Affirmative Action and the Economic Costs of “Diversity”

R ac i al P r e fe r e nc e s Thr i ve und e r t he B ush A dm i ni str ati on

Edwin S. Rubenstein S

YNOPSIS

In their 1993

Forbes

article, “When Quotas Replace Merit, Everybody

Suffers,” Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer determined that the “total

shortfall” or cost attributed to federal compliance with affirmative

action policies and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

(EEOC) regulations was close to four percent of GNP or well over

$225 billion. As the authors pointed out, the total economic cost of

racial preferences and diversity in both the private and public sector is

difficult to pinpoint in an aggregate sum, but is not impossible to

calculate in terms of a reasonably reliable estimate. The following

paper analyzes the economic costs to taxpayers as a result of federal

compliance with affirmative action and equal employment-based

regulations. Estimates show “that for every dollar spent on regulatory

enforcement, about twenty dollars is spent on compliance costs by the

private sector.” The policy implications of federal EEOC regulations

apply an unnecessary burden in terms of direct and indirect costs to

taxpayers, in addition to undercutting merit-based employment

practices, and therefore Executive Order 11246 and subsequent

regulations should be repealed.