Economics of Health and Safety

Investment in the infrastructure of health and safety is a worthwhile investment from a practical standpoint. It is important to consider the amount of resources needed to nurture a child into a useful adult, this price is very high.his requires heavy investment from both family and community, whether directly or indirectly. When proper health and safety policies and infrastructure are not in place this huge investment has a greater chance of being thrown away in the blink of an eye. is a devastating loss for all, the goal should be to preserve a contributing individual for as long as possible and in the best form possible. The positive return for the overall community as a result of reasonably high investment in health and safety is a stronger and more practical argument against the mistreatment of or negligence against workers and population than any moral argument. The only time that investment in health and safety is not a worthwhile investment is when the systems for health and safety are inefficient and too costly for the community. Normally the avoidance of health and safety investment is only to benefit a few at the expense of the overall community. Family Business Example The easiest way to understand this concept is to consider a family business. This hypothetical business has all family employees. It's in the best interest of those who manage this business to keep it's employees healthy and safe. If there is a serious accident on the job they will be required to raise new children to replace the handicapped or perished family members. This will require an exhaustive effort to provide the new children with resources, nurturing, and training of skills for the business over a period of many years. If the accident was avoided with smart investment in health and safety this waste could have been avoided. The emotional pain involved can also take a harsh toll on morale for the family and its business. Invention That Helped Lay the Foundation for the Industrial Revolution A great mental exercise to further help understand this concept from the perspective of health is to consider the Italian invention of the eyeglasses. Though seemingly providing only an improvement in standard of living for those with eye problems, it was much more than this. Eyeglasses enabled older scientists, businessmen, and other important professionals who were beginning to have eye troubles to stay active in their field of expertise. This exponentially increased productive output as such seasoned workers were able to continue providing for society for many more years on average. This helped directly fuel the Italian Renaissance which was an important step toward the industrial revolution that later took place in Northwestern Europe, North America, and Australasia. Exploitative Companies It isn't always in a company's best interest to look after the safety and health of its employees. If a business finds itself in a situation where their environment is either overpopulated or has high unemployment, they can save costs by cutting investment in health and safety and simply hire new cheap labour when accidents occur. Though this is good for the profits of the exploitative business, there is still a net loss for the community as the community must bare the burden of raising new children, which we know is extremely expensive in terms of resource and time investment. The low level of safety and health also has a great negative impact on the community, not only in times of loss, but even simply dealing with the stress as a result from unnecessarily hectic work conditions. These factors do much to help reduce many communities around the world from achieving their potential in standard of living. Abundance of Waste Throughout the socioeconomic status quo and history of human civilization, due to poor adherence to health and safety, there has been countless cases of regression that has held and is holding human civilization back to a magnificent degree. This can be observed in wars, poor societal behaviors, irresponsible levels of reproduction, lenient or unenforced traffic regulations, prison systems, systematic poverty, poor working conditions, and more. The toll is paid in both resources and societal progress. The United States is no exception to this, and is one of the worst offenders of all time. It is long past time to overturn this wasteful legacy.