Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, there is, and first of all, don't blame me for the language of economics. It's been around about 100 years, and some of it is antiquated. I always tell my students, I kind of translate for them what these words mean, but yes, there is a term in economics called 'bads' and it simply means, obviously, a product or service that we consume that is harmful for us. Usually, it's resulting from us not - we consumers - not directly, willingly consuming that bad, but it may be a side effect, someone else doing something that creates this bad. The all-time best example would be pollution. When we drove in this morning to do these programs, we created some air pollution, and so, for example, people that have asthma, may be bothered by that, that pollution that we created. Now we didn't do it on purpose, we weren't trying to harm people with asthma. It was a byproduct of what we did, but clearly pollution is a bad for many people, especially folks with respiratory situations. Now, how do we handle that in economics? Well, actually the most efficient way to handle it would be to tax the creator of the economic bad, to say, 'Ok, you can still drive your car and create pollution; however, if you pay some tax based on that economic bad and that we use that tax money to try to mitigate the adverse effects of your activities.' So, yes there are economic goods; there are economic bads, and there are important ways to treat each."