I recently wrote about the pinheads at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who are threatening legal action against companies that are leery about hiring people with criminal records.
Now some states and cities are making it illegal to discriminate against those that have been unemployed for a long period of time.
Unlike special legal status for ex-cons, this sounds reasonable. After all, we all would like to help the long-term unemployed break free of the chains of government dependency.
But sometimes good intentions generate undesirable effects. I explain in this Fox Business News debate that companies will do their best to avoid even interviewing the long-term unemployed if they have to worry about potential legal pitfalls whenever they make a hiring decision.
I also explain that businesses have no incentive to engage in unjustified discrimination. After all, that would imply a willingness to deliberately sacrifice profit in pursuit of some irrational bias.
But as Walter Williams has succinctly argued, some forms of discrimination make sense.
And if there are two applicants who otherwise seem to have equal qualifications for a certain job, but one has been out of work for more than 12 months, it’s only logical that the employer will think that a lengthy stint of sitting on a couch does not suggest great habits.
Which is why Obama’s policy of never-ending unemployment benefits is so misguided. People get lured into long-term unemployment and there is both anecdotal evidence (check out these stories from Michigan and Ohio) and empirical evidence (here, here, and here) showing this unfortunate impact.
Heck, even Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have admitted that you get more unemployment when you subsidize joblessness.
So you won’t be surprised to know that I’ve dispensed some tough love on this topic as well.
P.S. This cartoon does a very effective job of showing the consequences of paying people not to work.
International Liberty 
[…] of which, I made the same argument when looking at a government proposal to help those struggling with long-run […]
It seems to me that almost every sensible solution is rejected by this administration. If you extend unemployment benefits for 99 weeks then guess what you will have more unemployment!!!! Milton Friedman told us that!!!
[…] The Perverse Unintended Consequences of Anti-Discrimination Laws […]
[…] Mitchell writes The Perverse Unintended Consequences of Anti-Discrimination Laws in his blog International Liberty February 23, […]
From a purely legal perspective, such anti-discrimination laws that ban looking into a perspective employee’s criminal history and refusing to hire because of said criminal history, as well as not hiring a someone because they were unemployed for a long time-indeed, not being able to inquire into potential employee’s histories at all makes it extremely difficult for employers to protect themselves from negligence and liability of their employees. In business law and tort law, there is a doctrine called “respondeat superior,” which means the employers are liable for the torts committed by their employees within the scope of their employment-and it’s important to remember that every crime usually has a tortious equivalent. Thus even if an employee commits a crime within the scope of employment, the employer might not be charged with the crime, but he/she could very well be liable for the tortious equivalent of the crime committed by the employee within the scope of his/her employment.
Thus, in order to protect themselves from tort liability, employers have to be able to know who their employees are, both before they hire them and after, as well as if their employees are good, competent, law-abiding people who are careful and negligent, if not inclined to criminal activity. There are a slew of reasons why someone has been unemployed for a long time, some of which could be negative, as Dan mentions in his video debate with Afro-Man. Thus, in order to protect themselves from potential liability from bad employees, they need to be able to know as much about them as possible, and if they find that they have a poor employment history, even where they have committed torts and made the employer liable, that has influenced their unemployment, then I think it is perfectly reasonable for an employer to not hire them because of their unemployment, because their poor habits which lead to their long-term unemployment could very well lead to an employer’s tortious liability. Thus, these anti-discriminatory laws have at least this one unintended, negative consequence for business owners.
The advocate for these potentially frivolous lawsuits, Rich Benjamin (from his site):
Rich earned a BA in English and political science from Wesleyan University and his PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.
Notice that he doesn’t have a degree in economics.
His claim to fame is being a columnist and author…his book: “Searching for Whitopia.”
He’s never started nor run a business, and completely ignored the unintended consequences mentioned by Dan.
It’s troubling that the unintended consequences not only didn’t occur to him, but that he isn’t troubled by them.
Personally, really tired of people who ignore the harm done to business so that they can seem to be “fair.”
If you are convicted of DWI, you loose your CDL. Isn’t the govermnent dicriminating ? Oh wait, their allowed. Any business owner would be a fool to explain in detail their reasons for highering one person over another. In my profession, I just find one person more personable than another, and we are service oriented.
Reblogged this on Animus Turbare and commented:
Dan Mitchell nails the dangers of big government, and the mentality that something MUST be done to “correct” every perceived injustice.
Essentially the same could be written about Dodd-Frank and how it affected our checking accounts, but this post describes the problem with no additional commentary needed.
WHAT ELSE IS NEW HERE ? THAT ‘ S WHY WE HAVE THE METAPHORSW KNOWN AS THEWE 2 X – EDGED SWORDS ! TOM SIMPSON
Perverse is the exact right word. Doing for others things that they could do for themselves but don’t is self-serving cruelty.