Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Adler. I was hoping it was going to be a tough question like the meaning of complete contracts in marriage, but this one's pretty easy.
There's no question that now and then you're going to bump into that kind of conflict. But to presume that it is an eternal conflict and that it is readily accessible of some logical policy response is a different question altogether. The term that labour economists use is “lump of labour”. If you're going to have a conflict between new entrants, current entrants, older entrants, that's only a binding constraint if you really think there are only so many jobs to go around. In a growing economy, that's just not the case.
Things like employment set-asides or special programs in public contracting are going to involve trade-offs and other kinds of unfairness, and if I were an older worker looking to get back into the labour force, I'd be really upset to find that I couldn't bid fairly for a job against someone who is younger, who had preference for the contract.