<p>Please post a link to the poll or whatever you are referencing in the above-linked thread. Also, both here and in that thread, you/me fail to properly define the term 'economic AA'. To me, a form of economic AA is already in place, the one where the adcom adjusts it's expectations to what kind of school you went to, and takes into consideration if you had to work to help with paying bills. The fin. aid packages could also be considered economic AA.
If, as I suspect, your definition of economic AA is that we should have quotas, so every year Harvard is trying to have 20% of it's kids from a low income bracket becasue 20% of the pop. is in that bracket. If this is the type of thing you mean, then I would venture a guess that most kids who are against racial AA are against 'economic AA' for the following reasons: Quotas are never good, they are bound to cause tension and leave out some who should have made the cut, and accept some who really shouldn't have, just for the sake of reaching an 'ideal' number. Plus, in much the same way racial AA puts whites and Asians at a disadvantage, this type of AA would be a terrible deal for the middle class. As a school like Harvard would increase it's amount of poor acceptees, the costs to them in fin. aid would skyrocket. They would be forced to admit more of those who can pay full price to make up for it, squeezing the middle class. This is already happening on a small scale. The adcoms at top schools frequently admit that they admit more kids from the top level of income to be able to pay for more of the low income kids. As racial AA breeds and encourages stereotypes and hatred towards minorities, so would this type of economic AA breed malevolence towards the poor. Now that would be bad! To make the public opinion, generally inclined towards charity, against the disadvantaged? Not a good idea. </p>
<p>It brings up an interesting little parable I just read in a D'Souza book that demonstrates a point about the welfare state in general, but could also be applied to types of economic AA, where some of it is already happening on a VOLUNTARY basis. It demonstrates why we might not want to make economic AA an official policy so to speak.</p>
<p>Say a you are sitting on a bench with a sandwich, and a poor man comes up and asks you for it. You can give him the sandwich, and you will feel good about yourself, and you will know that perhaps someday the poor man will return your kindness to someone else. Also, the man is fed. It is generally a good outcome for both, so you do it often. You have, without a doubt, performed a good moral deed.
Now suppose the same situation, except that this time, when the man asks for the sandwich, another man with a gun comes over, points it at your head, takes the sandwich, and gives it to the poor man. Every times this happens, you develop an animosity towards the armed man, and eventually a hatred of the poor man. The poor man begins to feel that it is his right to recieve the sandwiches, and becomes ungrateful to the armed man, always demanding more.
The two situations have the exact same result. You lsoe a sandwich that the poor man gains. But were the actions of the armed man moral? Most of us would say no.</p>