It’s Equal Pay Day, everyone!
As per tradition, progressives mark the occasion by using fabricated numbers to drive a destructive narrative of division and faux-victimhood.
In other words, Equal Pay Day is just like any other day, except with more hashtags.
During the State of the Union, Obama referred to the ‘wage gap’ as a ‘workplace policy that belongs in a Mad Men episode.’ Dutifully, his cattle constituents have latched onto the State-approved talking point and run with it:
This afternoon, Obama again addressed the phantom wage gap by signing another executive order, and delivering a few pandering remarks on a stage strategically decorated with mutli-cultural female props.
Despite the fact that the White House has admitted that the “women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns” rhetoric is misleading and false, Obama chose to regurgitate it anyway:
“Now, here’s the challenge: Today, the average full-time working woman earns just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns; for African American women, Latinas, it’s even less. And in 2014, that’s an embarrassment. It is wrong.”
As many have pointed out, the hypocrisy here is staggering. In Obama’s own staff, women make substantially less than men. Even in the Senate, the Democrat leaders have all selected men as their top aides.
Imagine the arrogance of a man who gallops in front of cameras, pledging to rescue all of womanhood from the oppressive grasp of the national wage gap, while electing to maintain those disparities for the females in his immediate employ.
Wow. Next thing you know, the dude will be sermonizing about the evils of guns while surrounded by armed men, or preaching about the dastardly One Percent while hoarding millions of dollars and refusing to donate his entire presidential salary to the poor.
Ah, but surely even this president couldn’t be that unwilling to live by the standards he wishes to impose upon the rest of us.
So I’d like to cut Obama some slack (he’s earned it!) and instead address the two primary suppositions behind the ‘wage gap’ rhetoric.
First, that anything useful can be gleaned from the vague statement that ‘women earn less than men,’ and second, that the actual existence of a wage gap automatically proves discrimination.
Let’s start with the first thing first:
Do women make ’77 cents for every dollar men earn’? Sure, according to some figures. But that statistic is about as meaningful as saying, ‘women give birth to one hundred percent of the babies’ or that they ‘spend a billion dollars more each year at the gynecologist.’ All of these things are probably true, but if you cite them in an effort to prove discrimination, you are being ridiculous.
You’re also lying.
The ’77 cents’ figure lies by omission.
Purposefully left out of the equation are relevant details like: tenure, job title, hours worked, region, experience, skill level, industry, occupation, safety risks, education level and difficulty. The figure simply compares all women and all men who work over 35 hours in any job, in any part of the country, for any period of time, at any experience level, however poorly or however competently.
A receptionist working 38 hours a week at your local dentist’s office is evenly stacked up against a stock broker or a coal miner. The salary of a male neurosurgeon is compared to a female manicurist. A male electrician is contrasted against a Denny’s waitress.
In all cases, the disparity is shoved under the ‘wage gap’ blanket, and used to paint a picture of sexism and paternalistic oppression.
Men are more likely to work dangerous, physically demanding, high stress jobs. They’re more likely to work weekends and holidays. They’re more likely to be willing to relocate. They’re more likely to pursue jobs in higher paying fields.
Loggers and steel workers are paid well, but the job requires the sort of brute force that most women don’t possess. A job on an offshore oil rig will pay handsomely because of the risks, the physical nature of the work, and the demands it places on your time. You will find more men taking these positions than women, but are we ready to chalk that up to ‘discrimination’?
Women business owners earn 50 percent less than men business owners. Does this mean women business owners are discriminating against themselves? Does it mean that customers often refuse to patronize a certain establishment if they find out it’s owned by a woman?
Probably not.
So, 77 cents on the dollar? Ok, and…? What does that prove?
This is the kind of math only done by politicians and propagandists. If you need workable and realistic numbers — statistics that tell you something important or relevant or even slightly functional — you would, obviously, control for factors that threaten to wildly skew your data, disproportionately impact the equation, and fog your ultimate conclusion.
Imagine this hypothetical. A crazy guy puts a gun to your head:
Guy with gun: Do some research and come back with one solid figure that will give me the clearest insight into gender discrimination in the workplace, or I’ll kill you!
You: Ok, here! I’ve got it! Women earn 77 percent of what men earn!
Guy with gun: Hmmm, that is compelling. Did you control for hours worked?
You: No.
Guy with gun: Type of job?
You: No.
Guy with gun: Experience level?
You: No.
Guy with gun: Tenure?
You: No.
Guy with gun: Geographic region? Risk? Skill level? Overtime? Holidays?
You: Well, no. And no. And no. And no. And no.
Guy with gun: So this is a number that merely reflects the fact that, broadly speaking, women and men work different hours, in different fields, with different skills, with different educational backgrounds, for different periods of time, in different parts of the country, in different positions, assuming different degrees of risk?
You: Yes.
Guy with gun: [BLAM]
See how that hypothetical ended? You died.
But don’t worry, you wouldn’t die in real life, because in real life you wouldn’t use that 77 percent figure if you felt any incentive to be honest and forthright. This is a number that works only for stump speeches and Facebook debates. It clouds the issue, and that is its precise purpose.
Now, all of this said, what if you narrow the field down a bit and still find a gap?
You’ve probably seen this study bandied about. According to research published last year, female doctors make about 50 grand less annually than male doctors.
Ah, a smoking gun of sexism and misogyny. Discrimination, at last! What else could it be?
Well, it could be, for one thing, the fact that women gravitate towards pediatrics while men are more likely to be surgeons and radiologists. Men go for the higher paying specialties, and women tend to become family care doctors.
Surgeons make more than pediatricians. Women are more likely to be pediatricians. Hence, women are more likely to make less money in the medical field. Discrimination?
No, it’s called choice.
Indeed, no matter where you look, you probably won’t find demonstrable and provable sexism, but you will find women making choices that lead to more time at home, more time working with children, and lower wages.
And thank God for that.
The Department of Labor — hardly a conservative think tank — published its own report on the wage gap. They admit that “economic research has identified numerous factors that contribute to the observed difference between wages paid to women and wages paid to men, commonly called the gender wage gap. Many relate to differences in the choices and behavior of women and men in balancing their work, personal, and family lives. These factors include, most notably, the occupations and industries in which they work, and their human capital development, work experience, career interruptions, and motherhood.” Read the full report here.
No matter what the progressive radicals say, many women still put family above fortune. Their nurturing instincts still often drive them towards caring for kids — whether their own or someone else’s.
And thank God for that.
Despite the urgings of these consumerist drones who place ‘professional success’ and ‘workplace advancement’ above all things, many people still decide to strive for something deeper.
And thank God for that.
The gender wage gap exists, in large part, because women are still more likely to take time off when they have kids, and if they do return to the workforce, they’re more likely to make professional choices that prioritize their children over their careers.
And thank God for that.
When you lament the ‘wage gap’ you are lamenting the fact that women like to be with their families, and they frequently choose jobs that allow them to care for children. You might see this as a travesty of justice, but I see it as something absolutely healthy, empowering, and wonderful.
If you really want to come up with a statistic that gives insight into sexism, you’d need to look at people with the same tenure and job title, working the same hours, in the same region, with the same experience, with the same skill level, in the same industry, in the same occupation, with the safety risks, with the same education and competency level and doing a task with the same difficulty, but then you’d also need to ensure that they have the same professional ambitions, made the same choices, have the same priorities and proclivities and personal inclinations, and are a part of the same sort of family dynamic.
Then, once you’ve somehow numerically quantified all of that, you merely have to come up with the ability to peer into an employer’s soul and determine if discrimination and sexism are behind the pay differences between all of these individuals. But this would require you to first disprove other biases. You’d have to rule out a prejudice based on age, or personality, or body odor, or any multitude of other human characteristics that might cause another human to view them in a positive or negative light.
There. Simple enough.
Come back when you’ve done all the calculations.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to see the wage gap as an indication that men and women are different, make different choices, and have different goals and ambitions that manifest themselves in different ways, and are achieved through different means.
And thank God for that.
The Matt Walsh Blog 
Yes, thank God women make different choices to men. Why shouldn’t they get paid the same for those choices? Why should loggers and steel mill workers get paid decently while our nurses and teachers get paid less? Why is brute force valued over caring and nurturing? That’s why the wage gap is real, and discriminatory. The important roles women play in our community are too often taken for granted and undervalued.
Well, actually nurses and teachers are generally paid fairly well, especially (in the case of teachers) considering the amount of time they get off per year. Both professions are heavily unionized, and men and women bargain as a group. Nursing as a career is likely to keep growing as the baby boomers retire, and loggers and steel workers have been losing their jobs for decades; that portion of the economy is shrinking. Also, steel workers are far more likely to lose a limb or die: these are dangerous professions. Not a lot of limbs lost in elementary classrooms. That risk comes at a premium. Also, you can teach well into your seventies; not a lot of seventy year old loggers out there. Also, on top of all this, once you figure in benefits, it is likely that teachers and nurses (particularly nurses) are already paid more than steel workers and loggers (as is likely fine given the formal education required: this also comes at a premium.)
The main problem here though is that you seem to assume that these people should be paid the same no matter what their choice, which is really only true in command (largely communist) countries, which hasn’t worked out very well for most of the people in those economies, last time I checked. The freedom to choose implies that you chose to accept the pay that goes with that choice. If you want a logger’s salary (I don’t), do your best to become a logger.
Another issue here is you seem to assume that we should pay teachers more to eradicate the pay gap with women. Yet there is no evidence that there is any pay gap with male teachers, so are you also going to raise the pay of the male teachers? Won’t that offset whatever reduction in the supposed pay gap that you achieve?
The idea of a government mandated pay rate by profession (which seems to be what you are advocating) is tremendously burdensome, unlikely to solve the hypothetical problem at issue, and likely to both unfairly punish men in the same profession (assuming you only pay women more) and distort the (already distorted) market.
I may have misunderstood you, but what you at least seem to be advocating makes little sense to me.
You’ve got NO IDEA how little time teachers actually get off. They don’t take summers off starting on the last day of school and going back at the beginning of the school year. The typical teacher gets off a couple weeks in the summer, a month IF you’re lucky. Want to argue that they’re lucky to get this unpaid time off? Consider that they’re salaried, and it’s not uncommon to work 65+ hours a week. Get there at 7, an hour before the kids, use your lunch break to discuss issues with other teachers, and stay until 4:30 or 5 for parent-teacher meetings and to help kids, and then go home to grade papers. Many teachers are on call in the evenings and on weekends if a parent needs to talk to them.
Yeah, $28K, the typical starting teacher pay in my area, is greeeaaaaat pay for all this work.
Still, you are assuming all teachers are women. I’m not saying that we should not raise the pay of teachers. I think you are absolutely right. It is grueling work and teachers are doing an incredible service. However, the point here is that men are teachers and nurses as well. Therefore, if we raise the pay for these professions, we are raising the pay of male workers, in turn, maintaining the same “gap”.
Actually, by far the majority of teachers (upwards of 80%) and nurses (more than 90%) are women, so raising pay for these professions would certainly go some way towards closing the gap since more women than men would benefit from an increase.
You can if you prepare well enough. When I was a teacher ten years ago (now I stay home with the kids), I got the entire summer off, starting the day the kids got out and I didn’t have to go back until two weeks before school started for training and preparations. I had to be there 20 minutes before the bell rang and had to stay until 30 minutes after the bell rang at the end of the day, and I used that time to get all my prep work done. My workday was literally 7 hours long and I used every moment I could to get my work done so I didn’t have to take it home. I never took it home and rarely stayed extra hours. If you work hard and don’t waste time, you can accomplish all you need to in the timeframe given. I looked around at other teachers who used their ten minute breaks to socialize or run errands, and I didn’t do that. I never had parents calling me at home, in the evening or on weekends, so that notion of being on call is ridiculous (nor have I ever contacted the teacher of any of my kids on a weekend or after school, unless it has been by email, but people check personal and work email all the time, so that shouldn’t count). When I figured out my pay hourly once, I found that I made more than my husband per hours worked (at a salary of $32k/year in California) at his job as a fast food restaurant shift manager. He was making $14/hr and I was making like $18/hr, when I figured it out.
This isn’t a decade ago. You don’t know what teachers are dealing with TODAY.
As for this not being a decade ago: My wife is a public school teacher and still gets out the last day of school with the kids (some years might have one extra day after) and does not go back until two weeks before kids start classes. Your example that says it is not like it was a decade ago may be true for you and some others, but it is definitely not universal.
Amen.
You clearly show your ignorance of the teaching profession. Nope, crossing gang lines daily to go teach in an inner city school isn’t life threatening like being a steel mill worker. And jeez, you know it, working at a steel mill is so much more important that caring for 45 students in a typical city elementary school, or 200 high school students a day! Most teachers get 4 weeks off in the summer plus Xmas and spring break – the 3 months off myth was in the 1970s, before lengthening of the school year/ day (with no pay increases) became the trend… school ends in late June and starts in early August, and teachers are required to go to professional development, plan syllabus/curriculum for upcoming school year in the summer. But you go ahead and give your ignorant definition of a teacher as nothing more than a part-time glorified babysitter. IGNORANT. I hate when a non-teacher tries to act like he knows anything about the teaching profession.
Rita sounds like you need to find another job or union.
Wow, you really made a lot of assumptions about what I said. I was not advocating for any kind of government mandates on pay, or suggesting male teachers should get paid less than female teachers, nor was I saying that communism is the way to go. I was simply trying to draw attention to the fact that the kinds of professions favoured by women and that tend to suit traditional female roles, are paid less than the kinds of professions chosen by men, and that this is where the discrimination is. The 77cents figure is misleading, but just because you can trash it doesn’t mean that there is no discrimination. The discrimination comes from the fact that lower value that is placed on women’s contributions to society and to their communities compared to men’s contributions. One example: two friends of mine, a married couple, completed the same amount of education, achieved their degrees in the same year, but in their first jobs she was earning just over half what he was. Their professions: she is a teacher and he is an engineer. The both work in low risk environments, work similar hours over the course of a year, and deal with similar levels of stress. The argument that we can all choose our profession and therefore our pay doesn’t hold water. It assumes that we make career choices based on money; most people make career choices based on what they enjoy, and their natural aptitudes. Why should the skills of women be valued less? Isn’t teaching just as important to our society as logging or designing bridges? I don’t have a problem with pay reflecting how good you are at what you do, or the level of learning required to become competent, but I do have a problem with a society that consistently rewards male-dominated professions at higher level (i.e. more money) than female-dominated ones.
What you and many others seem to miss is exactly what justifies a high salary. Things made of steel and wood cost money, a LOT of money. People spend money buying them. As such, it’s easy to say “This guy produced enough wood to make 100 chair costing $10 each thus his labor is worth $1,000 for that time period minus other associate expenses.”
Granted, if logging were safe and easy, and any moron with limited physical ability could do it, the labor would be worth less as the pool of applicants grew (supply and demand), but that’s not the case.
Engineers need a very high level of intelligence. The majority in this country lack the intelligence necessary to be an engineer. Of those who are smart enough, you still have a small percentage who choose that field with many choosing other high paying careers that they may personally find more fulfilling or enjoyable.
Teachers do NOT need a high degree of intelligence. Don’t freak out. There are brilliant teachers out there, some even smarter than engineers. However, there are some that are just plain dumb. Thanks to unions and opposition to performance based salaries, they all get paid, and often treated, the same.
Simply put, you need to know what you’re signing up for. I’m an IT librarian making a modest salary. I could be doing IT privately making a lot more, and my GRE scores were higher than the average engineer so I could have chosen that career too. I made a choice to take a lower income for a job that, quite frankly, it pretty easy with easy hours and no work following me home. I’m still making more than other, equally ranked librarians, but that’s because I have unique skills and negotiated a higher salary, something that over 80% of women don’t even try to do.
No, I’m not missing what justifies a high salary. I’m suggesting we need to redefine it so that the roles women play are considered as valuable as the roles men play.
Your last two sentences are contradictory. I don’t think any person in their right mind would the skills of women are “valued less.” Not by a long shot. The reality is, the potential income is limited, for say, an elementary school teacher. There is finite amount to be paid and earned. Set by budgets. Voted on by citizens. Compare that to, for example, a small business owner, where the potential income is limitless. If your business is growing and thriving, so will your paycheck. No one is forced to be a teacher. No one is forced to start a small business or work for a large corporation. On the same note, no one is entitled to anything in this country. Just because you believe they “deserve” more, doesn’t make it wrong for someone else, in a separate field of work, to make more. The work teachers and mothers, and others who do “thankless” and “underpaid” work is invaluable. We could not function as a society without them. I like to think so anyway, considering I was raised by two parents who chose teaching as a profession, and I am now a stay-at-home mother of two. You don’t do that type of work expecting to become rich. It is a honor to give back to the world in such a way. It is a harsh reality that life is unfair. But aren’t we blessed to be able to choose for ourselves what path to take?
Your last two sentences are contradictory. I don’t think any person in their right mind would the skills of women are “valued less.” Not by a long shot. The reality is, the potential income is limited, for say, an elementary school teacher. There is finite amount to be paid and earned. Set by budgets. Voted on by citizens. Compare that to, for example, a small business owner, where the potential income is limitless. If your business is growing and thriving, so will your paycheck. No one is forced to be a teacher. No one is forced to start a small business or work for a large corporation. On the same note, no one is entitled to anything in this country. Just because you believe they “deserve” more, doesn’t make it wrong for someone else, in a separate field of work, to make more. The work teachers and mothers, and others who do “thankless” and “underpaid” work is invaluable. We could not function as a society without them. I like to think so anyway, considering I was raised by two parents who chose teaching as a profession, and I am now a stay-at-home mother of two. You don’t do that type of work expecting to become rich. It is a honor to give back to the world in such a way. It is a harsh reality that life is unfair. But aren’t we blessed to be able to choose for ourselves what path to take?
Just because it is an honour to give back to society doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be fair compensation for that work. It is also an honour to represent one’s country in a sporting event or to work as a foreign diplomat, but we don’t expect those professions to work for free.
Sure, teachers are more important than, say, a professional athlete. Air to breathe is more important than diamonds to wear, but air is free and diamonds are more expensive. Should air cost money, or should diamonds be free? Teaching may be more important, but there are many thousands or millions who can do it. But there are only a handful of people in the world who can perform with the skill of top-level athletes. But even more than that: You can’t force society to “value” your profession more. If you want higher pay, work in a field that pays more. If you want to be “more valued” by society for your profession, choose a profession that society values more. Simple as that. You can’t dictate what society should value and what it shouldn’t any more than you can demand respect, require admiration, or force love. If you want to “raise awareness” about the respect you think “women’s” or other jobs should have and about how other jobs are respected “too much,” you have that right–feel free to.
Actually, “raising awareness” about the respect I think “women’s” jobs should have is exactly what I thought I was doing. How clever of you to pick up on that. And how kind of you to give me permission to continue. I hope you can hear the sarcasm. And by the way, I’m not a teacher.
Go work in an inner city school full of gangs, drugs, and poverty, then come tell me teaching is not dangerous, that you can’t lose a limb.
10 Deadliest Jobs In America, according to BLS
1. Logging workers
2. Fishers and related fishing workers
3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers
4. Roofers
5. Structural iron and steel workers
6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors
7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
10. Construction laborers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/22/americas-10-deadliest-jobs-2/
Which gender works in these jobs, predominantly?
I’ve worked inner city jobs. I’ve had my life threatened at those jobs, including in Camden, NJ, home of the highest violent crime rate in the US. Guess how many employees there had serious injuries in the past year. Zero. Guess how many deaths occured at that job in the history of the building. ZERO. The job was scary at times, and there was an ever present threat of bad things happening, but, in reality, there were never the injuries or deaths that you see among loggers, fishers, roofers, etc.
Because you don’t get “danger pay” for pulling a thermometer out of an old mans butt.
Oh but you should.
Plus loggers don’t make any glorious salary.
Choosing to be a logger or teacher is not the same choice. They are two completely separate occupations. An appropriate concern would be if a female teacher were paid less than a male teacher of the same experience, education, and work place location (different districts pay different amounts).
So no, you are incorrect that the wage gap is real given your examples. They are not remotely related.
Nursing is a promising field. Not only can it pay handsomely, it offers many specialties from which the individual can choose.
Truth. My cousin is a nurse, and not only is the pay pretty good, but you have plenty f opportunities to make more money. You can opt to work overnight shifts and different holidays for more money. Since my cousin is just now getting married and has no children, she has always opted for night shifts and the last few Thanksgivings and Christmases, she celebrated with us in the afternoon and then went to work that night. She just graduated from college with her nursing degree almost two years ago, and not only did she buy a brand new car this year, but she and her fiance just bought a big beautiful house as their first home.
It seems to me that your frustration has more to do with how society values teachers/nurses rather than the “gender wage gap”. Since a male teacher gets paid less than a male lumberjack; just as a female teacher gets paid less than a male lumberjack.
Think of where the pay is coming from for those fields. Private companies vs. public taxes. Of course teachers are paid less from the public sphere. And a man teacher who has worked for the same number of years in the same district as a woman is paid the same as that woman. If a female logger is paid less than a male simply because she is female, THAT would actually be wage discrimination. As it is, the fields demand different types of work (hard labor vs. standing/sitting in a climate-controlled classroom all day), and have different sources of money. This may or may not undervalue the role of a teacher, but without the work that loggers and steel mill workers, and other hard labor jobs provide, we would be very low on many resources and would have to go out and obtain those resources ourselves. Are you prepared to cut down a tree to build your house or do you have the means to fashion steel so it can be used to build the nearest skyscraper? This is not a wage gap based on discrimination or even devaluation. These roles are important too.
By the way, I am an elementary school teacher by profession.
Sure, teachers are more important than, say, professional athletes. And air to breathe is more important than diamonds to wear. Should air cost more, or should diamonds be given away free? Teachers may be more important than professional athletes, but there are thousands or millions of people who can teach and only a handful of people in the world who can perform with the skill of top-level athletes. If you want society to “value” your profession more, then work in a profession that society values more. If you want more pay, then work in a profession that pays more. Simple as that. Beyond that, you can’t dictate that society “value” your profession any more than you can demand respect, require admiration, or force love. But if you want, you have the right to campaign for societal “awareness” about the respect you think “women’s” and other professions should have and about still other professions you think are “too respected”–feel free to.
If it was true that women earn significantly less than men for the same exact job, why would any capitalist with half of a brain hire a man? It wouldn’t make good business sense.
Hey, this is simply brilliant! It´s the best argument against the existence of a wage gap based on discrimination.
Golden reply.
Needs to be framed or stickied.
Misogynists rarely make sense.
Yes, because misogynists are principled. They’re willing to lose money to keep women out of the workforce.
BraVO!
The reason why men are hired is because there aren’t enough women to replace men. Men’s wages have stagnated to fallen since 1980, while women’s wages have grown. These capitalist figured out that women are cheaper, started hiring them and not men. Now, in order to compete, most men are paid lower wages. I think the wage gap will disappear not with rising women wages but falling men wages. Funny how everyone eventually sinks to the same low level.
If the $0.77 on the dollar is true why would any business hire a man when you can instantly save 23% on labor cost with an all female work force.
Because men are obviously the harder workers.
Hmmm, could it be because women are typically discriminated against in hiring, as evidenced by the .77 figure? Nah. That’s simply to obvious, therefore must be a liberal invention.
You didn’t read the article, did you? Nah. Must be another “genius” liberal, who’s just to smart to have to be bother with all that.
Like fish in a barrel…
Yes, thank God for that! My husband and I actually earn roughly the same thing. He graduated from college and began work in his field where he is often on call and works nights and weekends sometimes risking his life to protect people, homes, and our most valuable natural resource, forests, from fires. He is a forester. He also works to try to persuade private landowners to not just cut down trees to make money now but to reinvest in the land and replant trees back for future generations. That is sadly a pretty daunting tasks these days when most people only want to live in the present and want their money now. Anyway, I am angry that my husband who works for our state doesn’t earn more. He definitely isn’t valued as highly as he should be for all he does for this state and nation. I sit behind a desk with very little physical sacrifice at a five day a work 9 to 5 job. Both of our professions require higher education. I will likely earn way more than my husband once I pass the bar exam which I have chosen to put off for a while to concentrate on my family after four grueling years of attending law school at night while working full time because my husband isn’t paid what he deserves after devoting over 12 years to his employer. There are many factors that affect this so-called “gender wage gap,” but in my opinion, it is mostly due to personal choices…some good and some bad. Thank God for women who choose to pursue their God-given right to be wives and mothers. Where would the world be without these women? We may just see in the years ahead.
HAHAHAHAHA you think your pay will increase as a lawyer.
Was I so foolish to think I could pray, when there is only one chance I could save you? I gave Matt life, I can take it away! Let shadows descend like a knife! But when I am all alone, will I cry “Mattie?” Oh, my Mattie!
Matt, I’m going to ignore most of what you’ve written, in typically inflammatory style, and just zoom in on the state you love to argue about. Women making 77% of what men earn. This is in raw median wages, so you are correct, this is a misleading figure. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a wage gap, it just means the wage gap isn’t quite that simple.
In reality, the wage gap is closer, and is smaller than what it was 50 years ago, the problem now is that the still evident gap is closing at such a slow margin now, that there could still be a gap for the next 150 years because of discrimination and ineffective government policies. During an examination for the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee they found that over hundreds of studies done on the subject, they consistently found unexplained pay differences which could be as a result of discrimination or social pressure.
Now you may think this is unimportant, or has little real effect, or women are being babies or whatever. But the reality is that it does have far-reaching effects, particularly if you look at long-term results such as lower pensions. Elderly women are far more likely to face poverty.
Also, lets just take a look at the US economy – you want to talk stimulus? An October 2012 study by the American Association of University Women found that over the course of a 35 year career, an American woman with a college degree will make about $1.2 million less than a man with the same education. Therefore, closing the pay gap by raising women’s wages would have a stimulus effect that would grow the U.S. economy by at least 3% to 4%. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
What about the death gap Amanda? If I recall correctly, 92% of work place deaths are suffered by men. I’m willing to give you that 23% pay raise if we can have a lottery where four thousand women are sacrificed on the alter of equality. It’s only fair.
I’m guess that’s because men tend to work more of the jobs that generally result in on the job deaths. Encouraging women to go into non-traditional fields should tighten that stat up for you.
Encouragement is irrelevant. Most women can’t or won’t build the muscle necessary to be loggers, steel workers, or oil rig workers.
You also mention a generic “college degree.” Anyone with half a brain knows that a college degree in engineering will earn you more than a college degree in social work. Before we even pretend it’s about workplace discrimination, just look at which degrees men and women choose and you’ll see that women are choosing degrees which are clearly known to lead to lower paying careers. Seriously, I’m saying this as a man who knowingly chose to work in libraries, knowing full well that it wouldn’t pay as well as other career options.
Right, so if men choose to go into those fields, they do so knowing it carries a higher risk.
I did say “college degree”, but I’m talking about men and women with the SAME degree, not a woman with one type and a man with another. The studies I’m talking about show that even when you take into consideration any of the mitigating factors (part-time versus full-time, job type, education level), and compare men and women in the same fields, there is a gap in wages.
Can you provide a study that shows this? The best studies I’ve seen that try to equal everything out show either no wage gap, or a wage gap of up to 3%, which is within the margin of error for the study.
First off, you say at the end that “closing the pay gap by raising women’s wages would have a stimulus effect that would grow the U.S. economy by at least 3% to 4%.” What is being suggested is raising the minimum wage, not just women’s wages. If they just raised women’s wages, that would in turn be sexist and discrimination against men. If they did raise the minimum wage, what would happen, no matter what any so called government “experts” say, is that prices would go up, or the businesses would hire less people, or both since a business is there to make profit. That is the point of a business.
“which could be as a result of discrimination or social pressure.”
Gotta imagine them boogie monsters.
“But the reality is that it does have far-reaching effects, particularly if you look at long-term results such as lower pensions. ”
Pfft, like any pension funds are going to survive that long anyway.
“Therefore, closing the pay gap by raising women’s wages would have a stimulus effect that would grow the U.S. economy by at least 3% to 4%. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.”
Only in the same way raising any wages would. It’s not really a gender issue.
Also simply raising wages doesn’t increase actual industry and GDP, it won’t do anything to help trade deficits ect, in fact it would make them rather worse given the money would likely be spent on imports (as most goods are imports)
Question 1: You said that lower wages for women was “a result of discrimination or social pressure.” Okay. What discrimination, and what social pressure? I can discriminate against people in a number of ways, for instance by hair color, body type, sex, age. And those are just the one’s that are kind of rude to discriminate by. All employers discriminate. You have to if you want to run a company. If you’re running a logging company, you’re not going to hire an old woman in a wheelchair.
Question 2:”with a college degree” or “with the same education?” They do not mean the same thing. If I have a degree in astrophysics and my friend has one in psychology, it does not mean that we have the exact same education. He couldn’t tell me the first thing about how to measure stars, and I couldn’t explain how the human mind works.
Schools still discourage girls from taking math and science courses. Skilled laborers, like electricians and mechanics, are actively hostile to having women in their workplaces. Men still expect women to do all of the domestic work like laundry an dealing with school conferences. Men make objecting to being stuck with all of life’s shit work so unbearable that women endure it instead of throwing the kind of fit necessary to make the worthless bums clean the bathroom or take their turns with pediatrician appointments.
Agreed. And yes Susannah, individual business owners do discriminate – they have to choose between applicants – but the stat I’m talking about is representative of systemic discrimination.
Amanda, just so you know, some men do get very involved in cleaning and family and, yes, school meetings. My husband is one of them. Yes, he liked doing these things. He felt more manly than ever at a school meeting. So your argument is flawed.
What are you talking about Karen? Both girls and boys are REQUIRED to take math and science courses. I’m not an electrician or mechanic, so I can’t tell you about the workplace. I just don’t know many women who have even the slightest desire to work in either field.
Do you really feel like laundry and school conferences are “s**t work”? Going to the pediatrician is really that bad for you? I can do those without needing a shower or having back pains afterwards. I LOVE bringing my son to the pediatrician. Go on and try mowing the lawn, cleaning out the gutters, recementing the walkway to your front door, patching up the driveway, etc. and then tell me what “s**t work” is.
How many girls do you know that are interested in a STEM degree, vs. how many boys? How exactly are schools discouraging girls from taking STEM classes? I’m a Soldier, I still get shot at, and I do dishes, sweep floors, change diapers, vacuum, mop, etc. on top of refurbishing the house myself and doing vehicle maintenance (to include complete engine overhauls). Further, how many women plumbers do you see? How many girls picture a glorious career snaking tampons out of clogged sewer lines? I’m sick of feminism that blames men for everything, but expects men to bear the burden of maintaining all the infrastructure this country has. Feminists are only interested in white-collar equality.
Any company forced to equal-out salaries by whatever cockamamie Obama “Equality Pay” bill is signed will have one effect on wages – it will give men pay cuts to equal women’s salaries. It will not give women pay raises to equal men’s salaries.
The AAUW study assumes every company will just pony-up the extra $$$ and pay more in salaries, when in fact in a capitalist economy, the opposite will happen. People (see: men) will be hired for less money, ensuring a smaller net take-home income.
Families will take home less, and live on less because of this.
Nice work, Mr. President.
” pay cuts ”
I think you found the bottom line of this bill nicely. Weather its via direct cuts or relative inflation.
“Families will take home less, and live on less because of this.”
This seems to be more or less the goal of most government recently.
You’re ignoring the existence of many, many families where the wife and mother is the primary breadwinner, so in that case the family will then be taking home more.
But I don’t agree that an increase in wage for women will mean a decrease in wage for men. That’s just silly. No one is going to accept that. Increasing equality doesn’t mean taking away from one group to give to another.
Amanda, that’s what always happens to balance things out when you pull this crap. Just look at Obamacare. The moocher class now gets cheaper insurance while the rates are skyrocketing for healthy people like myself to compensate. When they raise minimum wage it always hurts the people who were at or above the new minimum wage. I know because I’ve been that person before who was basically told that those raises I earned over a year or two were meaningless because new people are now hired at the same rate that I worked my way up to.
Indeed, the single mother rate is astoundingly high.
Hi Amanda. One of this issues here is that the AAUW is hardly neutral, and therefore their study is frankly pretty suspect. Another is that, as pointed out below, having a college degree is no guarantee at all of earning the same salary. I came out of college with two humanities degrees, and quickly discovered they were worthless exempt as a ticket into more school (graduate or professional). Failing to distinguish between a philosophy major (ouch) an RN (good choice in the long term), an engineering degree (ding ding ding!) and a sociology major (only good for academia or a government job) guarantees a skewed outcome. Take a look at your typical college campus and you’ll see more male engineers and more female sociology majors. Discrimination? No, just poor choices (assuming that money is your only goal). I also don’t know (perhaps you do?) if the compensation picture took benefits into account, as all of the female social workers likely have a heck of a medial plan and retirement, and the male engineers starting companies in their garage likely don’t. If the plan left this out, this also significantly skews the results.
Beyond all of this, assuming that there is a gap, no one knows for sure what causes it. Maybe women work fewer hours so they can spend more time with their kids. Is this taken into account? The census study didn’t, and I doubt the AAUW study did either. So why automatically attribute this phantom gap to discrimination?
One other thing I would like to see more discussion of: why do female business owners make less than male business owners? Discrimination seems an unlikely culprit. Whatever the reason is, perhaps that is the same reason for any gap, real or perceived, among employees.
Lastly, what exactly could the government even do about this? Raising the minimum wage has nothing to do with gender, really, although I actually think it is a good idea for other reasons. Even though I think we likely agree that raising the minimum wage (or at least picking a number and then tying it to inflation) is a good idea, I haven’t yet seen any proposed action by the government to fix this perceived problem that would fix the problem, should it exist.
In short, you might have an argument, but so far there isn’t any good data you’ve cited. If you say there are hundreds of studies confirming this, could you tell me which ones explain why female business owners also make substantially less than male business owners, and how we should distinguish between different profession, hours worked, and the amount of risk taken (both physical and financial)? I am not sure how we could realistically account for even this short list of figures, but unless we can, we are just talking past each other, because the figures we are discussing are fatally flawed.
Why do female business owners earn less than male business owners? What businesses do they own? I know a number of women who own hair salons and a few men who own trucking companies. I think that we would need to compare the types of businesses in order to know if there is a gap. And just an anecdotal note… The women i know who own their own business do so to work fewer hours and have time off when they choose/need to be with their kids. The men? Many of them work up to 80 hours a week – read late nights and lots of weekends.
Amanda, can I hug you?
But why would employers continue hiring women if women consistently make less money?
Let’s just assume everything you said is correct, up until the last statement:
“Therefore, closing the pay gap by raising women’s wages would have a stimulus effect that would grow the U.S. economy by at least 3% to 4%. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.”
That’s just false, an outright lie. Sure, if you somehow magically gave all women more money without taking it from any other source in the economy and without creating more money into the system, it would have a great affect on the economy.
Unfortunately that sort of magic doesn’t exist, so we’re forced to continue on with an economy that will be affected like it has for thousands of years to the point where we have economic principles that explain these things.
If you did decide to be sexist enough to just start handing out taxpayer money to women or passing a law that forces companies to give money out just because someone is a woman, here’s what would actually happen: Some of the population of women would get more money, some of the population of women would lose their jobs. Actually the same thing happens every time you force any sort of wage increase, in order for the companies to stay in business and stay within the law, they’ll have to increase the pay, but then cut some of their workers.
So sure, go ahead and do it just to female workers, I’m sure all the women who lose their jobs will just have to take consolation knowing that other women are getting their money now.
Two words. Shut.up.
I have never seen a blog ramble on and on ans on , vomiting the same crap you see on Faux News or whatever Glenn Beck is warning everyone. I honestly tried to read you, Matt. I was hoping I would see something that resembled a fact.
YOUR cattle send me comments to leave you alone, like we are in grade school.
You win, Matt. I cannot read one more lie, one more sentence filled with huge words that nobody understands, one more disrespectful post towards women, gays, all non-white races and our President. Go find an alpaca and marry it.
Bye!
Typical low-information, HuffingtonPost/CNN/NYTimes reply.
*yawn*
“Two words. Shut.up.”
Okay… So I’m not going to read another word of your comment. HOWEVER, I will say that everything you say is a lie and is offensive to all who know truth. [Insert bigoted or sexist comments] Next I will claim to be reasonable but ignore anything you have to say and assume YOU are the one who cannot be reasoned with [insert absurd insult that makes the reader shrug awkwardly].
you call him a liar. Where did he lie?
If you don’t want to read big words, don’t follow his blog. Seems to me as if you’re just angry because he’s made an argument that you can’t really counter. You have resorted to the lefts go to in the case of inability to find a response, you have chosen to get angry and insult. Way to go.
If you do indeed earn less than a man, being unable to comprehend “big words” may be part of your problem (I didn’t even see any “big words”). What a foolish, disrespectful, dishonest comment.
Ding, ding, ding. I was going to point out the same thing.
Am I the only that has noticed that the ones screaming for equality are often very abrasive? I am a woman (obviously), and I’d hire a goat over many of these women, simply because I couldn’t stand to deal with them on a daily basis, if their comments are a true indicator of their personality.
She was making fun of his MISUSE of “big words”… his arguments are illogical and obviously propaganda based off Fox news and other wackos who are full of hate and paranoia. Here is some advice to Matt’s ignorant flock: think for yourselves. Can you do that? or can you only regurgitate what others who don’t seem to follow or understand the motto “live and let live”…. or how about “different strokes for different folks”…. No, you people are about segregation and hate – and anyone who thinks freely, against your wacko pre-packaged interpretation of the bible. I guess we are all going to hell if we don’t agree with Matt and his flock of lemmings. oooooh I’m scared. Better sign up for the cult!
Have you ever investigated whether these people do think for themselves or not? Sweetheart, before you jump to conclusions check to make sure they’re true! We must be like the Bereans, testing every thought against the scriptures which is the source of all truth. And even if we find that something we don’t like is true we must embrace it any way. I know how it feels, it is so hard to give up something we held onto half our lives, I have shed tears and hurt others over it. But do please read the scriptures before you condemn these people and remember that we are not of Paul or Apollos or Cephas or Matt Walsh, we are all of Christ, including Matt Walsh. Which means that we are brothers and sisters and I don’t think Christ would like the way you just condemned those people. Do you really think these people are about segregation and hate? Christ calls hate murder and to charge one with murder is serious! Just remember we are all on the same plain; all children of God striving after holiness. I have researched things and this is an exceedingly well informed post and I do believe that most of these people are well informed and are certainly thinking for themselves! But even if that’s not the case, don’t you think you could have said it a little more nicely? However it is, you may toss me off as writing hate speech and that’s okay, but think of Christ, think of Him taking the blame on that cross while hundreds hurled hate speech at Him. Did He even so much as raise His voice? He did it for you and I. Look, and behold His face and the things of this earth will grow dim, no matter how much you’ve suffered from fundamentalists, Christ calls us to forgive, and remember that every one who holds a more conservative view is a legalistic radical or bible thumper. Think on Christ who came to testify to the truth; who loves you more than any other! I will be praying for you!
@Rita
From reading Matt’s posts, I would find it highly unlikely that he follows Fox news much at all, much less regurgitate anything from there. Just because two different sources have similar messages doesn’t mean they are watching/reading each other and copying. There are people who think alike who have never met in fact.
Also “Live and let live” is all fine and good when the other people are actually “letting live”. Matt often advocates for the aborted, because they are in fact not being allowed to live. He also advocates for the persecuted by the militant left, because they aren’t being left alone.
I don’t hate, nor am I paranoid about anything related to homosexual people, however that doesn’t mean I want to be forced to provide money or services for one of their weddings. But I also don’t want to be forced to provide money or services to anyone’s wedding unless I feel like doing so of my own free will.
Do you know why Matt get so animated in his writing? It’s because he’s pro-liberty, he very very much wants a “live and let live” United States. However, liberals are constantly trying to turn it into a tyranny one lie at a time.
This particular blog is about the gender wage gap lie that is told.
There is a vast difference between thinking freely and thinking in line with the left. I know you think they are one and the same, but here in the real world, they aren’t.
I understand Leftturns feelings.. it’s exactly how I feel after listening to an obama speech!!
I agree with this At first I thought this post was satire since I’ve read and liked some of this guy’s posts, but he can’t see past his own privilege. You don’t need to control for hours worked if you look at the hourly pay. At my last out-of-home job, I made 60% of what my male teammates made per hour. Same job. No one had substantially more or less experience (and no, I was NOTat the bottom), though I was the one who went in on holidays and weekends. No, no holiday pay for working Thanksgiving of Christmas or any other holiday, and no vacation time for me, unlike everyone else.
Yet Matt thinks the pay discrepancy is because women don’t work as much. Try telling your typical single mother she’s just not working enough.
Exactly. Unless you work a union job where the union protects the wage and everything is equal (…but unions are bad right?) it is left up to the employer to decide how much to pay. For the same job, same experience level, besides discrimination what other possible reason could an employer have for paying a woman less?
Amanda, those unions guarantee that the best employees will be paid the same as the worst employees. They’ll also protect the worst employees at all cost because those are the ones that WANT unions and will vote with them every time because unions are the only thing standing between them and a pink slip. The best employees, however, will be told not to work as hard, take on extra responsibilities, etc. because then management will expect more out of everyone else.
I don’t know a lot about unions, honestly, and don’t think they’re all bad. I will say, however, my husband has worked at a couple union jobs and the lazy people are protected. My BIL works at a unionized job and sleeps on the job to get overtime. Yes, he and other employees actually sleep when they’re supposed to be working and get paid for it. The “overtime” drives up the cost of production and who do you think ends up paying in the end? The consumer.
Alysbcohen, have you ever considered that you got paid so little because you LET your employer pay you that much? Hear me out. When your boss hired you, how much money did you ask for? Did you tell him how much money you wanted? If not, did you ask for more than he initially offered? over 80% of women do not. I make more than most of my coworkers at the same level, male and female, because I negotiated my salary until I convinced my director to bump me up nearly an entire pay grade. I don’t know any women at my job who even TRIED to get more money. With one I even counseled her and how to ask for more when she’s up for her next raise because she had wrongly assumed that she couldn’t possibly negotiate more than the base salary when she was first hired.
How do you know you were making less than everyone else? Did everyone get together and have a pay disparity party? And what did you do to try to correct the pay disparity?
Anecdotes aren’t data. Your single example doesn’t contradict anything he said.
Well said! couldn’t agree with you more. 🙂
It seems to me that you just can’t handle the truth! Goodbye!
So what if he wants to marry an alpaca?! He can love whom he wants!
When I come across a word I don’t know…I look it up:-). It’s called learning. Try it sometime.
Yeh, see I’m just one of those lower waged women. I didn’t think of that. Thank you so much. Now look this up….Get bent.
I’ll just say it: EVEN if it were true that women are paid less than men, there ain’t a SINGLE THING the Government can do about it. They do NOT have the resources to audit each & every role and control for all the factors that go into what a person is paid and why, not the least of which is whether the person was an external-hire or internal promotion (externals often are paid more to come to a new company vs. stay where they’re at).
This “Equality Pay” baloney by the President is simply a ploy to rile-up Women & Progressive voters for the mid-terms, because his ObamaCare law is going to ensure a shellacking by the GOP come November.
That’s. All. This. Is.
Love this post Matt! But here’s another thought for you: isn’t this whole argument inherently sexist? Why is it that my job is the only thing that defines me? Why aren’t Democrats pushing for increased time with family or something like that?
So let me see if I get this straight. Because liberals are lying (perhaps even grievously) about an issue to further their agenda, this automatically becomes a non-issue unworthy of recognition or careful thought. That about right, Matt?
Lemme guess — because there have been no lynchings lately, racial discrimination is a thing of the past, too, right?
I thought only liberals played the “nothing to see here” and “the whole world is binary” cards.
I’m glad I’m conservative. I only threw up in my mouth a little.
The point is that the concept of a wage “gap” is untrue when you take into account equal education and work. In those cases both sexes get paid wages on par with one another.
What your point about lynching had to do with anything is far beyond me. Talk about an analogy gone wrong…
No Bobby, that’s wrong. The 77% figure is wrong, but when you take into consideration type of work, education and those types of factors, there is still about a 7% gap in wages.
I wish that made sense. Congratulations, you’ve wasted a good 5 minutes of my time trying to figure out what you’re talking about.
If it were a valid issue people would be able to discuss it by bringing up REAL issues, instead of repeatedly telling lies as their only example of it being a problem.
The underlying problem with identifying these gender gap inequalities – or any other inequalities for that matter – is that first the facts about how much a person earns – or some other statistic – must be made public in order for the appropriate committee or agency to be able to tell where the inequalities lie. True? You bet it is. See the problem? No privacy. And that is where the entire argument or discussion collapses. Neither the government nor the public should be allowed to access your life to assess the worth of our personal lives in order to correct some perceived inequality. I’m not being too clear but I hope you get the point. The premise that anything and everything a person does, or says or owns or makes should be readily available for public scrutiny and outside “correction” is ludicrous on its face in a free society.
I love how Matt simultaneously denies gender discrimination while presenting a crapload of examples of it.
And WHY exactly is it that surgeons get paid more than pediatricians?
Clearly surgery is a “manly” job.
Yup.
Okay, I’ll bite. To get to the root of why surgeons get paid more than pediatricians, lets look at how the jobs differ. Pediatricians are doctors that specialize in the health care of young people. They diagnose illnesses and proscribe treatment. They do not generally cut into anyone, in a manner that, if done wrong, can lead to death, during the course of this treatment.
Surgeons, as part of their job description, need to cut into people in a way that, if done wrong, can lead to death. This is more difficult and risky than the job description of the pediatrician. It requires more education.
So, surgeons are paid more than pediatricians because a) the cost of them performing poorly is higher, b) it is more stressful and difficult, and c) more education is required.
Please note that none of these reasons is gender bias.
Totally agree with Jordan. I’m sure that surgeons also have to pay MUCH higher insurance premiums due to the higher risk involved. A pediatrician sometimes has the opportunity to sit down for 5 minutes during the day instead of standing up over an open body for 6 hours making precision cuts.
That with testosterone Men are on average 50% stronger than Women, that the creator did say to pay women only 2/3 of man for manual work, obviously strong men can do more work, so more pay for this obvious reason we also have Different events for both Sexes in the Olympics!
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My brother is a physician, I am an engineer. Yes, I make a great deal more than him but I travel to foreign countries (dangerous ones usually), work in extreme conditions, blistering heat, sub zero temps, side of mountains, jungles & deep sea. There are no females I know of in my occuption, mainly because none want the environment, working with laborers comprised of men only or going to school longer to study for this type of work. Should I be compared to a female civil engineer working for a muncipality cutting in new roads or placing traffic lights? Nothing against that but there’s no risk factor & not as much heavy responsibility.
Nobody is arguing that a city-based engineer be paid the same as an engineer such as yourself. Obviously there will be differences in pay between types of jobs. The argument is that if you were a city civil engineer, you should be making the same as the female engineer. Or, if there were a woman doing your job, she should be making the same as you. Generally, this is not happening – it is systemic, and this is the problem.
My question is this: if it’s a big conspiracy, who’s pulling the strings? Who’s telling everyone how much they can pay females?
I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy. It is a systemic problem, that exists because of the inherent beliefs about men’s and women’s abilities. These beliefs are a result of a lot of things, but it boils down to employers believing that a male worker is worth more, and is thus paid better. There isn’t any one person “telling” everyone how much to pay, it’s just a societal norm to de-value female work.
Except for the fact that if you were a city civil engineer (male) and you were making more than other city civil engineers (female) you are still most likely on some form of contract with the government. Therefore, equal pay laws are fruitless because if the GOVERNMENT (a bastion of competence, right?) is “unable” to pay both sexes the same amount, there’s no reason that the government would be able to get the private sector to pay equally.
So…if one organisation is following bad practices, then that makes it okay for everyone else to do it?
I don’t think the government (or whoever else we’re talking about) is “unable” to pay – they simply don’t because it is ingrained in our culture to pay men more. That doesn’t make it right or acceptable. If nobody complains and makes a big deal of it, it won’t change.
This is the worst blog I have read. It is so awesome how you spread your hate against gays, women – you support discrimination and raise yourself on a pedestal with your twisted, negative interpretations of a bible that is hardly proof of any factual evidence. You give conservatives a bad name – close-minded, under-educated, hateful discriminator. Those who agree with you are fools too. Do us all a favor and stop writing and making a fool of yourself with your illogical, opinionated, non-factually based arguments that are nothing more than an egotistical, angry little boy pontificating and spinning bullshit…
Yeah, because asking valid questions about the methodology used to arrive at a statistic is SOOOO hate-based.
No, it’s not. But doing so with no proof is kinda stupid……
You’re asking someone to prove their own request for proof?
And this moron makes money off this tripe? He accepts donations? What a loser. Get a real job.
America is progressing socially while you losers (Matt’s target audience) are stuck in a time capsule. Mr. Walsh doesn’t buy into his own dribble… so why do you?
For example, Matt Walsh has you believing that many US citizens are “takers;” receiving welfare handouts instead of donating their time to corporate America… in exchange, they might receive a “liveable income.” But this guy — who is nothing more than a conservative mouthpiece — talks out both sides of his ass (yes, asses have side).
Black America! Rise out of the ghetto, get off welfare… but, by God, don’t aim too high — it ain’t right for a black man to become president of the United States of America.
Women! Rip those bastard babies off your teets, stop living off child support and food stamps… but, by god, don’t expect equal, or to become the CEO of a major tech company, or president of the United State of America.
Matt Walsh is a writer… he is told what to say and pretties it up for all you knuckle dragging fools. America has spoken — the last two elections tell us that, in general, the United States is a tolerant nation — we accept your nationality, we accept who you love, we want to see you pursue your dreams. Matt Walsh is in some conservative group’s pocket and obviously has no self respect for playing puppet. His fancy writing isn’t going to change the direction of this great nation or send history back to 1950. Sorry!
Are you absolutely, one hundred percent certain that everything you just said was true?
Was it lovely? – Philippians 4:8-9
So… the invalid points he attempted to make were WHICH ones?
“Black America! Rise out of the ghetto, get off welfare… but, by God, don’t aim too high — it ain’t right for a black man to become president of the United States of America.”
When has Matt ever, EVER, criticized anyone for the color of their skin? Matt criticizes Obama fairly regularly but there is never any indication he’s doing it because Obama is black (or half-black as it were).
Why is that Conservatives are always labeled as ‘racist’ when they never talk about race? When did “You’re a racist!” become the rallying cry of the liberal left?
Nice…too bad it’s not true.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/at-highest-paid-levels-female-white-house-staffers-outearn-men/article/2547018
But Matt Walsh Wouldn’t Lie! He was on the Radio!!!!!
Yeah…even with America’s appetite for hate-radio, he couldn’t cut it on the airwaves. Go figure.
You should give a link as to how the statistic was arrived at. Otherwise somebody might think you were making it up. That being said, What is wrong with a law that guarantees equal pay for equal work? What reason could anybody have for being against that?
Those laws already exist. Here’s the thing, like Matt Walsh said in his blog, they are not taking into account education levels, hours worked(a lot of women choose to work part time to take care of their family), experience, or other things when they talk about a so called “wage gap”. Should a women who is just coming into a field and working part time in it, get paid the same amount take home as a man who works full time and has been working in the same field for 15-20 years? No. Also, the biggest thing that has been suggested is raising the minimum wage which would do nothing to decrease the gap as it would be across the board(both men and women) and it would do nothing except raise prices and most likely also decrease hiring.
“What is wrong with a law that guarantees equal pay for equal work? What reason could anybody have for being against that?”
Are you truly that simplistic? HOW is it guaranteed? Through what mechanism? How much MORE data will businesses need to gather and provide to the government?
Why do you want to enrich lawyers?
The clarity in this blog may be missing a central point…kind of. In my own experience talking with feminists and researching it, as well as a painful stint in grad school (etc. etc.), I believe the 77 cents statistic does hold important meaning beyond simply b.s. for the sake of getting an agenda passed. I think a key push in the more…grave of the progressive thinkers is that the differences between men and women need to disappear. Gender is a social construct, such that women may be making decisions “freely,” but those free choices are being formed by the patriarchal forces that pressure women to define themselves as nurturers, etc.
Of course, you didn’t really miss the point. You said, “And thank God for that.” And that may be the only kind of response possible. For when one declares that all my choices and the choices of those around me are defined by social forces that are invisible and all-powerful, what argument can have meaning? “I like that women care about children and family more than men do,” seems as good a response as any.
The comments really confirm what Matt is saying about the complexity of the issue. At the root, of course, is why women need the same pay as men in light of the fact that women overwhelmingly have two full-time jobs. Men “help” with the kids as a rule. What does that mean? It means they don’t see it as their primary responsibility. Many men have abandoned the role of parent completely. If the playing field was really equal, both genders would enter the workplace and scrap for its perks using whatever assets they bring to the game. Women, for the most part enter a rigged game. Time off, limited availability, divided attention, and many more factors inhibit a woman’s ability to compete. The real problem here is that men expect women to work outside the home. Men expect women to raise their children. Yet men are unwilling to give up their own desires in order to allow women either the higher wages to support the children better or stay home with the kids in the first place. “Men love your wives as Christ loves the church.” Is it loving to force a woman to abandon her children in order to provide for their survival and then deny her a wage advantage for doing it? In no way am I advocating a government solution. This is a heart issue.
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Just because you don’t believe something exists doesn’t mean it doesn’t. Sex discrimination can occur in the workplace. It’s why there’s lawsuits for it. Look up the lily ledbetter act. Its not asking much to ask for equal pay for equal work. In a world of injustices and sometimes discrimination, it’s not too absurd to think there can be a wage gap based on discrimination. It’s an imperfect system created by imperfect people, after all. Sorry Matt, I’m disagreeing with you on this one.
If women do jobs so worthy of thanking God……why not give them a raise?
Anyone?
Are you really expecting an answer to that question? It seemed quite rhetorical in nature.
Let me ask another question: If men who work to support a family including a stay at home mother and children are doing work worthy of thanking God……why not give them a raise?
I suspect your answer might be “men already make too much and it would increase the gender pay gap”.
Here is how it should work: Employers should be blind to issues that do not impact the experience, productivity or performance of an employee. They should not discriminate on any criteria other than finding the best employees and paying them a fair wage based on the value of the work performed. I think most are blind to those external things (in as much as humans are imperfect), but some definitely do. I don’t think you can ever eliminate it 100%, all you can do is pass laws that provide a means to keep things as fair as possible so that they can be litigated if needed.
On the other side, people need to recognize that there are legitimate reasons why one person might be paid less than another for the “same job” that have nothing to do with gender. It is relatively easy to compare average pay based on gender: compute the average salary of all men and the average salary of all women. It becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to control for every other potential variable to come up with the *real* pay gap number.
“Come back when you’ve done all the calculations.” Well, somebody has and there is still a wage gap. See http://esoltas.blogspot.com/2014/04/how-big-is-gender-pay-gap_10.html and http://esoltas.blogspot.com/2014/04/yes-pay-gap-persists.html
I find several parts of the first analysis interesting. One is that it is stated that many of the variables that the author is trying to control for and perform regression analysis of are estimates. It’s hard to have faith in estimates to draw an absolute conclusion that any difference in pay between the sexes is systemic and must be addressed by further legislation.
Another is the last paragraph: “It’s not clear, though, that we really should be controlling for all these things. It’s fair enough that people with more experience earn more. But it’s reasonable to think that things like occupational choice and working hours are all influenced by the same gender discrimination we’re seeking to detect. The pay gaps that result from women ending up in lower-paying fields are part of the pay gap insofar as that’s true — they’re not something to explain away. More on this soon.”
This seems to be saying that, because women take work in lower-paying fields due to considerations beyond pay (such as choice of occupation and working schedule) that discrimination is real. If one believes that, then it seems to me that the only way to fix that would be to mandate the same salary for all jobs so that there is never inequity. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, police, firefighters, engineers should make no more or less than phone sex operators. I have a hard time accepting that.
Companies exist to consume labor (including the labor involved in production of all raw materials) and produce goods and services. If the amount they pay for the labor is less than the amount customers are willing to pay for the good or service, then the company can make a profit. If it is the same, the company can break even. If it is less, the company will not be able to sustain their business very long.
So if you’re going to mandate the same salary for everyone, then you have to mandate the prices people can and will have to pay for a good or service. Then you’ll start needing to mandate how much of it is bought. Starting to sound like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Next how many people are allowed to work in each field. Which leads to telling people what jobs they will work rather than allowing them a free market choice. The rest of this is sounding like a planned / command economy. Maybe that’s what we need! I’m sure the Soviet Union’s failure to make it work doesn’t mean we can’t make it work here!
The author of the analysis (Soltas) used the statistical method of regression analysis. In the field of statistics, a “statistic” is an estimate of a parameter of interest made from sample data. So yes, the analysis involved the generation of estimates along with statements about the level of confidence and the sources of the data (like any good analysis should). The amount of “faith” you can have in the estimates is specified by the level of confidence used in the analysis (e.g., 95 percent confidence would mean that if the experiment were repeated over and over, then the confidence intervals from these analyses would encompass the true (but unknown) parameter about 95 percent of the time).
Note that the author did not proposed or even mention any kind of legislative fix. He is simply saying that the gender pay gap is not as big as the 23 percent difference quoted by some, but after doing “all the calculations” it is real and is somewhere between 4 and 10 percent (with a point estimate of 7.7 percent). That is, a “woman working in the same occupation, in the same region of the country, of the same work experience, education, and race, and with the same family and working hours — that woman is paid significantly less than a man to whom she is alike in all these respects.”
Perhaps I misread something then, but my understanding was that you started with real numbers then applied regression analysis techniques, not that you estimated the initial parameters. Even if that is true, upon what were the original estimates made? Regardless, I think the number range (4-10%) that was given is a more realistic number than does a good faith effort of trying to control for a set of variables that would be very hard to come up.
You are correct that the author did not propose any of the “fixes” I mentioned. I did not claim that to be the case. However, if one accepts that careers that attract women that pay less on average is in and of itself a form of discrimination, and that it is discriminatory, how do you fix it other than mandate that careers dominated by women be paid the same as careers dominated by men? How is the value of the work computed? Certainly I don’t think anyone would suggest a highly skilled neurosurgeon should be paid the same as a fast food worker for the same number of hours of effort. If one accepts the final premise that it is discriminatory that “traditionally” female jobs pay less than “traditionally” male jobs, then how do you fix that other than by mandating all jobs pay the same so that there is no gender pay gap due to the work being performed?
I am a 28yo female with a construction degree, working over 50 hours per week as a Contract Administrator. I have 8 years experience in the industry and earn just over $60k per year. My colleague is a male, also 28yo, did the same degree course and graduated at the same timeans me, works same hours, in the same position and has 6 years experience. He earns at least $75k per year… enough said
Well, this one single anecdote has *me* convinced! Or maybe not.
But seriously, if all is as you say it is (and I have no reason to doubt you or believe you as I don’t know you from Adam, er, Eve) then you should really approach the National Labor Relations Board with a complaint. Years ago I worked for a company where a woman brought a complaint to the NLRB that men in the company were given unfair consideration for various things that could impact pay. I received a form from them asking me various questions as part of their investigation. Mind you, I was only a part time employee earning far less than she did (so much for the advantage for me *there*) but still, there are already avenues to pursue if one feels one is being discriminated against.
Have you attempted to discuss this with your managers to see if you could work something out? I just learned that pay secrecy clauses are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935 in as much as you have the legal right to discuss compensation with whomever will engage with you. It seems like a no brainer to me that for yourself and a cause you seem to believe in you should push to end this injustice.
Again, this all assumes that what you’ve stated anonymously as a comment on a blog is accurate. As the old paraphrased saying goes, on the internet no one knows I’m a dog.
The question is – Should I poke the bear with a stick in these times of great economical troubles, or just leave it as is? I think I will wait a bit longer and see what happens 🙂
Thanks for your reply CasaDeRobison