Always finding a problem, but never offering a reasonable solution!

American Psychological Association Claims Hiring the Most Qualified Job Applicants Is 'Unfair'

Socioeconomic disadvantages early in life can undermine educational achievement, test scores, and work experiences. In this way, inequality can undermine equal opportunity. Yet when we evaluate the fairness of merit-based processes, people tend to ignore this broader context and the effects of inequality.

Want the true reality? Life is designed to be unfair. People are born with different skill set and skill levels and it is never fair. Some people are simply smarter than others. Some are born with better looks and more charisma. Some are born athletically gifted. Some are born with artistic abilities. Some are born with cognitive mental issues or personality disorders. Some are born with physical disabilities. That is simply life.

No matter how hard I work, I was never going to become the star center of an NBA team standing 6' 1". I was never going to become an Olympic shot putter weighing 185 lbs. I was never going to be a brilliant theoretical physicist with an IQ below genius level. I love music, but I am no musical prodigy. I am not a bad looking guy, but I was not going to be hired to do underwear commercials. There are certain limitations to life that just exist because of this thing called reality.

Ultimately I was never going to go to an Ivy league school because none of those schools were recruiting students from a small southern Minnesota school district and because my parents did not have the resources to pay for anything like that. Their assistance for my college was to give me a place to live if I went to the local school (which coincidently was the best computer science school in the state at the time). But I never looked at the socio-economic portion of my life any differently than I looked at any other limitation. I did the best I could with the skills, abilities, and resources I had. I worked multiple jobs and paid my way through college and got a degree in computer science, with minors in math and business. I made the deans list on multiple occasions, but did not graduate with any honors.

Today, however, the entire focus of how life is unfair is based entirely on socio-economic situations with the emphasis on socio. Being a "white male" growing up without a lot of financial resources would not make me part of the class of people these experts want to single out as being treated unfairly. I would have to be both a person of some protected social group (racial, sexual, religious) and a person who had limited resources before an employer passing on me would be seen as unfair. In fact, I believe that even someone of the correct social status who had money might be seen as more demanding of help than a White Male who did not have financial resources.

However, the fact that have never really attempted to apply for a job I was otherwise not qualified for means I have never been in a situation where I felt the world was unfair to me. I have tempered my expectations. I have not applied to be an attorney or a doctor or a physicist because I am not qualified to be one. I don't see my lack of qualifications as an unfair disadvantage for me in those situations, but that seems to be where many people are going.

It's one thing to suggest we should live in a society where everyone gives what they can and takes what they need (sort of the cornerstone of the communist ideal). But it's entirely another when we decide that everyone should have the same chance to be a brain surgeon, regardless of qualifications and that it is inherently unfair to hire the most qualified person to do that job. That is not a solution, it is simply a dangerous pile of political rhetoric.