The Wage Gap

The one-stop wage gap video repository

ArgusEyes — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:23:09 GMT

The “Why Men Earn More” playlist on my channel needs more maintenance then I have been giving it. As we all know, the wage gap argument is the most common retort in any argument with a feminist.

In a similar vein to many creationist/evolution debates. Their claims are simple – there is a gap and therefore sexism. Whereas our answer requires knowledge and understanding of markets and human nature, the viewpoint of the feminists has won in the popular culture – it is the commonly accepted “thought” despite having little thought in it at all.

A subscriber contacted me and told me about a dialog he had with a friend about the wage gap. We have all been in situations like that where, afterwards, we felt that we could have made a much better case for our side than we did. Or you think the classic “Damn! Why didn’t I say that?”.

Here is the playlist as it stands now. I have Warren Farrell’s videos in there and I have recently added Walter Block’s excellent lectures to it as well. If you know of a good video on the wage gap then email or comment on this thread and it will be added.

The proof for oppression against women: Still missing

ArgusEyes — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 03:29:00 GMT

This post garnered a lot of discussion in the comments thread, which I am happy to see, I started this reply to a poster named bob who makes the cases for why women are more oppressed than men are. These are oft-repeated arguments so I felt it was important to dedicate a new post to my reply.

“Women get beat, raped, and exploited more.”

Men are more likely to be the victims of a violent crime, if you’re talking about D.V. then some say it happens to men a lot too. I’m not going to commit to stats since I am not a stats guy but I’m damn sure it happens to men more than those paltry handful of D.V. shelters that accommodate males. Rape does affect women overwhelmingly due to the nature of the crime.

However, for both D.V. and rape the same answer applies. These things are both crimes, therefore how is this oppression against women? We continually push, as a society, for more laws and services for women who have been raped or battered so we realise that this is a problem. Consider a crime where men are more likely to be the victim, like violent crime in general, it is accurate to say that violent crime oppresses men? No it is not, since it is not perpetrated by the state, but by individuals on other individuals and is recognised as being illegal.

The important part is where you claim women are exploited more but you’ve merely changed the words you use. Women are oppressed, women are exploited.

Never a scrap of evidence on how. The nearest you came to it was when you said this:

“Look at Middle Eastern countries.”

We are living in the west, criticising feminists in the west, who complain about the west and try to affect legislation in the west, they claim that all these oppressions happen to women in the west and when I ask how, what do I get in reply? “Look to the east”. What a crock.

“Women get paid less, men don't get to retire as soon.”

You’re missing the importance of the retire issue. This is government policy which treats men differently based upon their sex. Why do we always restrict freedom of speech to the government? Because government is the necessary totalitarian mechanism of control over all citizenry, you cannot escape the government. However, if the bakery doesn’t want you to say certain things then you can always walk out, you can never “walk out” of the government.

I realise this important distinction which is why I distinguished between the types of oppression and state that the state mandated instance of oppression are surely the worst kind and if men win in this area then what is the point of going further? The things I pointed out involve government action or funding. Do the feminists have an example of where the government acts in this way? Lets see..

The wage gap is a common example. Does the government enforce different pay on people based upon sex? Well no, it doesn’t. In fact, there is legislation passed in 1970 (1963 in the U.S. I think) that says that companies cannot pay people differently based upon sex, so if this does happen then it is like in the rape and D.V. examples where individuals in companies are choosing to pay women less. It is against the law. Therefore no government oppression exists.

The wage gap is the most sheepish feminist line out there. You’ll hear it spouted again and again when talking about these issues. It seems strange to me that so many people view the world as being so systemically sexist through-and-through as to make such a gap so pervasive throughout society. Ever since I first heard about the gap I though it was B.S. since I am not inclined to believe such conspiracy theories.

Feminism has won the culture war, its effects and ideas are pervasive in society to the extent where people can get ostracised for misplaced comments and heretical thoughts. Yet despite this people are still such sexists?! Any man will know a number of women in his life, his mother, sister, aunt, grandmother. Do so many men want what is bad for women?

I don’t want to portray that I am simple minded to how convoluted humans can be, I know that nothing is simple, taller people earn more than others because people subtly prefer taller people. Will the position of an attractive person when compared to a similarly-abled unattractive person be better? I would put my money on “yes”. However, I honestly do not find the feminist line on the wage gap to be persuasive.

The economists I know do not support the mass sexism explanation for the wage gap, these are people who actually look underneath the underneath in matters of markets and wages. I have not seen thoughts which support the feminist line in what I have read in the works of Milton Friedman, Walter Block, Thomas Sowell, etc. I see again and again that the wage gap used as proof of victimisation is made by feminists and feminists-economists (effectively like a “creation scientist”) and other groups of the activist victimist mentality such as racial groups.

In fact, I would play the victim if I wanted to. Check this out.

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/rb/RB_503DRRB.pdf

Those Asian women sure did a great job of breaking through that glass ceiling didn’t they? Having studied computer science, I can tell you that for all their flaws, the Asian students had a fierce work ethic. It would be an unfair world that dictated that the rest of us who had not worked as hard had to be raised on a pedestal to their level to close this “gap”.

As Thomas Sowell so aptly puts it, Asians always kill the yarns that the victimists try to sow.

We've frequently heard, and will hear much more I am sure if Hillary is the Democratic nominee, that women make 76 cents for every dollar a man makes. Can you give us a basic rundown of why that discrepancy exists?

There are lots of reasons. Men and women do not work the same number of hours. They do not work in the same occupations. They do not work continuously the same, and so on.

You know, if it was really true that you could hire a woman for three quarters of what you could hire a man with exactly the same qualifications, then employers would be crazy not to hire all women. It would be insane to hire men. Not only would it be insane, it would probably put them out of the business because the ones that were smart enough to hire women would have such a cost advantage that it would be really hard for the others to compete.

There are lots of gross differences between men and women and other groups and some of them shocked me when I first started doing the research. For example, I found that young male doctors make considerably more than young female doctors. But, when I dug into it a little deeper, I discovered that young male doctors work an average of 500 hours a year more than young female doctors. Obviously, a doctor that works 500 extra hours is going to make more money than the other doctor.

One profound thing you said in the book, when talking about disparities between the wages earned by white workers and minority workers in this country was that there are differences between groups all over the world, so why should we expect different groups to make the same amount of money in the first place? Can you tell us a little bit more about those differences...

I think most people have heard that there are these differences, but I think that what most of them have not heard is that there are the same differences between Asian-Americans and whites as there are between whites and blacks. Asian-American families have higher incomes than white families; during downturns in the economy, whites get laid off moreso than Asian-Americans. Among people who apply for mortgage loans, whites get turned down more often than Asian-Americans. Whites have to resort to sub-prime loans more often than Asian-Americans.

But, most of the people who talk about these things leave out Asian-Americans because it really kills their whole story. Their whole story is that non-whites do poorly because of white racism. Well then, if you find that there is the same disparity between Asian-Americans and whites as there is between whites and other non-whites, that whole argument falls down.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/02/an_interview_with_thomas_sowel.php

It’s 4am and this is getting long. So I will end it there. I am truly interested in hearing rebuttals to my points here since I am interested in finding the truth on these matters. I have not heard the feminist come back with reasonable counter arguments to points like these. They usually make the claims and then these claims work their way into the zeitgeist. But as for not, that elusive proof for oppression against women is still missing.

Walter Block Lecture on Sexual Discrimination and Capitalism

ArgusEyes — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:31:36 GMT

Why Men Earn More - The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap

ArgusEyes — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:47:17 GMT

This is a talk given my Dr. Warren Farrel at the Cato (www.cato.org) institute on Tuesday, February 1, 2005 entitled:

Why Men Earn More
The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gapand What Women Can Do About It

A presentation from his book of the same name
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226349227&sr=1-1

Cato offers the real video stream of the lecture I have captured here on this events page:
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=1834

I have reproduced this material without permission under fair use. The aim is to present information on how womens own choices lead to the wage gap which thus stems from their own liberty. I make no profit from these video views and all intellectual material is to Cato.

Synopsis:
Warren Farrell, the only man to have been elected three times to the National Organization for Womens New York board of directors, is the author of such books as The Myth of Male Power and Why Men Are the Way They Are. In his new book, he argues that women earn less than men on average not because they are discriminated against, but because they have made lifestyle choices that affect their ability to earn. Why Men Earn More argues that although discrimination sometimes plays a part, both men and women unconsciously make trade-offs that affect how much they earn. Farrell clearly defines the 25 different workplace choices that affect incomes--including putting in more hours at work, taking riskier jobs or more hazardous assignments, being willing to change location, and training for technical jobs that involve less people contact--and provides readers with specific, research-supported ways for women to earn higher pay.

To feminists, gender is more important than skill.

ArgusEyes — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:34:07 GMT

RE: Friday Feminist Fuck You: John McCain, rant on wage gap

ArgusEyes — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:01:32 GMT

Misrepresentatiion #1:

A lot of sources state that McCain “voted against” the law. In fact, McCain did not attend the vote at the senate. [1]

But don’t take my word for it. Ann from Feministing corrected her post. [2]. But not her youtube video. [3]

The proper way to respond to a mistake is to admit to it. Video descriptions are editable and a correction on behalf of the author testifies to intellectual credibility. [4]

Misrepresentation #2

The Ledbetter pay act would have guaranteed employers the right to sue for discrimination:

This falsehood is propagated by Ann at 0.48 in her video on the subject [3]. In fact there are many other remits under the law that can be used to address grievances like this such as Title VII and the Equal pay act [5].

Misrepresentation #3

This is an opposition of the equal payment for women:

To quote the Feministing website:

“And not holding businesses accountable for wage discrimination is the same thing as endorsing it.”

This is simplistic thinking. It’s a false dichotomy in the first place. Businesses can still be held accountable by the relevant investigative agency when a claim is filed. The Ledbetter law relates to an employee’s pay discrimination claims and increasing the time period where a claim can be filed this is not groundbreaking legislation by any objective means and it is dishonest to colour people who are concerned for the state of the law or increase in the litigiousness of society as being anti woman or anti fair pay.

Misrepresentation #4

Lilly Ledbetter was paid less because she was a woman, and she never received recompense from her case.

To quote the Supreme court of the united states document on Ledbetter v. Goodyear tire and rubber corporation:

“During most of the time that petitioner Ledbetter was employed by respondent Goodyear, salaried employees at the plant where she worked were given or denied raises based on performance evaluations.”

...

“There, Ledbetter alleged that several supervisors had in the past given her poor evaluations because of her sex;”

...

“Goodyear maintained that the evaluations had been non-discriminatory, but the jury found for Ledbetter, awarding back pay and damages.”

The question was on the status of her performance evaluations. The jury rules for Ledbetter and awarded back pay and damages. Ledbetter appealed anyway and this is when her claim was barred due to time constraints.

Misrepresentation #5

This law was solely about increasing the window in which claims could be made.

The law also had clauses to allow “someone other than the employee” to bring a claim. This may be a beauorcratic organisation. Leading open a huge legal hole which politically motivated groups and parties to insert themselves into a situation.

The decision on the bill is completely inline with partisan politics. With the political left aiming to increase the reign and affect that government can have on private businesses and with the political right acting to minimise the government intrusion.

I have included sources because I believe that issues such as this deserve the in-depth treatment it has certainly not received in the popular press.

In light of Feministing’s treatment of this topic I have to stand by my previous statements that Feministing as an organisation is intellectually vacuous, given to cheap and simplistic gender demagoguery and propagating hatred and false information in line with a radical feminist, sexist agenda.

Sources

[1] McCain Opposes Equal Pay Law – Washington post
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/24/by_juliet_eilperin_washington.html

[2] John McCain supports wage discrimination - Feministing
http://www.feministing.com/archives/009085.html

[3] Friday Feminist Fuck You: John McCain - Feministing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qjaXk-qCVw

[4] The problems with feminism, ArgusEyes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68l4XUeJYo0

[5] Nothing Fair About the “Fair Pay Act” - Hans Bader
http://www.openmarket.org/2008/04/29/nothing-fair-about-the-fair-pay-act/

[6] LEDBETTER v. GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER CO., INC.-SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/05-1074_All.pdf

[7] Post Editorial for Changing Lawsuit Deadline Based on Factual Misunderstanding - Hans Bader http://www.openmarket.org/2008/04/23/post-editorial-for-changing-lawsuit-deadline-based-on-factual-misunderstanding/

A word to all the feminists who swallow the wage gap myth

ArgusEyes — Sat, 31 May 2008 22:35:53 GMT

Watch and learn.