On: UN report comes up with a better way to size up nations' wealth

[patdennis]

The author says "no worse off than before", as if the human suffering created by such a massive transition has no impact on the overall wellbeing of the nation.

It'd be funny if the implications didn't make me so sad.

[canttestthis → patdennis]

How do you quantify human suffering?

[Clotho → canttestthis]

Meaning that it can't be done to it has no value.

I can think of lots of ways to capture it's essence quantitatively. Life expectancy, social mobility, marriages. savings rate....

[rayiner → canttestthis]

However you quantify it, you can't ignore it because then you implicitly quantify it as 0.

[msellout → canttestthis]

The EPA and many other agencies try to quantify the value of life (cost of death). Without that estimate, they would be unable to decide the appropriate level of pollution to allow.

[rdl → msellout]

And I think the number they use usually ends up pretty low -- something like $2-10mm.

[obtu → rdl]

The report used 6.3 million USD for a US life (the EPA's VSL, value of a statistical life, p. 287). They want to learn more about the feedback between natural resources and health, so that they can price natural resources that economists are normally unable to value.

[patdennis → canttestthis]

You can't. What you should do is acknowledge that fact.