Saturday, January 4, 2020

American Economic Association Conference Goes Off the Wall Politically Correct



The American Economic Association, in conjunction with 61 associations in related disciplines known as the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA), is currently holding its annual three-day meeting. This year the event is taking place from January 3 to January 5 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) in San Diego, CA.

It appears they are all counting up races, genders and sexual preferences at the event.




I wonder if the conference will discuss the work of Nobel Prize laureate Gary Becker, particularly his book, The Economics of Discrimination, where he demonstrates that discrimination in the market place by any group reduces their own real incomes as well as those of the minority.

Afterall in 1958 in the AEA publication, the American Economic Review, Melvin W. Reder wrote in a review of Becker's book:
This is an unusual book; not only is it filled with ingenious theorizing but the implications of the theory are boldly confronted with facts. . . . The intimate relation of the theory and observation has resulted in a book of great vitality on a subject whose interest and importance are obvious.
Perhaps the conference should examine the possibility that there may be discrimination in the academic sector of the economics profession because it is generally not subject to the profit motive and also consider the role government may have in providing poor quality education in the inner city, primarily to minorities (not to mention the disastrous Great Society programs launched by LBJ).

Since these types of questions are not being addressed in San Diego, the AEA conference discussion of race, gender and sexual preferences must be considered nothing but shallow politically correct signaling by trend followers who fail to consider true investigation and spend their time on not very meaningful  fads.

-RW


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