Reddit reviews Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (Yale Nota Bene S)

> The argument for AA is that it is overt discrimination to cancel out hidden discrimination that happens elsewhere in the process, or historical discrimination.

But that merely shifts the burden onto another innocent. If you could direct that burden onto the people who deserve it, that's one thing, but if someone else is left jobless or denied an application because they share a skin color with previous applicants who were given that job due to their skin color, I don't see how that's any better.

Going forward, counter-discrimination only works if it can be guaranteed to be proportional and targeted properly, otherwise it merely breeds new forms of resentment and discrimination. If it is overdone or mistargeted, you merely create new victims of discrimination. And, of course, better economists than any of us argue back and forth on whether or not affirmative action even works at all. As a libertarian economist, I tend to agree with other libertarian economists and be convinced by arguments against it.

For those who enjoy reading, there is a book called Affirmative Action Around the World and it is a very interesting attempt at a non-biased review of the implications and effects of AA. I enjoyed it and it was a pretty good read, and/but there are a lot of statistics.

If someone says that Thomas Sowell doesn't look at empirical data, they are either ignorant or lying. Which error have you made? One of many examples:

http://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empirical/dp/0300107757

Thomas Sowell received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his Doctorate in Economics from the University of Chicago. What is your experience with empirical economics?

"His father died shortly before he was born, and his mother, a housemaid, already had four children. A great-aunt and her two grown daughters adopted Sowell and raised him.[2] In his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, he said his childhood encounters with white people were so limited that he did not believe blond was really a hair color.[3] When Sowell was nine, his family moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to Harlem, New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School, the first in his family to study beyond the sixth grade. However, he was forced to drop out at age 17 because of financial difficulties and problems in his home.[2] He worked at a number of jobs, including at a machine shop and as a delivery man for Western Union,[4] and tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948.[5] Sowell was drafted in 1951, during the Korean War, and was assigned to the United States Marine Corps."

What hardships have you overcome in order to acheive an understanding of economics empiricism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

http://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empirical/dp/0300107757

Except it doesn't do that at all.

That may have been the intent, but in practice it violates the civil rights act as it excludes whites from jobs based on skin color.

There was a case in the 60s where a white plumber was not given a job despite having more qualifications than the black man who was hired. He took the employer to court as the civil rights act had recently passed. The judges told him the CRA only applied to/protected minorities, despite the language of the bill being quite different.

It's in this book

Regardless of if it's racist or not, it still violates the language of the CRA. it also treat blacks as subhuman, implying that they can't gain a job via skill, and need the government to get jobs for them, which is a disgusting implication if you ask me.