I absolutely love this idea: The Bad Boss Tax

[possiblylogical]

48. Taking steps to avoiding discrimination would be a mess.

You are basically giving people the incentive to discriminate and then telling them not to. This is problematic in and of itself because people will try to work around the law. This inevitably means there has to be an enforcement mechanism, and the costs associated with it.

Then there is a question of how you would actually structure the law to avoid having discrimination. These types of things are never easy. Different industries and different locations generally have different types of workers. Would you insist that every company had to have an even number of people from every relevant demographic? If you would, it would be a mess.

If you do not use quotas, then you allow the employers to use tricks that help them determine whether someone is likely to use public assistance. They can use tricks such as statistically discriminating by overemphasizing job characteristics that are relevant to employment and give an indication that the employee is less likely to use public assistance. These types of things are hard to challenge legally.

If the goal is to get people off of public assistance, why not just raise the minimum wage? It would avoid all of this mess.