Jeff Spross — New Study: The Economic Benefits of EPA Regulations Massively Outweigh The Costs

From the 2012 Presidential campaignonwards, Republicans have railed against the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “job-killing,” as a threat to freedom, and as a drag on economic growth. The claim has never comported with evidence, but like a zombie it just refuses to die.
The latest effort to kill it comes via a new study from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which found that the benefits EPA regulations bring to the economy far outweigh the costs.
The way this works is pretty straight-forward. Environmental regulations do impose compliance costs on businesses, and can raise prices, which hurt economic growth. But they also create jobs by requiring pollution clean-up and prevention efforts. And perhaps even more importantly, they save the economy billions by avoiding pollution’s deleterious health effects. Particles from smoke stacks, for example, are implicated in respiratory diseases, heart attacks, infections and a host of other ailments, all of which require billions in health care costs per year to treat. Preventing those particles from going into the air means healthier and more productive citizens, who can go spend that money on something other than making themselves well again. Another example is carbon emissions, which will impose costs on the economy in the form of future disruption to food supplies, destruction from extreme weather, and other upheavals if they’re not curbed. Researchers generally put those costs at around $20 to $25 per ton of carbon, but estimates vary widely.....

Climate Progress
New Study: The Economic Benefits of EPA Regulations Massively Outweigh The Costs
Jeff Spross

As usual the opposition is sewing disinformation to generate FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).

Gary S. Becker and Gary S. Becker — Have We Lost the War on Drugs?

After more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market.

Wall Street Journal
Have We Lost the War on Drugs?
Gary S. Becker, Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago (awarded Nobel Prize in economics in 1992), and Kevin M. Murphy, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Both are senior fellows of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
(h/t Ed Rombach in a comment at The Center of the Universe)

Even the arch-conservative Hoover Institute (and Wall Street Journal) is taking sense about this issue now. It's long past time to recall the lesson of Prohibition. And that involved repeal of a constitutional amendment. Fixing this self-created problem today is much simpler.