Smearing a Serious Approach to Policy
7 February 2007
Editor, The Boston Globe
To the Editor:
Opposing the nomination of Susan Dudley to lead the agency overseeing the regulations that Uncle Sam imposes on the economy, you assert that "Only an undue faith in the ability of the market to correct problems created by industry could have led Dudley to oppose, as she did, EPA's efforts to keep arsenic out of drinking water" ("A specific governing failure," Feb. 7).
Nonsense. Like Ms. Dudley, law professor Cass Sunstein - decidedly a man of the left - argues vigorously in favor of using cost-benefit analysis to guide regulatory policy. And Sunstein is quite clear that the proposal to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water might well create more harm than good.*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Cass R. Sunstein, Laws of Fear (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), p. 28.
Editor, The Boston Globe
To the Editor:
Opposing the nomination of Susan Dudley to lead the agency overseeing the regulations that Uncle Sam imposes on the economy, you assert that "Only an undue faith in the ability of the market to correct problems created by industry could have led Dudley to oppose, as she did, EPA's efforts to keep arsenic out of drinking water" ("A specific governing failure," Feb. 7).
Nonsense. Like Ms. Dudley, law professor Cass Sunstein - decidedly a man of the left - argues vigorously in favor of using cost-benefit analysis to guide regulatory policy. And Sunstein is quite clear that the proposal to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water might well create more harm than good.*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Cass R. Sunstein, Laws of Fear (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), p. 28.
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Tuesday October 16, 2007 at 4:35pm