Cass Sunstein Quotes
There's every reason to think that whatever their political leanings, Americans will be highly receptive to numerous reforms designed to improve health, safety, economic security, environmental quality and democratic self-government - at least if those reforms do not eliminate their freedom of choice.
Sunstein, Cass R. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Yale University Press, 2008.
This was the first time that the Environmental Protection Agency had vetoed a permit for a mountain top removal coal mining project that had been granted by the Army Corps of Engineers. The proposed project, Spruce 1, would have removed the entire top of a mountain. It would have created a number of jobs, but it also would have polluted a number of streams in the area and would have affected the ground water of people in the area. What made this a most difficult political decision was that the economic damage was clear as was the science showing the water damage. The people in the community were split over which was the worse alternative.
Although the Premier recognizes the importance of environmental protection it is difficult for China and other developing countries to make the necessary trade off’s at the expense of slower growth which means continued poverty. Even in the United States with all its affluence, slowing economic growth for environmental reasons is politically very difficult.
Many of the very rich agreed with Lind on this point. So did many Americans with good jobs. However there were very few Americans who did not have good jobs who agreed with this point of view. In most industrialized countries ,most workers spend one-hired of their entire adult lives working. If we do not count sleeping time, it is more like half. It is hard to believe for most people that a person could have a good life when half of his/her waking hours are spend in a not very good situation. Many of Lind’s critics observed that this was the Classic Christian theological view until recent times that every person should accept his station and be happy in at as that is what God ordained.
Cass Robert Sunstein is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics. He is also The New York Times best-selling author of The World According to Star Wars (2016) and Nudge (2008). He was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012.
