Nick Terlizzi, Introduction, Question 6

In my reading of Naked Economics a passage that stuck out to me was the story of the hiring company that had 10 candidates, 9 white and 1 black, who were all equally merit. The company has an affirmative act that says the minority gets the job if they are equally merit with the other contenders. Thus leaving 9 whites without a job feeling discriminated against and angry at the black person who received the job. So when this policy was supposed to benefit the black person it ends up hurting the person in the long run. The book puts it this way "Affirmation action can harm the very race that it seeks to heal"(xx). A good economist thinks about every solution that could go wrong and not just short term benefits or results but the long term effects.