Walter Williams asks a question most economists step around, then answers it with prices. How much of the economic gap facing black Americans follows from discrimination, and how much from laws that quietly make it illegal to compete?
His method is to follow the incentives rather than the intentions. Minimum wage laws price the least-skilled off the first rung of the ladder. Occupational licensing turns a trade into a club with a locked door. Taxi medallions and interstate trucking, before and after deregulation, hand him something close to a natural experiment - and the results run the direction the theory predicted.
The conclusion is not that discrimination is imaginary. It is that a discriminating employer in an open market pays for the privilege, while the political process hands him a rulebook to hide behind.
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