Facts and Fallacies About Paycheck Fairness

President Barack Obama and his feminist friends have been trotting out their tiresome slogan that women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Every reputable scholar who has commented has proved that this is a notorious falsehood that anyone should be embarrassed to use.

U.S. law calls for equal pay for equal work, but the feminist slogan is not based on equal work. Women work fewer hours per day, per week, per year. They spend fewer years as full-time workers outside the home, avoid jobs that require overtime, and choose jobs with flexibility to take time off for personal reasons. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men are twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week.

Women place a much higher value on pleasant working conditions: a clean, comfortable, air-conditioned office with congenial co-workers. Men, on the other hand, are more willing to endure unpleasant working conditions to earn higher pay, doing dirty, dangerous outside work. In 2012, men suffered 92 percent of work-related deaths.

If a man is supporting his family, at the peak of his career, he often works longer hours to maximize his earnings. By contrast, a successful woman who reaches a high rank in her career is more likely to reduce her working hours.

All these reasons for women voluntarily choosing lower pay are now beyond dispute among those who have looked at the facts. But even those explanations for the alleged pay "gap" are still only part of the story.

Perhaps an even more important reason for women's lower pay is the choices women make in their personal lives, such as having children. Women with children earn less, but childless women earn about the same as men.

Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don't have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.

While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.

Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.

Obviously, I'm not saying women won't date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.

In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market.

Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap, just as much as the choice of a job with flexible hours and pleasant working conditions.

The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages. Since husband and wife generally pool their incomes into a single economic unit, what really matters is the combined family income, not the pay gap between them.

In two segments of our population, the pay gap has virtually ceased to exist. In the African-American community and in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 32), women earn about the same as men, if not more.

It just so happens that those are the two segments of our population in which the rate of marriage has fallen the most. Fifty years ago, about 80 percent of Americans were married by age 30; today, less than 50 percent are.

Just a coincidence? I think not. The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.

The real economic story of the past 30 years is that women's pay has effectively risen to virtual parity, but men's pay has stagnated and thousands of well-paid blue-collar jobs have been shipped to low-wage countries. Nobody should be surprised that the marriage rate has fallen, the age of first marriage has risen, and marriage, in general, has become more unstable.

Well, yes. But it is not a speed bump. It is a brick wall. Since we will never agree that all companies publish their salary data by gender (and even that would not tell the full tale; they’d have to publish everyone’s resume and performance evaluations to prove that they are not sexist!), we will never get to all citizens working for the government. Or they’ll have to go around that brick wall by instituting a full-scale communist revolution.

Often the real situation is that women have been at the job longer and actually do it better than the men making the higher salary.

Which is usually caused by the fact that those males are willing to work more overtime and take less medical time-off. There is no male-pay-scale vs. female-pay-scale. When I was working in IT, we were paid for our experience, skills and willingness to get the job done. All of our hourly rates were pretty much the same, but we had several females who were paid MORE per hour, but their paychecks were LESS because they wouldn't work the overtime. These factors are the MOST OFTEN cause of pay differences. All these labor numbers, BS Dem talking points and such are based on OVERALL, COMBINED annual salaries. Those salaries are eschewed because of the personal choices which women and men make towards their careers, their family needs, and their current situations.

The problem with your approach is that it often leads to other areas which the Dems use to open other false narratives (Republicans don't care about the poor, Republicans want to let businesses screw over their workers, Republicans want people to starve by abolishing the minimum wage, etc...).

The Dems have presented a nice sounding, although COMPLETE lie about 77% pay difference. The best way to fight that isn't by opening ourselves up to more avenues for the Dems to parade with "Republicans hate women and minorities" signs. The best defense is to make the Dems own up to the LIE about the 77% and present the truth, which is on our side!

Power for the sake of self, not so great.

To the left, it is all about self, control and power over those not like them.

For years, Conservatives have been pegged with the label of greed. We are the robber barons. We are exclusive country clubbers. We amass wealth at the expense of "the working man". Yada yada yada.

Stop and examine what the liberal/"progessives" are up to and there is every ounce of greed in them we have long been pegged with, but for the want of power and control. But that is OK (in their mind). It's for the social good.

What the Dems are saying is a lie, because they are saying it’s unequal pay for equal work.

But the reasons Republicans are giving for the disparity can sound more offensive: women pick easy majors, women are designed for childbearing, women work shorter hours—all of these statements are adding to the problem.

My advice is to stick to the big answer: it’s none of the government’s business. Any attempts to counter their claim by offering answers to why women are paid less is really off topic. It gives them food for more refutation and sends all these negative stereotypes about women workers into the airwaves. Plus some inexperienced candidate is going to stick his foot in it big-time if we stay on this theme.

It's illegal to pay based upon gender for the same job. It's grounds for a lawsuit which will be won.

The statistics, studies, etc. are based upon "equivalent jobs."

Guess who decides what constitutes an "equivalent job?

You won't get that from the article, or any article...just as the lamestream media can't use the words "alien" and "illegal" in the same sentence.

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