Freedom, Legislation and Disabilities; J. R. Edwards

The essence of competition is privately owned firms facing off against each other in order to provide the best value to the cus tomer. When the USPS does battle with private firms, a portion of the tax dollars paid by those private firms is spent to hamper their ability to compete against the government monolith, the USPS. That's not efficient, and that's not fair. Ultimately, policy that is open and honest must allow enterprise the unhampered freedom to com pete. Not only should government allow competition, but it should sell off its Postal Service assets, and exit the business. A level playing field in business enterprise does not allow the government to be one of the competitors! D 1. u.s. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1993 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office). Freedom, Legislation, and Disabilities by James Rolph Edwards T he Americans with Disabilities Act, which took effect in January 1992, at tempts to prevent discrimination in employ ment against the disabled and to guarantee access to "public" (Le., business) accom modations. Providing "access" to disabled employees quickly began to generate costly adjustments in physical facilities by busi nesses all over the nation. Within little more than a year, over 9,000 legal complaints had been issued under provisions of the law by individuals who felt that they had been Dr. Edwards is Associate Professor ofEconom ics at Montana State University-Northern.

discriminated against or denied physical access to places of business. Most members of the academic and intel lectual class have welcomed the ADA as a landmark piece of legislation. Complaints by businesses about the costliness of the Act have been dismissed as self-serving. Warn ings by economists, based on more system atic data and estimates, have simply been ignored, washed away in a pious river of emotional arguments. The lack of wheel chair ramps, we are told, indicates that "society cares nothingfor the disabled" ;for the sake of equality we must provide access for the disabled, "whatever the cost."

226 THE FREEMAN • APRIL 1995 The emotive, anti-business argument used tojustify the ADAcompletely mischar acterizes the treatment of the disabled by producers and employers in the market economy. True, not every factory, office,or store has wheelchair ramps, nor have busi nesses adjusted their physical facilities to accommodate all of the special needs of people with various disabilities. Forcing employers to readjust their facilities every time a person with a different disability is hired, would wreak financial havoc if tried. As a matter of simple economics, physical facilities are best designed around the func tion of ordinary people. Other customers and clients must make personal adjust ments. But this does not mean that businessmen are indifferent to the needs of the disabled. Such modem innovations as wheelchairs, prosthetics, hearing aids, and eyeglasses are supplied by business entrepreneurs to meet the specific set of needs of a specific set of market demanders. Such products narrow the effective differences between individuals with disabilities and other per sons, giving the disabled more access to society and social institutions, and in par ticular, making the disabled more employ able. Industries makingsuch products them selves generate additional employment and add to aggregate real output and in come.

Few of these good works resulted from any specific altruistic impulse. Instead, the businessmen who provide such products do so out of self-interested desire for profits. But the genius of the competitive market system, as Adam Smith pointed out, is that it motivates people seeking their own self interest (as most of us do most of the time) to learn about and supply the needs and desires of others. In the resulting voluntary market transactions, both parties gain by obtaining something they want more than what they traded to-the other in exchange. Consider, in contrast, the effects of the ADA. While it certainly makes some dis abled persons better off, it reduces the·net earnings of employers who must, under threat of coercion, make costly adjustments to accommodate the disabled. In addition, reduced earnings of firms throughout the nation mean that aggregate employment must fall relative to its prior level or growth trend. Reduced aggregate employment means reduced aggregate real output and income. Indeed, we may already have ex perienced this decline.

Perhaps worst of all, discrimination against the disabled may even be increased, rather than reduced, contrary to the intent and despite the penalties of the act. This result follows because the ADA, in contrast to the voluntary market provision of prod ucts aimed at reducing disability impair ment, increases the disadvantage of dis abled persons relative to others being considered for employment, by adding to the costs incurred by firms employing a disabled person. Suppose you were a business executive considering two applicants of equal skill for a position that pays $25,000 annually. One of the applicants has a disability. Hiring him would cost your firm an additional $10,000 in legallymandated adjustments to the work place. Which applicant would you hire? It seems likely that disabled applicants will often either not be hired, or hired only at salaries low enough to offset the prospec tive additional costs they generate for the firm.

The ADA is a perfect example of the harmful character of coercive morality leg islation that harms society at large without even benefiting, on net, those it seeks to help. D THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY Fortunately, It's Just a Game by Candace Allen I haven't played Monopoly for years and years. But a few nights ago I was given another chance. Mter I'd banned the tele vision for the evening, my twelve-year-old son persuaded me to play the game with him. It was not the same as I'd so nostalgi cally remembered. Mter being soundly beaten, I found myself reflectingon Monop oly's negative and misleading economic messages. Had I won the game that evening, I may not have made any connections between the assumptions inherent in Monopoly and my previously held attitudes that wealthy peo ple were usually greedy money mongers. But my son beat me, and ·this caused me to do some thinking. He owned four houses each on the yellow spots (Atlantic and Ventnor Avenues and Marvin Gardens), hotels on Boardwalk, Park Place, and the three magenta spots (St. Charles Place, Virginia, and States Avenues). Though I owned three railroads, the two utilities, three houses on the red spots (Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois Avenues), and hotels on the light blue spots (the cheap part of town), I could not long compete with him in the win-losegame. When the game was over my son added up his assets and gloated that he was richer and more powerful than I. I felt slightlyirritatedthathe had takenme to the cleaners by owning so much! His kiss goodnight included a pleasant, "Thanks, Mom, for losing all of your hard-earned Ms. Allen is a social studies and economics teacher at the Pueblo School of the Arts and Sciences, a Colorado charter school.