Hamilton's 20/20 Vision

There's more to James Hamilton's blog than high-quality energy economics. His latest is an incisive analysis of an Americans with Disabilities related lawsuit:

If Boone was indeed fired because she was blind, is it a relevant fact that her replacement, Pamela Shaw, is also blind? Apparently not to Mr. Scolforo, who omitted this detail from the AP account. Nor was it deemed relevant to the 100 other news outlets that Google News says carried this story last week, but none of which Google claims also included the name "Shaw". I only found the fact from the pajama-clad bloggers at Overlawyered.com.

And now the big picture:

Elsewhere in the news, drug maker Merck, which other juries are destined to plunder for many, many billions of dollars, announced it will eliminate 7,000 jobs and close or sell 5 manufacturing facilities.

Not to worry. This is just an example of what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. As soon as we can get those former Merck employees retrained as lawyers, they'll be doing something that society values more than developing medicines that ease pain or cure disease.

The market has spoken. Who am I to argue?

If you're sarcasm-impaired, read the whole post.

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