Right way to help
There is an old story about two fishermen meeting a beggar. One of them gives him a fish, the second one gives him a net and shows how to use it. It is clear from this story that people knew what is the right way to help many centuries ago. Alas, it is very easy to forget even obvious lessons.
If the government helps the tsunami victims in Asia or starving people in Africa, it should help also Americans that need its aid. And it does, but not always in the right way.
I would like to make a suggestion that should work better. If a group of people is underrepresented in the workforce, the employer should be rewarded for employing a member of this group. This should be done for almost any group that is well defined and is sufficiently large . There are some exceptions;
for example, it is a wrong idea to apply this to mothers with small children. They have already a very important job and it is unreasonable to encourage them to leave it; they should get help in other way (for example, Swedish mothers get salary for raising children).
Of course, this idea is useful to fight discrimihation, but it can be used in many other cases. Take, for example, people recently released from jail. It is very natural that the prospective employer , if he has a choice, should prefer to hire somebody else. However, it is in our common interest to have these people working; then the chance of new crime will be much less.
Let us take disabled (or mentally retarded) people .
Sometimes, the employer should make costly adjustments to use them; one should create incentives to do this.
The unemployment among young people (especially, among young blacks) is quite high. This is understandable: employers prefer people with experience. However, this is very dangerous: keeping young people on the street is a good way to breed criminals.
Is it too expensive to encourage emloyers to hire people that are less productive? Probably, at the end of the day we'll find that the money are well spent. We are spending $25000 per year for every prisoner; if it takes $5000 or even $10000 to keep a person out of prison we can save a lot of money. In any case if somebody is not working this does not mean that he is not eating; his expenses are covered in some way (by crime or by government aid or by charity). We can ask employers to have a definite share of people from underrepresented categories on their payroll. If the share of these people is higher, then the employer will benefit, if it is lower he will be fined . (May be, the word "fine" is not appropriate here, "tax" is a better word. It is completely unnecessary to require from every employer to make adjustments for disabled people; it is much more efficient to make these adjustments only in some places. )
A byproduct of the suggested reform
would be a solution of the problem of illegal immigration. It is clear that no border control can solve this problem, because the US needs illegal immigrants
to take the jobs that citizens do not want to take for a good reason: the salary is too low. It would be very easy to find and deport at least half of 12000000 illegal immigrants we have, but what would happen with American agriculture ?
The claim that people with low IQ have no room in modern economics is a fallacy. The jobs of illegal immigrants are mostly low IQ jobs and we see that there is plenty
of them. The strict enforcement of immigration laws would free a lot of jobs for unskilled Americans, but they do not want to get these jobs. They would be happy to take them if the salary were much higher. Much higher salary is impossible from the viewpoint of employer: he would loose money. However, now all of us are loosing money
supporting the unemployed in some way or keeping them in jail. If the employer will get some support for hiring American citizens and will be fined for hiring illegal immigrants the problem of illegal immigration will be solved.
sufficiently high
If the government helps the tsunami victims in Asia or starving people in Africa, it should help also Americans that need its aid. And it does, but not always in the right way.
I would like to make a suggestion that should work better. If a group of people is underrepresented in the workforce, the employer should be rewarded for employing a member of this group. This should be done for almost any group that is well defined and is sufficiently large . There are some exceptions;
for example, it is a wrong idea to apply this to mothers with small children. They have already a very important job and it is unreasonable to encourage them to leave it; they should get help in other way (for example, Swedish mothers get salary for raising children).
Of course, this idea is useful to fight discrimihation, but it can be used in many other cases. Take, for example, people recently released from jail. It is very natural that the prospective employer , if he has a choice, should prefer to hire somebody else. However, it is in our common interest to have these people working; then the chance of new crime will be much less.
Let us take disabled (or mentally retarded) people .
Sometimes, the employer should make costly adjustments to use them; one should create incentives to do this.
The unemployment among young people (especially, among young blacks) is quite high. This is understandable: employers prefer people with experience. However, this is very dangerous: keeping young people on the street is a good way to breed criminals.
Is it too expensive to encourage emloyers to hire people that are less productive? Probably, at the end of the day we'll find that the money are well spent. We are spending $25000 per year for every prisoner; if it takes $5000 or even $10000 to keep a person out of prison we can save a lot of money. In any case if somebody is not working this does not mean that he is not eating; his expenses are covered in some way (by crime or by government aid or by charity). We can ask employers to have a definite share of people from underrepresented categories on their payroll. If the share of these people is higher, then the employer will benefit, if it is lower he will be fined . (May be, the word "fine" is not appropriate here, "tax" is a better word. It is completely unnecessary to require from every employer to make adjustments for disabled people; it is much more efficient to make these adjustments only in some places. )
A byproduct of the suggested reform
would be a solution of the problem of illegal immigration. It is clear that no border control can solve this problem, because the US needs illegal immigrants
to take the jobs that citizens do not want to take for a good reason: the salary is too low. It would be very easy to find and deport at least half of 12000000 illegal immigrants we have, but what would happen with American agriculture ?
The claim that people with low IQ have no room in modern economics is a fallacy. The jobs of illegal immigrants are mostly low IQ jobs and we see that there is plenty
of them. The strict enforcement of immigration laws would free a lot of jobs for unskilled Americans, but they do not want to get these jobs. They would be happy to take them if the salary were much higher. Much higher salary is impossible from the viewpoint of employer: he would loose money. However, now all of us are loosing money
supporting the unemployed in some way or keeping them in jail. If the employer will get some support for hiring American citizens and will be fined for hiring illegal immigrants the problem of illegal immigration will be solved.
sufficiently high
posted by Republican-against-Bush at 9:59 AM
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