I'm sure that many members of the forum share Sian's horror at the
ideas put forward by Larry Summers. Unfortunately they are not at all
unusual. All he was doing was applying fairly standard neo-classical
economic analysis of marginal costs and benefits etc. The problem is
not with Larry Summers but with this kind of economic analysis which
at Lutzenberger pointed out, can lead to outrageous conclusions and
policy prescriptions. I'm quite sure that some neo-classical economist
somewhere has suggested sending children back up chimmneys to free up
the labour market and encourage good attitudes to work.
Far more damaging has been the imposition of a free market economy in
Russia using shock therapy and the impact of free market speculative
capital flows in the South East Asian financial crisis. And there is
the global pollution rights agreement whereby, as I understand it,
the US and other western countries are able to buy the atmospheric
pollution rights of the Eastern bloc and keep on pumping Co2 into the
atmosphere. Larry Summers statement is merely a bizarre manifestation
of a deeper and more insidious form of narrow economic calculation.
This is what needs to be challenged.
Chris Hamnett
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chris hamnett
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