Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 170-171 of Thomas Sowell’s 2008 book, Economic Facts and Fallacies:

Employers who discriminate against job applicants from particular groups usually have to either pay more, in order to attract additional workers from other groups to take their place, or else lower the job qualifications required, in order to make more of the existing job applicants eligible. Either way, that costs money, whether in higher pay or in lower productivity from less qualified workers. If the discriminating employer is competing with other producers of similar products, then those competitors who have either less racial partiality or who care more about money can hire more qualified workers from the rejected groups without having to pay the additional costs paid by the employer who rejected them. In a competitive market, these cost differences translate into differences in profit rates and can even translate into a difference between survival and bankruptcy.

DBx: Yes. The irrationally disliked worker has no friend as excellent as the competitive market. Ditto for the irrationally disliked consumer.