How Big Business Robs Us With "Externalities"

[marmar]

How Big Business Robs Us With "Externalities"

Wednesday, 24 April 2013 14:08
By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Show | Op-Ed


Odds are you've never heard the phrase "negative externalities." Corporations and their boards know all about them, but most Americans don't understand even the concept.

A negative externality is a cost born by all of us that was produced by a private entity and then dumped on us – externalized from that business to us. Externalities reduce the costs of business for corporations, which in turn increase their profits, while the tab is picked up by you and me, the taxpayer, the worker, and/or the citizen.

For example, air pollution is usually a negative externality.

Air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels causes damage to public health, crops, and the overall environment. But do the oil or coal or natural gas companies pay for these costs? No, of course not – they externalize them to us. You and I are forced to play for the cleanup of this pollution and the damage and cancers that it causes, while the corporations that pump it out increase their profits because we're picking up the bill for the externality of pollution. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15975-how-big-business-robs-us-with-externalities

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[Bannakaffalatta]

2. It's even worse,

Big business makes a profit, and gets credit for adding to the national economy, on every one of those operations. The government agencies who have to do the cleanup all must buy their equipment, vehicles, office supplies, communication devices and special clothing from a corporate supplier. (Government contracts make fortunes - corporations become irate if the army gets its uniforms from a federal prison factory, or a public facility even does its own laundry, rather than contracting it out.)

Even better is the money to be made on health problems caused by industry. Every syringe, every scalpel, every MRI machine and operating table is bought from private suppliers. And we won't even mention the drugs - that would be obscenity.

There was a terrific documentary on this.... let's see if i can recall enough of the title to find it. No, sorry; it's gone. The Corporation is pretty good, too.

[KT2000]

3. cost shifting is the term

I have heard. This is another reason why health care should be single payer. It is not just polluting industries but industries whose products are toxic. They have successfully built a firewall through the courts that keeps most liability on the backs of the individual - as in tough luck.
Tort reform is the last brick in the wall.