Suchergebnisse

The South African economy is widely misrepresented, not least by the Western media, as being an oppressive capitalist regime. Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia, demonstrates how South Africa's economy has been socialist for many decades. What South Africa requires is less socialism, not more.

Conventional wisdom asserts that differences in SES between blacks & whites are a result of racial discrimination. While racial discrimination does play a role, its relative importance must be reevaluated in light of several facts: (1) other despised minority groups, such as Jews, Japanese, Polish, & Irish faced open hostility but assimilated as a group into the mainstream of American life; (2) in spite of billions of dollars, civil litigation, & legislative measures, a larger segment of the black community is worse off than during racially hostile times. It is argued that today it is not racial discrimination per se that handicaps blacks, but laws such as minimum wage legislation & occupational & business licensing -- labor laws created to monopolize markets. These laws, while not having a racial intent, produce a racial effect & hence, make permanent handicaps held by many minority persons. The essential feature of the laws that produce this effect is that they restrict voluntary exchange & hence deny a handicapped person the opportunity to be employed & upgrade his skills through the offering of "compensating differences." Much labor legislation in the US is identical to that in South Africa, where it is intended to prevent blacks opportunity; in the US, there is no such intent, but the laws produce the same effect. 2 Tables. AA.

Frederick D. Sturdivant, Walter T. Wilhelm, William Hanselman, & Norman Kangun have concluded in their studies that merchants use excessive markups & usurious interest to exert economic &/or racial discrimination against the poor. The crucial theoretical weakness of their experiments is the assumption that since creditworthiness was controlled in the experiment, creditworthiness played no role in the merchant's behavior. Minorities, in general, however, face longer & more frequent unemployment, move more, & have lower income than the majority population; these are factors which influence creditworthiness. Race & ethnicity are correlated with many other factors & poverty & higher probability of default are among them. Therefore, merchant behavior is inextricably tied to information & the cost of that information. In order to economize in this area, physical attributes (cheaply observed attributes) are used as an average indicator of some other attribute. An alternative hypothesis for the merchant behavior described by Sturdivant et al is that discrimination, on the basis of superficial attributes is consistent with the wealth-maximization model of merchant behavior, & implies nothing certain about his personal feelings about the race of the individuals involved. The discernment of behavioral relationships helps to decide policy effective in modifying aspects of merchant behavior. S. Coler.