What was the Larry Summers Memo?

Lawrence, or Larry, Summers is an American economist who was the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance under Bill Clinton. In 2008, he joined President Elect Barack Obama with the Council for the Transitional Economy. In 1991, Larry Summers joined the World Bank to serve as the main economist. During his time he wrote the infamous remark of Larry Summers, discussed pollution and its consequences in the developing world. Larry Summers Memo itself has never been published, but the author Lant Pritchett discussed it a little in public. It seems to have mostly discussed the fact that free trade policies at that time by the aggressive world bank probably had a negative impact on the environment of many developing countries to which they were related to. Larry Summers signed this remark, but the true story was released aside.

Aside from the Larry Sumemos MMERS, it caused a huge stir in the world. Without mixing words noted that in fact it had strictEconomic meaning to export more pollution to the development world. Larry Summers Memo suggests that "dirty industry" should be exported to "LDC [less developed countries]" for three main reasons:

First, measurement of employed health costs focuses on lost incomes that have suffered from potential workers are sick or less able to work. Given this measurement, Larry Summers Memo notes that one would like a nation with low wages to suffer health costs. Since high -wage nations would lose a large amount of economic strength for every worker of incapable disease, Larry Summers Memo claims that the industry that can cause such a disease should be moved to low wage countries. It neatly encapsulates it as: “Immys I am that economic logic of the burden on toxic waste in the country with the lowest wageIt is perfect and we should face it. ”

Second, Larry Summers Memo states that many developing countries are actually contaminated compared to developed nations. Because they claim that the cost of pollution is exponentially higher at higher levels, it makes sense to push a large amount of pollution into areas where there is little or none, and where the costs are negligible. He mentions Los Angeles and Mexico City as regions so saturated with pollution that adding more would be extremely damaged.

And finally, Larry Summers Memo claims that the desire for a clean environment is related to the intake of the population. He notes that lower -income population has a lower chance of survival, when certain diseases such as prostate cancer may occur, and people in the developed world will suffer more industrial industry. At the same time, he notes that the great opposition to pollution is for aesthetic reasons and the desire for aesthetically attractive air will be less important for members of poor populations than that ofrich populations.

After Larry Summers Memo escapes in 1992, there was a strong scream against him. At that time, the Minister of the Environment wrote Summers a frightened letter, asked to resign from his post to the World Bank, and point to the logic of the letter, as evidenced by the destructive way of thinking between certain economists, and notes: "Your justification is perfectly logical but absolutely crazy."