Here’s a letter to Marketplace Morning Report host, David Brancaccio (who never as much as hinted at challenging this woman’s highly dubious claim – a claim which, by the way, if you believe to be plausible, presents to you a golden opportunity to make oodles of money while simultaneously making the world a better place):
Ms. Jules Pieri is absolutely sure that venture capitalists discriminate against women (“Fixing the VC gender gap,” May 27). She proposes to solve this problem by denying certain tax deductions to venture capitalists who lend ‘too little’ to women.
Given Ms. Pieri’s beliefs about venture capitalists, her proposal is mysterious.
On one hand, she insists that VCs are so indifferent to their bottom lines that they willingly forgo the extra profits that they would earn by extending more loans to women. Yet on the other hand, Ms. Pieri argues that VCs are so sensitive to their bottom lines that all that is needed to prompt them to extend more loans to women is a tweaking of the tax code.
VCs either care about making as much money as possible or they are willing to sacrifice some profits in order to indulge their prejudices against women. It cannot – contrary to Ms. Pieri’s apparent supposition – be both.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
