Science of Money: The Workplace Melting Pot

I was watching a segment on the Colbert Report, as I've been a fan since my senior year in High School, with an author, Christopher Cauldwell, who was discussng Islam in Europe. He makes the claim that in Europe, Muslims aren't assimilating into the culture as well, because they are capable to maintain an insular community due to a welfare system which allows them to remain in said communities.

Supposedly, due to the less-generous American Welfare system, we force workers to assimilate into the American Workplace, or get out of the nation. And while there is certainly truth to this statement, I don't believe it has as much power as Mr. Cauldwell would leave us to believe.

A lot of communities in America, and the world, are insular. The most common form of this is geographic isolation. Many of the services and money spent on services, stay in the same community. If you live in a small town in Maine and the nearest population center is 50 miles a way, you won't drive out there to get your hair cut, as you would spend an extra $10 (round trip) or so in gas money, and the cost of your haircut would be $25 as opposed to $15. So it becomes highly unlikely that you would go to this other barbershop, and thus your money would stay in the community. This goes for the vast majority of other services, and retail locations.

However, even in larger communities social differences also increase the isolation of a community. A Jesuit practitioner can't go to the same butcher as a Christian, and even the existance of a language barrier, like Yiddish, further isolates that community. And the natural tendency of a person to promote and hire those who share their values (and as such their backgrounds), not to mention community needs of a business, make it more likely that they will hire those from within their own community. A Jerk Chicken restaraunt will need to hire someone who knows how to cook Jerk Chicken. The manager of the restaraunt may attribute his success in the industry to growing up in Jamaica. And patrons, may feel more comfortable with the cliches of a Jerk Chicken cook as opposed to say, a Latino cook. So it makes it much more likely that the restaruant will hire someone from Jamaica who knows how to cook Jerk Chicken.

So unlike what Mr Cauldwell says, a person's ability to assimilate with a culture begins in the public sector, not in the private sector. This begins with education and access to education, which not only increases a person's technical and academic ability, but forces them to open their minds to new ideas and new people. In addition community and social events where the idea is to purposefully encourage diversification will increase the ability of immigrants to assimilate.

Just a little bit of food for thought. What are your opinions on this topic? Does the public or private sector have more influence on cultural assimilation.