The study mentioned Rivertucky, er, Riverside, CA, an area that continues to get more desirable in SoCal because of comparatively less expensive housing, continued new building, and more local jobs sprouting up with the population.
The downside of Riverside is not that it pollutes. It's just the pollution sink for big chunks of the more coastal Orange and Los Angeles counties. The pattern has a lot to do with inversion layers, offshore flows, local mountains, and all that. Even the Indians, way back in the day before millions of people came to the Southland, called the San Fernando Valley (which has the same kinds of pollution trap problems and is about 70 miles northwest) the "Valley of the Smokes". Same inversion layer issues concentrate particulate matter from nearby sources.
If the study or interpretations of it don't mention that dynamic, but call for any kind of "solution", they're incomplete at best. When nature concentrates pollutants from a wide area into one small area, there's only so much that can be done to solve the problem.
Fundamentalist
· 2 years ago
Do we need to start a Coase Club to counter Mankiw's Pigou club?
Also, I would think the women with heart problems would find little comfort in the government benefiting from their illness. To be fair, the victim should be compensated, not the government.
HC
· 2 years ago
To say that women should band together and collectively pay the polluters not to pollute is no different than if I decided to play obscenely loud music out my window and refuse to turn it off until my neighbors pay me to do so. The people who are (supposedly) doing harm, the polluters, should bear the cost of their actions. A business can then pass on the cost to the end consumer who inevitably reaps the benefits.
Russ Roberts
· 2 years ago
HC,
The issue I think you are raising is discussed a great deal in the academic literature on Coase. But in the case of the women (and possibly the neighbors as well) the cost of coordinating the action is usually high enough that these kind of side payments don't take place, with or without the kind of strategic opportunism you imply. These costs of coordination narrow the policy choices to be considered when there are large numbers of people who are affected.
SheetWise
· 2 years ago
Great article. But I cringe when I see the word Pigovian.
How much would it cost to filter all of the ground-level air in a city?
New York City encompasses 301 square miles, which is roughly 8.4 billion square feet. If we want to filter the bottom 20 feet of air, that's about 168 billion cubic feet we're concerned with. Let's say we want it all filtered once every two hours. That's 1.4 billion cubic feet per minute, or about 1.4 million 1000 CFM HEPA devices at $1,000 each (they normally run twice that, but we're buying in major quantities here, so I expect a steep discount). That's only $1.4 billion for the initial equipment - about $175 per resident, and lots of people who work in the city would benefit, too. Let's hit them up for a contribution.
Replacement filters would cost about $200 million annually, and it takes a fair amount of electricity to run these things - 600 watts each, 840 Megawatts total - that comes to $1.5 billion annually (runnning 24/7/365 at $.20/kWh, and apparently the cost is that high in NYC). And there are installation costs and both initial and ongoing labor costs that aren't reflected here.
But hey, what wouldn't we pay for particulate-free air? We're saving lives! And think of all the car washes we could avoid.
Alan
· 2 years ago
Excessive gas taxes in the DC area may encourage more "slugging", which is a method of commuting where you jump in a complete stranger's car (with permission) so you both can use the HOV lane. If someone is killed by their slugger or sluggee, can I hop up and down and say that just one death is too much to bear for idealogical taxation?
who, me?
· 2 years ago
As a post-menopausal woman, I want access to a residential dacha in the pristine countryside, far, far from Riverside CA. Then, when I travel to an urban area and subject myself to air pollution, it may be assumed that the cost of breathing soot is exceeded by the value of the urban experience.
who, me?
· 2 years ago
In addition, my husband reminds me of my conviction that women's freedom in this society is so vastly enhanced by free use of the automobile, that reducing that access and use for the sake of pollution control, would be a cost immense, near-incalculable, and unacceptable.
All Comments
The study mentioned Rivertucky, er, Riverside, CA, an area that continues to get more desirable in SoCal because of comparatively less expensive housing, continued new building, and more local jobs sprouting up with the population.
The downside of Riverside is not that it pollutes. It's just the pollution sink for big chunks of the more coastal Orange and Los Angeles counties. The pattern has a lot to do with inversion layers, offshore flows, local mountains, and all that. Even the Indians, way back in the day before millions of people came to the Southland, called the San Fernando Valley (which has the same kinds of pollution trap problems and is about 70 miles northwest) the "Valley of the Smokes". Same inversion layer issues concentrate particulate matter from nearby sources.
If the study or interpretations of it don't mention that dynamic, but call for any kind of "solution", they're incomplete at best. When nature concentrates pollutants from a wide area into one small area, there's only so much that can be done to solve the problem.
Do we need to start a Coase Club to counter Mankiw's Pigou club?
Also, I would think the women with heart problems would find little comfort in the government benefiting from their illness. To be fair, the victim should be compensated, not the government.
To say that women should band together and collectively pay the polluters not to pollute is no different than if I decided to play obscenely loud music out my window and refuse to turn it off until my neighbors pay me to do so. The people who are (supposedly) doing harm, the polluters, should bear the cost of their actions. A business can then pass on the cost to the end consumer who inevitably reaps the benefits.
HC,
The issue I think you are raising is discussed a great deal in the academic literature on Coase. But in the case of the women (and possibly the neighbors as well) the cost of coordinating the action is usually high enough that these kind of side payments don't take place, with or without the kind of strategic opportunism you imply. These costs of coordination narrow the policy choices to be considered when there are large numbers of people who are affected.
Great article. But I cringe when I see the word Pigovian.
For more on the adjectival form of Pigou -
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id...>
How much would it cost to filter all of the ground-level air in a city?
New York City encompasses 301 square miles, which is roughly 8.4 billion square feet. If we want to filter the bottom 20 feet of air, that's about 168 billion cubic feet we're concerned with. Let's say we want it all filtered once every two hours. That's 1.4 billion cubic feet per minute, or about 1.4 million 1000 CFM HEPA devices at $1,000 each (they normally run twice that, but we're buying in major quantities here, so I expect a steep discount). That's only $1.4 billion for the initial equipment - about $175 per resident, and lots of people who work in the city would benefit, too. Let's hit them up for a contribution.
Replacement filters would cost about $200 million annually, and it takes a fair amount of electricity to run these things - 600 watts each, 840 Megawatts total - that comes to $1.5 billion annually (runnning 24/7/365 at $.20/kWh, and apparently the cost is that high in NYC). And there are installation costs and both initial and ongoing labor costs that aren't reflected here.
But hey, what wouldn't we pay for particulate-free air? We're saving lives! And think of all the car washes we could avoid.
Excessive gas taxes in the DC area may encourage more "slugging", which is a method of commuting where you jump in a complete stranger's car (with permission) so you both can use the HOV lane. If someone is killed by their slugger or sluggee, can I hop up and down and say that just one death is too much to bear for idealogical taxation?
As a post-menopausal woman, I want access to a residential dacha in the pristine countryside, far, far from Riverside CA. Then, when I travel to an urban area and subject myself to air pollution, it may be assumed that the cost of breathing soot is exceeded by the value of the urban experience.
In addition, my husband reminds me of my conviction that women's freedom in this society is so vastly enhanced by free use of the automobile, that reducing that access and use for the sake of pollution control, would be a cost immense, near-incalculable, and unacceptable.