o Externality Costs

What is the price you pay for a tomato you buy in the supermarket? Does it properly reflect the shipping cost, the social cost of migrant workers who picked the tomato, and the environmental impact of irrigation and pesticides?

You can buy a bottle of water for $1.00, but no one pays for the recycling of the plastic bottle once you throw it out. It’s an externality paid for by government services and not applied directly to the consumer of the good.

The cost of any good should include the hidden costs that go along with the production of the good. Manufactures and growers should be made to pay for the externalities embedded in their products. Only then will consumers realize what the true cost necessary to grow and to ship a tomato.