiotic straw character.
>
> Luke, just so you don't forget what a pig sounds like when writing (perhaps
> I should say plagiarizing because apparently Lant Pritchett penned it but
> Summers took credit for it), read this:
>
> http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html
>
> WORLD BANK OFFICE OF THE CHIEF ECONOMIST
> DATE: December 12, 1991
> TO: Distribution
> FR: Lawrence H. Summers
> Subject: GEP
>
> 'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be
> encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less
> Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:
>
> 1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on
> the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this
> point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in
> the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest
> wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in
> the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.
>
> 2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial
> increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that
> under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air
> quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or
> Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated
> by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the
> unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare
> enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.
>
> 3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is
> likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that
> causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is
> obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get
> prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per
> thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is
> about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very
> little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic
> pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile
> the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.
>
> The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more
> pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social
> concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used
> more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.
>
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