The 'paycheck fairness' myth

Chicago Tribune ^ | 07 june 2012 | Steve Chapman

[rellimpank]

As any debater knows, defining the issue is a major part of the battle. On Tuesday, Democrats failed to persuade the Senate to approve the Paycheck Fairness Act. What are we to conclude from that outcome? That paychecks will be unfair, to the detriment of America's working women.

That's the claim of those supporting the legislation. President Barack Obama said it would merely mandate "equal pay for equal work." Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, warned beforehand that failing to pass the bill would send "the message to little girls across the country that their work is less valuable because they happened to be born female."

[Buckeye McFrog]

“Equal Pay for Equal Work” has been the law for decades.

They are actually trying to resurrect this “comparable worth” idea from the 1970’s.

[KarlInOhio]

If businesses could really hire women for 30% less pay for the same work, what sane business owner would hire anyone but women? A 30% cut in labor costs? Sign me up.

[Magic Fingers]

“Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, warned beforehand that failing to pass the bill would send ‘the message to little girls across the country that their work is less valuable because they happened to be born female.’”

But if you were going to be born female and your mother wants to abort you, we enthusiastically support that.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

This legislation should have been titled the “Full Employment for the Plaintiff’s Bar” bill.

[thesharkboy]

That’s always the question that they can’t answer, isn’t it?

[Tao Yin]

This legislation should have been titled the “More useless paper work, anal exams, and litigation rather than anything productive” bill.

[allmendream]

Well women do outnumber men in the workforce currently. When hard economic times hit (see “Obama, Presidency”) the layoffs seemed to disproportionately hit men.

But yes, it is already illegal to discriminate against women by paying them less for the same work.

This legislation - where it was not redundant and unnecessary (except to lawyers) was advancing the idea that some jobs are (preferred by women that may not require any special skills or training) are “equivalent” to others jobs (preferred by men that do require special skills and training/ danger/ hard physical labor) - despite the market saying otherwise.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Yes, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 prohibits pay discrimination between men and women in the same job.

Is this area of “equal pay for equal work” still a problem in this country, after decades of the women’s movement?

If it is, Obama and Eric Holder already have the law and legal tools to deal with it. If companies were really discriminating in this manner, Eric Holder could direct his Justice Department to, among other things, file high profile lawsuits on the subject. The law is already in place to do something about this, if this is still a problem.

If that law is not being enforced, that’s a separate issue from whether we should have a law on the subject of equal pay for women.

So now the Democrats are going to say how Republicans are against equal pay for women. This whole thing was a political game. And the useful idiots in the media will push that line. These media idiots probably don’t even know that there is already a federal law on the subject of equal pay for women. If they were critical thinkers, they would ask if that law is being enforced, not whether we need another law on the same subject.

[Mach9]

And, again, we’re right back at defining terms. What, for instance, is “equal work”? The “same” job? I’ll never understand this, I guess. Sure, whatever the formula is works in government and labor unions, both rigidly “job”-striated; but how, if at all, does it work in the real world? Pure boondogglery. (As was the ERA.)

[Labyrinthos]

This guy just figured out what should have been obvious when the femanazi’s and their homowanabe husband's first raised this issue thirty years ago. In addition to the “mommy track” that many women choose, women often make less because they choose careers that are not as dangerous or as physically demanding as the jobs that men choose. Also, women often choose jobs that are sensitive to the laws of supply and demand in that there are hundreds of other qualified people with worthless college degrees who could easily fill the position. Lastly, we have the laws of supply and demand at work in the sports entertainment industry where men generally make a lot more money than women because the men attract a larger audience on TV/Radio and both men and women are willing to pay more money to watch men than they are to watch women play the same sport (think NBA/WNBA, PGA/LPGA, tennis). It's that simple.

[IronJack]

little girls across the country

Ohmigosh! What kind of hard-hearted bustard could possibly want to hurt LITTLE GIRLS!!!???

Will liberals never tire of hiding behind children and other stale cliches?

[massgopguy]

Equal pay for equal work with EQUAL EXPERIENCE. An entry level test technician may work on the same printed circuit boards as a Senior Tech, but the senior tech will be more efficient due to experience. A company I worked at in the 1980’s came up with system to bring about pay equality. They stopped giving the Senior technicians who were men, Merit raises. If you take a literal view of equal pay for equal work then Rebecca Lobo should have been paid the same as Michael Jordan. In the mind of a government bureaucrat. They did the same thing.

[Reeses]

There is very wide deviation at the individual level, but at the group level women's brains are biologically about 10% smaller on average than men's brains. Women aren't 10% less intelligent but they do consistently score about 5% less on tests, such as the MCAT to get into medical school, and the SAT test before it was rigged to hide the difference. On a macro scale this 5% less mental horsepower accounts the remaining 5% gap between incomes.

This biological truth infuriates envy consumed leftists. They want to be lied to.

[sauropod]

I would send a message to Harry Reid that the reason his work is less valuable is because he was born stupid.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Wow, there’s an equal pay issue right there. The gals in the WNBA earn a fraction of the men in the NBA.

Then again, NBA basketball attendance, TV ratings, etc. is far higher, and generates far more income, than the WNBA women’s basketball.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Remember a few years ago, Larry Summers was forced out as president of Harvard? If I recall correctly, he talked about how relatively few women are in the hard sciences, and he said we could explore reasons for that.

He didn’t say he thought that it was good that relatively few women go into the hard sciences. He said we could explore the reasons for that. For making such a statement, he was terminated from a college presidency, for saying that we could look into why some fields seem to have few females.

True leftists can’t even study a subject to learn what’s going on. They have to blindly believe that bigotry and discrimination are the reasons why women may not have numerical equality in some areas of life, and that you are not even allowed to question that reasoning.

[TurboZamboni]

A group of Democratic female senators declared war on the so-called “gender pay gap,” urging their colleagues to pass the aptly named Paycheck Fairness Act when Congress returns from recess next month. However, a substantial gender pay gap exists in their own offices, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of Senate salary data reveals.

Of the five senators who participated in Wednesday’s press conference — Democrats Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Patty Murray of Washington, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Dianne Feinstein of California and Barbara Boxer of California — three pay their female staff members significantly less than male staffers.

http://times247.com/articles/paycheck-unfairness-women-paid-less-by-female-senators#ixzz1vtSOZ5SG

Should call it the "Lying Bedwetters Act"

[allmendream]

LOL.

Men are larger on average and are therefore more intelligent - having larger brains on average.

But the funny/interesting thing is that if you compare women and men with the same sized heads - women are, on average, smarter than their same size male counterparts.

They figured out recently that taller men are more successful than shorter men - and they tried to blame that all on perception (tall men are seen as leaders - head and shoulders (figuratively as well as literally) above their peers). They didn't once account for the fact that taller men have larger brains and will, on average, have higher IQ’s.

[ccmay]

A new government bureaucracy to mandate that a receptionist filing her nails in an air conditioned office and gossiping about the Kardashians should be paid the same as a journeyman plumber snaking sh¡t out of a clogged line at 3 a.m. What could ever go wrong with that?