Liberty Alone

The New York Times reports on a strange instance of sex discrimination in the US. It isn’t a simple matter of discrimination against women, but affects both sexes at different times.
The situation is that there are different tariffs on items of clothing based on whether they are for men or women. For example, men’s synthetic swimwear has a 27.8% tariff whilst women’s only has a 11.8% tariff. Women are hard done by when it comes to shoes with a 10% tariff as opposed to an 8.5% one for men’s shoes.

At last, the clothing industry is taking this to court though. Hopefully they will win - striking a blow against sex discrimination and hopefully lowering tariffs at the same time.

Nobody knows why this tariff structure is in place. It is illogical, but then again tariffs themselves are illogical when it comes to the overall economy.

(hat tip: Marginal Revolution)

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.