Dan Hamermesh: Let's Regulate Labor Markets Even More

Despite the fact that this sees the light of day on The Daily Show, and I think I see the mirth in your posting too, this is a serious subject. But I come at this from pretty much the same position as you do. Not that the ugly need protections, but that those that already receive protection are not as unique as they think they are.

When someone tells me that I cannot understand what it is like to be treated poorly because of the color of my skin because I am White, I tell them that is poppycock. There are all sorts of reasons why people are treated poorly for stupid reasons. Possible reasons are ugliness, short, fat, facial tic, speech impediment, skin condition, etc. Pretty much all of us have been treated as dumb or dangerous because of some trait that in reality has nothing to do with intelligence or violence.

So I think Hammermesh is providing a great service to show how ugly folks are treated badly (I suspect their income is worse on average than Blacks). I hope he follows up with similar statistics on various other impediments. I don’t agree with Hammermesh that the ugly should be treated as a protected class, but I do think that further research will show how silly it is to give special benefits to certain groups based on their treatment on an average basis. Can you imagine how badly our schools would be doing under No Child Left Behind if every group that that could be shown as statistically weaker had to catch up for the school to succeed? We need more studies like Hammermesh is doing to show that the whole concept of breaking out groups to promote is the height of silliness.

I’m ecstatic that the Daily Show was taking this on. I despise the stupidity and malice that goes into advocacy of these anti-discrimination laws, which always manage to find an excuse not to take the general principle seriously. Why not ban discrimination against those without a fat social network, or with poor social skills, or who are neuroatypical, etc.?

Whatever rationalization you use to throw them to the free market, can probably be applied to your own preferred protected class.

And when all is said an done, the discrimination still goes on, employment becomes a minefield, job listings go scarce, and the powerless still struggle to get jobs. Good work, guys.

Slightly OT, but Hamermesh appears to be a bad economist in general. Here’s my criticism of him from two years ago about his poor application of game theory.

I got to the Freakonomics blog where he posts, and looking at his recent history, I see him misidentify a Pareto improvement (and his readers all call him on it), and later criticize the AARP’s inflation estimate because people can paper over the increases in their cost of living by substituting to worse stuff.

I feel sad to know that people like him keep well-paid jobs to promote these errors.

(Please let this post through despite the 3 links.)

This doesn’t any different than from something Ronald Dworkin might advocate.