Monthly Archives: March 2018

Salami tactics in everyday life

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Salami tactics mean doing something others dislike little by little to keep them from obstructing or retaliating. Each small step is too small to be worth retaliation, but together the steps add up to an action that, if taken all at once, would definitely be worth stopping or retaliating for.
I have neighbours who put their unwanted things (broken bicycles, toys, furniture) in my parking space, using salami tactics. They don’t put the objects right in the middle of the space all at once, but initially put them mostly outside my parking space, with a small part of the object sticking into the space. If I don’t do anything, then the neighbours shift the objects so that a somewhat larger fraction of them is in my space, or add more objects that slightly stick into the space. If I push some of their rubbish out of my space, then other things appear, sticking into a different part of the space. They have plausible deniability in case I confront them – the object was only slightly in my space, so placing it there can be excused as an accident. This dance has gone on over a year, with them pushing their stuff into my space when I’m not there and me pushing it out when they are not there. Their encroachment attempts have become somewhat humorous, and I am observing them as a social science field study. The same encroachment happens in the common hallway, which fire regulations require to be clear at all times, but where the neighbours store their unwanted furniture. The furniture starts out near their door and gradually moves further and spreads out.
People in another house in this suburb have gradually squatted on a piece of the public park. They planted a hedge around that piece, which adjoins their dwelling. Now it is somewhat difficult to get into that part of the park (one has to squeeze through the hedge), so other people have stopped going there. It is effectively a private garden. The hedge did not appear overnight – the planting happened at a rate of about one bush per month, so it wasn’t too obvious to people who regularly pass through the park. The squatters planted the bushes in daylight, so deniability would have been a bit stretched if someone had confronted them. To some extent, planting one bush at a time in a public park can still be claimed an idle hobby, with no intent to encroach. However, the hedge that now clearly encloses a plot next to their dwelling does look suspicious.
A related tactic does not slice the salami slowly over time, but slices it many times at once to different people. At work, there are people who, upon receiving a task from the boss, ask one colleague at their level to help with one part of the task, another colleague to help with another part, etc, until they have delegated the whole task piece by piece. Each piece comes with an excuse why the delegator cannot do it. Then when the colleagues ask for help in return, the delegator is absent, unavailable due to family responsibilities or has some other excuse.

“Relative to opportunity” evaluation and anti-discrimination laws

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Most countries have some anti-discrimination laws, requiring employers to pay people with different productivities equally, or to give someone who took parental leave their job back after they return. One reason why unequally productive people are paid equally is evaluation “relative to opportunity”, i.e. the bar for a promotion or a raise is lower for someone from a historically disadvantaged group or who has family responsibilities. Suppose that there is a consensus in society for supporting certain groups. Why might the cost of this support be placed only on specific employers, namely those who employ the target group? Why doesn’t the support take the form of direct subsidies from the government to the target group, financed by taxing all employers equally?
An explanation from political economy is as follows. Clever people in society or government want to pay a larger subsidy to high-income members of the target group, perhaps because the clever people are themselves high-income and belong to the target group. However, the majority of voters would not like high-income people getting a bigger subsidy. So the clever people disguise the subsidy as something that looks equal, namely every member of the target group gets the same duration of parental leave, the same guarantee of their job back at the end of leave, the same privileges and special treatment for promotions and raises. The value of these guarantees and privileges is greater for higher-paying jobs. For example, a promotion from a high-paying job usually gives a bigger salary increase than from a low-paying job. A guarantee of getting a high-paying job back after parental leave is worth more than a guaranteed low-paid job. Thus the support provided to the high-income members of the target group is more valuable.
Further, productivity at a high-income job is typically more responsive to the employee’s human capital, and the skills deteriorate faster. A truck driver who has not driven for some years retains a greater fraction of driving ability than a surgeon retains from surgical technique after not operating for the same number of years. The productivity difference between an employee returning from parental leave and someone continuously employed is on average greater for higher-paying jobs. So the cost to an employer of keeping a job for a returning employee instead of hiring a new person is greater if the job is higher-paid. The subsidy to the high-income members of the target group thus costs more per person.
Income is positively correlated with intelligence, so the smart members of the target group are likely the wealthy members who benefit from this kind of unequal subsidy. They are likely to vote and campaign in favour of the unequal support, instead of an equal cash subsidy for everyone. The less smart members of the target group who lose from an unequal subsidy (compared to an equal one) are less likely to understand that they lose. This makes them abstain from opposing the unequal subsidy.
In effect, the smart members of the target group redistribute a baseline-equal subsidy from the less smart (and less wealthy) to themselves, at the social cost of losing some efficiency in the economy. Keeping a job for someone when a more productive potential hire is available means losing the difference in the productivities of the two people. Such efficiency losses are typical of re-distributive policies that are not cash transfers.
In principle, the cost of the current policies could still be equally distributed between employers by taxing them all and subsidising those who employ the target group. Or equivalently, taxing only those who don’t employ the target group. However, to equalise the cost to employers, the firms employing highly-paid members of the target group must be compensated more than the ones employing low-paid members. The differential compensation to firms would call attention to the unequal support that people with different incomes are receiving, thus weakening the disguise of the subsidy. The clever people want to avoid that, so do not campaign for equalising the costs of anti-discrimination laws across employers.