Inspired Idiot of the Week: American Psychological Association

“Can Selecting the Most Qualified Candidate Be Unfair?” asked researchers in a recent study published by the American Psychological Association.

And the short answer, according to this new ‘science’, is a resounding YES: hiring the most qualified people based purely on their merit and talent is unfair.

Naturally they don’t actually discuss WHY. They just take it as a well-known fact that merit-based hiring is bad, while diversity & inclusion hiring is good.

The actual experiments that the researchers discussed in their paper had to do with how easily they could brainwash and manipulate people into believing that “merit-based hiring and promotion processes [are] significantly less fair.”

Quite easily, it turns out. The results of their experiments show that they can easily “disrupt the perceived fairness of meritocracy”.

They’re also excited to take their research even further by “exploring whether the manipulations developed here can be effective” in other ways, like making “diversity policies” less “polarizing”.

By lifting its countenance upon this research and publishing it in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, this ideological drivel is now considered ‘science’.

So, the next time some Inspired Idiot wails about how wonderful diversity and inclusion is… and justify their position by saying things like “studies show” and “the science says”, we can thank the American Psychological Association.

Now, this is just one research paper written by a few fanatical academics pushing their agenda. It’s hardly anything to get bent out of shape about.

But it is a small example of the direction of the nation. And that direction can be summed up in a single word: WRONG.

I’ve written extensively how the problems facing the US aren’t even really political at this point. It’s a question of arithmetic.

The government’s own baseline forecast estimates an additional $20 trillion in new debt over the next decade, on top of the $34 trillion debt they already have.

Most likely this will result in a substantial amount of inflation, plus loss of reserve status for the US dollar, over the next 5-7 years.

I’ve also argued that the US has a very narrow window of opportunity to turn things around. And one of the key ways to do that is to increase productivity.

If there were a true economic bonanza in the US— a surge in production of goods and services— then that would largely solve the problem.

Massive economic growth would lead to a major increase in tax revenue… meaning that the government could solve its perennial deficit problem simply by generating more revenue, as opposed to cutting costs.

And by the way, I’m not talking about raising tax rates.

Just look at the history of taxation in the US: since the end of World War II, the top individual income tax rates in the US have varied tremendously— from as low as 28% in the 1980s, to as high as 91% in the 1960s. Yet despite these fluctuations, the government’s overall tax revenue (as a percentage of GDP) has been very consistent— around 17% of GDP.

In other words, it doesn’t matter how high they raise tax rates. Overall tax revenue, i.e. the government’s ‘slice’ of the economic pie, will remain the same.

The implication? The only real way to generate more tax revenue is to make the pie bigger.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to do this: stop debilitating large and small businesses with mountains of rules and regulations.

Every day there seem to be calls for more anti-business, anti-capitalism, anti-productivity policies. New reports to file. Wealth taxes. Or my favorite, the Labor Department’s recent 800-page proposal to make sure your small business builds enough bathrooms to conform to everyone’s gender identity.

These sorts of things take economic productivity backward, not forward.

And this new ‘science’ by the American Psychology Association— demanding that businesses should NOT hire people based on merit— is just another small step backward.

It’s the wrong direction, plain and simple. And it’s why I’m not holding my breath that the Inspired Idiots in charge will suddenly start doing what’s necessary to turn the ship around.

Again, though, this should not be a cause for panic or dread.

I’ve also written extensively that rational, thinking people can mitigate the consequences of this Rule by Inspired Idiots.

Gold, for example, tends to perform extremely well in the chaotic, inflationary times that I anticipate. And one potential low-cost approach would be to buy options on long-term gold futures as a hedge against inflation down the road.

We’ll explain more about this, as well as the benefit of owning real assets, next week.

Source

Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur and permanent traveler. His daily letter is both educational and entertaining, and we suggest that those who want unbiased, actionable information about global opportunities sign up for Sovereign Man’s free, actionable newsletter at http://www.SovereignMan.com.

From Simon Black of SovereignMan.com