Disabling the Economy

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

If we are looking for the reason our "recovery" is indistinguishable from a recession, regulatory legislation like the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is a good place to start.

Leftists have long based social policy on the idea that all people are exactly alike, or should be forced to behave as if they were. But with the most wacky piece of egalitarian legislation in history, the feds have surpassed themselves.

Unlike the expensive Clean Air Act, for example, the ADA is not industry specific. It affects every business in the country with 25 employees or more (and 15 or more by 1994), forcing them to pretend that the physically, mentally, and emotionally disabled (and "disabled") are identical to the non-disabled, and to spend to make it so.

Say you're a small businessman, barely alive thanks to the recession and high taxes, and a man who cannot see applies for the job of office manager. You cannot turn him down, even though the job requires reading, for that would be "discrimination." You have to hire another employee to read to him. If you hesitate, you pay back wages and, thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1991, massive damages.

The ADA also protects those who have trouble learning, reasoning, and remembering. If a supermarket manager refuses to hire a dimwit to ring the cash register, he can be taken to court. A sales manager may prefer salesmen who can remember customers' names and preferences, not to mention products, but discrimination against the memory impaired is not allowed.

People with emotional problems (which do not include being driven crazy by radical egalitarianism) are included as well. Does a thousand-mile stare make you and your employees uneasy? You're out of luck, for this is no longer a chilling quirk but a certified disability.

Would you rather not hire a warehouseman with a history of drug use? If he's off crack this week, he's on your payroll.

Say the applicant is a dyslexic with a history of drug addiction who not only has trouble reading, but can't learn or reason well thanks to minor brain damage. If he applies, you have to hire him, and make necessary accommodations.

Thanks to Jesse Helms, the ADA (until it's amended in the Clinton administration) allows discrimination against transvestites and transsexuals. But not to worry – the gender challenged can be covered under some other disability. They may have AIDS or be considered loony. Or perhaps they're fat or ugly; the scale impaired and facially disabled, like those with HIV, are covered by the ADA as well.

Businesses can try to escape some of this by requiring certain abilities in a written job description, but they must be able to show, in a court of law, that the requirements are essential to the job.

Unfortunately, businesses do not always know ahead of time what a person will be required to do. So they look for qualities like character and attitude. But these are unquantifiable, and therefore, to the government, irrelevant (as you can tell by visiting any government office).

Until the courts decide, businesses cannot be sure what compliance requires. That's why more than two-thirds of American companies have done nothing to prepare.

To make up for that, government and private interest groups will use "testers." These actors, who will want to find all the discrimination they can, will terrify small businesses. The smaller the business, the more ADA hurts. That's why big business didn't oppose it. How nice to have the government clobber your up-and-coming competition.

How could this legislation have passed? In Washington, D.C., economics takes a back-seat to special interest lobbying. Both the Bush administration and the Democrats favored the bill, and few dared speak the truth.

A free market means allowing owners to hire, fire, promote, and pay based on their assessment of an employer's contribution. But American businesses have lost that ability, setting us on the road to civil-rights socialism. Even the Soviets recognized that people's abilities and attitudes affected their economic roles.

Truly disabled people need strong families, personal initiative, a growing and free economy, and private acts of charity. Draconian legislation does not substitute, and it can cripple the economy. The last thing we need is American business on crutches.