Economics of Discrimination Redux
It looks like most Americans already implicitly accept the Beckerian thoughtcrime that market forces alone heavily discourage — and ultimately eliminate — discrimination. Not for minorities, women, or gays of course; there, Americans imagine that regulation and lawsuits explain virtually all progress since 1950. But for discrimination against the most despised minority of all, illegal immigrants, Americans firmly believe that greed trumps prejudice. And that’s why discrimination against illegals isn’t just legally allowed, but required.
See other good sentence from Bryan Caplan at EconLog.
Nice post, drawing attention to the totally inconsistent way most people think about these issues.
The inconsistent thought is there because most people have never learned the economic way of thinking — which basically is logically consistent thinking about human action.
This is a pretty astute assessment. I get this comment quite a bit: “All they do is clog up our health care system and make public education more expensive.”
Well, duh. They respond to incentives just like anyone else. And they do a job that no one else will do. It’s hypocritical to sit in our ivory towers and carp about what’s ours when we just got lucky enough to be born here and not there.
Nice post. There is a lot of good stuff at EconLog.
I disagree. The only illegal immigrants that are despised are Mexicans; Not Canadians, Not Europeans, Not Asians, Not Jews, Not any other category of people. Now, are all illegal immigrants entering from our southern border Mexican? Of course not.
So, what we have is a xenophobic rallying cry to distract the population from focusing on the real culprit;
CORPORATIONS who have undermined the middle class.
But since corporations are faceless bodiless entities which have more legal rights than the average human citizen it is easier to legally discriminate against a common enemy – Mexican Illegal’s.
It is all by design.
Don’t think so, what about the face of terrorism? Middle Eastern men. That racial group is being held up as the reason why we are losing civil rights in the name of the war on terror even though there have been many more Anglo terrorists that have attacked our country than middle eastern men.