This article is classified "Real"
It is a well known and unpopular fact that today's modern manufacturing techniques are the cause of a great deal of pollution. It is also well known and unpopular that this pollution is the cause of many illnesses in the workers at the plants causing said pollution. What is neither well known nor popular is the fact that this entire cycle is actually a powerful economic force without which modern society could not exist. Let's examine this one step at a time. (One) An executive builds a factory knowing that it will cause pollution, much in the same way that cows produce methane, and (Two) hires people to work there at ridiculously low wages. (Three) The workers work, as workers are wont to do, and eventually (Five) become extremely ill and die because they have been (Four) handling very dangerous and toxic materials like uranium or the stuff inside Twinkies (tm). Each worker's death has two (Two) immediate effects: (Six) First, a job opening is created at the factory which is (Seven) filled by someone entering the workforce, thereby (Eight) lowering the unemployment rate. (Nine) Second, because of the immutable law of supply and demand, as the total number of available workers decreases, (Ten) the value of each worker increases slightly, forcing (Eleven) the executives to raise the workers' salaries. As can be seen from this analysis, pollution in and around a factory helps to stimulate the economy by constantly providing new jobs at a continually increasing rate of pay, as well as encouraging the circulation of money within the society by the continual payment of funeral expenses by the workers' families and the growth of complementary industries such as earthmoving equipment manufacturers and the general increase in land values as more and more of it is used as retirement space. Therefore, it is quite obvious that if factories were built which caused no pollution, the economy of the region would collapse. And why, you had better ask, would the corporate executives go along with this system which obviously threatens their lives and bank accounts? It could be that the executives are compassionate, altruistic individuals who are willing to accept a little sacrifice, both monetary and environmental, in order to keep society from economic collapse. It could be that the executives went to great trouble and expense designing and building highly polluting factories just to keep supply and demand balanced so as to save the workers from the indignity of being underpaid for their labor. However, it seems more likely that the executives' accountants pointed out that slight pay increases were still cheaper than stopping the pollution and that the executives could pay themselves more than they paid anyone else because they worked in the tops of tall buildings and were therefore closer to the pollution. The accountants were so persuasive, in fact, that all the executives bought big houses in the country to avoid the pollution and bought their accountants slightly smaller houses as a reward for extreme cleverness.