Ted,
How do you know that he doesn't pay more attention? I don't think that his children being overweight provides you with sufficient evidence to reach that conclusion.
That and the fact that he makes toast for them, or at least that's what his daughter claimed as she nominated him to be the Democratic candidate. Toast basically consists of empty calories, which (if you have a predisposition for being overweight) should be avoided.
You see the problem with scientists and their deductive reasoning which tries to make rational, economic sense is that they fail to recognize their limits. There science is limited to only that knowledge that they have acquired thru rigorous scientific study. However what was acceptable to a scientist in 1970 based on a 1970 understanding of the world is not acceptable to most people now. Add to that that scientists have a hard time factoring in the human element and you can run into serious problems. After all if you reduce the human body to its base elements, its only worth a few dollars. At that price, is it worth trying to save any of us? Most scientists probably would have to conclude..probably not.
I think what makes the subject more complex is the interaction of science in figuring out approaches to clean up rivers, reduce pollution and economics, that is an allocation of limited resources. Which always has the other side to it. If you move resources to a new area, you have to take it from another area. So you have to evaluate how much good you are making by spending money in one area vs. how much damage you are creating elsewhere.
If you spend one dollar on environmental cleanup, that one dollar may cause one taxpayer to be not have his brake checked (because he is $ short) and he may end up dying is a car accident. Or an HMO budget may be $1 short and a cancer screening test will not be approved.
I am for the government spending every dollar considering all this, regardless of where the dollars are spend - environment, education, military, pensions for government employees.
But if you say that the Willamette river is still not clean enough, and I want to spend all it takes to make it pristine, damn the torpedos, I guess you would not have my support.
If you say: "For a limited budget of X dollars, we can improve the quality of water by this much, which will result in improvements at the rate of Y units per dollar spent." I would be willing to listen.
I think the government, for example a Congressional Budget office, or the executive branch equivalent (Office of Management and Budget?) should have a scorecard of how much damage every dollar taken out of the economy causes. Then, the job of the politician is simple: Just weigh the benefits vs. the damage to arrive at a somewhat rational way of managing the tax money.
Joe |
