In fact, (a) that's a winning strategy for an employer, and (b) the win is enhanced if the victims of discrimination are willing to work for less . . . which they often are, if they find it hard to get jobs elsewhere. Enforced equal pay tends to block the movement of victims of discrimination into better jobs, whether the enforcement is done by government regulation or by labor unions' hostility to "cheap nonunion labor." (Historically, unions used to be major barriers to opening up good jobs to women and ethnic minorities.)
Market forces tend to erode discrimination over time; but ironically, if you command market actors to behave as if that erosion had already gone to completion, the outcome is often that discrimination gets worse, because there's no payoff for undermining it.
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zvi and
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Date: 2010-05-14 05:06 pm (UTC)Market forces tend to erode discrimination over time; but ironically, if you command market actors to behave as if that erosion had already gone to completion, the outcome is often that discrimination gets worse, because there's no payoff for undermining it.