As my colleague Laurie Johnson noted on her blog, the National Economic Research Associates have been generating anti-regulatory studies for years. A good deal of their research has been funded by polluting industries.
In this most recent study, the authors claim that Americans do not put any value on things like having parks to walk in, breathing unpolluted air, drinking safe water, or avoiding getting sick. Of course, the paper doesn’t state it quite like that. What it says is academic-sounding, inside-baseball stuff. It claims that the Environmental Protection Agency got it all wrong in a recent analysis that found true value from less pollution. Why? Because, the authors say, you can’t put a dollar figure on the benefit of less pollution.
This assertion is not only wrong. It is Earth-is-flat fraudulent.
It ignores something that any Economics 101 student learns: people value a lot of things that you can’t put a dollar figure on. Something that economics calls “well-being.” In doing this, the paper helps give academic-sounding cover to those who want to tear down the safeguards that help keep Americans safe and healthy.
You can read the full post by clicking on the line just above “As my colleague..”
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