Okay, so the latest claim I've heard going on out there is that "discrimination costs the economy billions". Is this really true?? Let's take a look at some things and try to logically pick this apart. In any voluntary economic exchange, an advantage accrues to both parties. That is, both the business owner and the worker will benefit. Now, if these persons who are being discriminated against really have so much to contribute, then it is the business owner who is losing out. Isn't that true? The business owner should have an innate economic incentive not to discriminate against job applicants if they have more to contribute. Now, let's turn around and analyze this from the perspective of the workers. I mean, maybe after all the way discrimination costs the economy really has nothing to do with what they are contributing to employers. The claim here that discrimination will "cost the economy billions" might be based on the simple idea that if a person does not get hired to a higher paying job, because of discrimination, then that is money lost to the economy. But it doesn't take but a brief logical look at this to understand that that's not true. "Discrimination" normally implies that someone else got that job instead. So aren't we really talking about the same amount of money in the economy? It would just have to do with who gets that money. (which is another debatable issue, but one that we are not going to look at here) Now something else I cannot understand, that seems very fundamentally inconsistent, is that this idea that discrimination hurts a segment of the population, necessarily seems to be based on the premise that there are "only so many of the good-paying jobs" in the economy. But this same group of intellectuals claiming that discrimination costs the economy, are also the same group who claim that immigration is beneficial to the economy, claiming that people create jobs, and that it is not a zero sum game. But how in the world are these two different views possibly consistent? You're claiming there are not enough of the good jobs, so we need to make sure certain groups of people don't get discriminated against, but at the same time you claim there are absolutely no worries about bringing in more people, because they are automatically going to create as many new good jobs as they take. This seems very wishful thinking at best, intellectually dishonest at worst. Like these economic theorists want to have their cake and eat it too. You can't claim both and be consistent about it. Either raising the level of immigration will result in less opportunity for everyone else, or there should be no worries about minorities being discriminated against, because there will inherently be plenty of other equally good opportunities elsewhere. This all to me seems like just another hair-brained claim. I am writing this little thread so that, whenever someone anywhere else makes this claim, I can link back to here. Will save me having to write out a long explanation and derailing that other thread.
Crikey, didn't you even bother to peruse the economic analysis into discrimination? Didn't you consider the right wing Chicago School's 'taste for discrimination'? That necessarily refers to how discrimination destroys economic activity. I tut a lot at the far right, for good reason, but its the lack of reading which properly gets my goat. The rant about immigration is, as usual, tosh.
