UTILITARIANISM IS APPLIED TO A REAL WORLD PROBLEM President Barack Obama's director of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, wrote a memo in 1991 (while he was the World Bank's chief economist) claiming that the world's well-being would increase if more of the waste from rich countries was sent to poor countries. Summers offered four arguments for this claim: 1 . Obviously, it would be best for everyone to send the pollution to the country where the health effects will be least costly. The cost of "health-impairing pollution" depends on the wages lost when pollution makes people sick or kills them. Therefore, the country with the lowest wages will be the country with the lowest health effects of pollution. So we can conclude, with "perfect" "economic rationale", that it would be best for everyone if we dumped our toxic waste into the lowest paying countries. 2 . Adding more pollution to an already highly polluted environment has worse health effects than putting the same pollution into a clean environment where it can disperse. So we can reduce the harm caused by polio by moving it out of highly polluted cities like Los Angeles and transferring it to "very little polluted" countries in Africa. " will increase 3 . The same pollution will cause more harm in a country where people are "long-lived" than in a country where they die young. When people are "long-lived," they survive long enough to develop diseases such as prostate cancer that those who die young do not. So pollution will cause more diseases like prostate cancer in countries where people live longer than in countries where people die young. As a result, we can reduce the diseases caused by pollution by removing pollution from rich countries where people live long lives and dumping them into poor countries where people die young. 4. Pollution can cause "aesthetic" harm, such as air that appears polluted, and these harms "may have little direct impact on health." Clean-looking air is more valuable to the rich than to the poor, as the rich are willing to pay more for clean-looking air than the poor. So it should be possible for people in rich countries to find people in poor countries willing to trade their fresh air for money that the rich are willing to offer. This kind of trade would be "welfare-enhancing" for both parties. Analyze This Argument 1 . Explain which parts of the reasoning in this note a utilitarian should accept and which parts a utilitarian might reject. 2 . Assuming all four arguments are true, do you agree or disagree with the conclusion that people in rich countries should send their waste to poor countries (perhaps get them by paying poor countries money)? Explain why or why not.