Readers familiar with my blog might notice that some posts fall under one of these three categories: Liberal Lies contain posts about the destructive myths perpetuated by the left about conservatives, our country, human nature, and the world at large. Liberal Fascism covers how the intolerant left imposes their policy preferences on the rest of us, be it through litigation, legislation, taxation, or speech suppression. And under Liberal Hypocrisy you’ll learn about the various ways liberals engage in the age-old “do as I say, not as I do” bit.
But oftentimes these three categories work in tandem: Liberals espouse a lie, then impose some draconian law upon us based on that lie, and all the while be engaging in activity violating their own rules.
Such is the case with yesterday’s Fair Pay Act signed by President Obama, which is intended to end the alleged pay discrimination against women in America.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying a discrepancy in pay between the genders doesn’t exist. But to say that it exists due to discrimination against women is nothing but a oversimplistic, politically correct, knee-jerk liberal explanation. And, unfortunately, it’s the belief of the Knee-Jerk Liberal in Chief, President Hope&Change.
Let’s break it down, shall we?
I. Liberal Lie
I’ve learned there are dogmas that you just can’t dissuade liberals from believing, despite mountains of evidence—or, sometimes, just simple common freaking sense—disputing those beliefs.
For example, George W. Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans actually resulted in more tax revenue, not less. Yet President Obama supports raising their taxes anyway, out of fairness, as he told Charles Gibson in an interview last year.
Likewise, Barack Obama—and too many Democrats to name—clearly believes that the gender pay gap exists due to sex discrimination in the workplace. And with one swipe of his magic Hope&Change pen, he’s gonna put an end to it, dammit!
But people clearly more intellectually curious and honest than our Harvard Law Graduate in Chief have actually done the research on the reasons for the gender pay gap.
Consider first this statement from a February 2008 interview with Thomas Sowell at Right Wing News. (The interview took place right after the release of his book Economic Facts and Fallacies—a must-read for everyone, even though probably no college professor would be caught dead reading it or recommending it!):
… 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.
This last point is particularly eye-opening: If an employer can get away with hiring a woman for 75% the amount than he can pay a man to do the same job, wouldn’t there be a whole lot of men out of work for the past, oh, couple hundred years?
Thomas Sowell has been studying social and economic issues for decades. Here are some relevant points from his 1975 book Affirmative Action Reconsidered, when women were said to be making 67 cents for every dollar earned by men:
Statistically, women tend to choose jobs that pay less but have more flexibility, less risk, and can be left and picked up later, so we can have children and raise families. When comparing jobs that are high-risk, require years of uninterrupted dedication, might require moving across the country, and using statistics that analyze single women with no children, then wages statistics become equal between men and women, and often women even earn a little more. […]
Women’s representation in professional and technical occupations declined by 9 percent from 1940 to 1950 and then by another 9 percent from 1950 to 1959. Women received 34 percent of the Bachelor’s degrees in 1920, but only 24 percent in 1950. They received just over 15 percent of the doctoral degrees in 1920 but just under 10 percent in 1950. … “If the statistical disparities between women and men are attributable to discrimination by men, then this remarkable history would suggest that men inexplicably became more discriminatory toward women during the first half of the 20th century and then relented later in the second half, causing the trend to reverse. […]
… The crucial role of marriage and child-bearing on women’s economic level can be seen by breaking down the female population as a whole into those who do and those who do not become wives and mothers, those whose careers are continuous and those who interrupt their careers to assume domestic responsibilities. As far back as 1971, women who remained unmarried into their thirties and who had worked continually since high school earned slightly more than men of the same description. (“The Economic Role of Women,” The Economic Report of the President, Washington D.C., 1973.) Academic women who never married averaged slightly higher incomes in 1968-69--before (gender-based) affirmative action—than academic men who never married.
Substantial male-female differences in income reflect the fact that women do get married, do have children, and do interrupt their careers for domestic responsibility more than men do.
Women tend to specialize in careers where career interruptions are easier to accommodate – teaching rather than computer engineering, for example. Another factor in male-female differences in earnings is that men tend to specialize in more hazardous occupations that pay higher compensation. Although men are 54 percent of the workforce, they account for 92 percent of job-related deaths.
Next, here are the findings of John Stossel of ABC-TV’s 20/20. His conclusions are very similar to Sowell’s:
Is the Wage Gap Women’s Choice?
Research Suggests Career Decisions, Not Sex Bias, Are at Root of Pay Disparity
May 27, 2005
… In her new book, “Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It,” Burk concludes what we’ve all heard. “Women make less. Even if it’s the exact same job title and it is the exact same work and the experience is comparable,” she said.
But author Warren Farrell, who spent about 15 years going over U.S. Census statistics and research studies, said Burk is wrong. Farrell’s research found that the wage gap exists not because of sexism, but because more men are willing to do certain kinds of jobs. “The average full-time working male works more than a full-time working female,” Farrell said.
Farrell illustrates his findings at lectures by asking men and women to stand up in answer to a series of questions about their job choices, such as whether they work more than 40 hours a week, or have held a job that has required them to work outdoors, or if they have 20 years experience in their current occupation.
Again and again, more men stand up.
Different job choices are why men earn more, Farrell says in his new book, “Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It.”
“The women themselves say they’re far more likely to care about flexibility. The men say I’m far more likely to care about money,” Farrell said.
What about the fact that almost all of the biggest money makers -- the company bosses -- are men? There are some female chief executive officers making big bucks, but they are the exception. Isn’t that discrimination?
“We have been suckered into believing that because there are more men at the top than women at the top, that this is a result of discrimination against women. That’s been the misconception. It’s all about trade-offs. You earn more money, you usually sacrifice something at home,” Farrell said. […]
Decades ago, Farrell was a man who joined Gloria Steinem in feminist protests. He’s the only man to have been elected three times to the board of the National Organization for Women. “I used to wear a ‘59 cent’ pin to protest the fact that men earned a dollar for each 59 cents that women earned for the same work. And then I asked myself one day: “If men are earning a dollar, maybe I’ll go out and start an all-female firm and I’ll be able to produce products for 59 cents that male firms are producing for a dollar,” he said.
He came to realize that there’s something wrong with the statistic.
Farrell combed through jobs data and found that higher-paying jobs are more likely to require longer commuting times, safety risks, frequent travel, long hours and other factors that, on his tests, led the men to stand while the women sat.
Those jobs pay more because fewer people want to do them. It’s not sexism. It’s just supply and demand. In some fields, like office jobs—finance for example—women make as much or more than men.
In sum, there are several legitimate and documentable factors contributing to the pay gap between men and women—but discrimination is not one of them.
Did Obama even know about the research of Thomas Sowell or John Stossel, let alone consider them? Doubt it. That would be too much cognitive dissonance for a hard leftist to handle.
Indeed, according to CNS News, “the data from both the Census Bureau and the Secretary of the Senate are based on gender without regard to job position, experience, or education that could be factors in pay.”
This is exactly how liberals deliberately or unwittingly fall for politically correct myths that are completely untrue, namely that women get paid overall x cents for every dollar men are paid because of like something unfair or discriminatory is going on. But what left-wing ideologues like President Hope&Change have failed to do is consider legitimate facts that lead to this pay discrepancy.
The result is that the President of the United States has signed a bill intended to address a problem that exists only in the imaginations of left-wing ideologues.
But worse than that, Obama’s feel-good bill is going to end up creating problems that didn’t exist. Which brings us to …
II. Liberal Fascism
This is the step where the liberal “We know better than you” State imposes their policy preferences on you.
Before we get into that, there is one very important aspect of this bill that has not yet been discussed: CNS News informs us that the bill “make[s] it easier to sue employers for pay discrimination.”
Aha! Now we get to the bottom of it: the real purpose of the bill. Whether it actually ends gender-based pay discrimination is unclear, but it will definitely make trial lawyers rich from endless lawsuits—threats of lawsuits. By the way, is it any coincidence that trial lawyers happen to be one of the Democrats’ largest special interest groups? Naaaah. Obama promised to rid Washington of special interest groups, remember?
OK, so what are the consequences of the Fair Pay Act? Here’s a very likely scenario:
(1) Business owners, perpetually threatened by the prospect of pay discrimination litigation, will have to set aside money to cover court costs.
(2) This means they’ll have less money to invest in their own company, their products/services, and … tada … paying employees!
(3) Businesses will then have to hire fewer workers, resulting in higher unemployment. (And I thought Obama was promising to create jobs.)
(4) Then, when the unemployment rate continues to rise, Obama and his fellow liberal ideologues in Congress will blame … greedy companies!
(5) The next step: More government regulation over private business!
To tally up the consequences: Trial lawyers get richer, defense lawyers get richer, the private sector takes a beating, Americans lose or can’t find jobs, and government gets more powerful and overreaching.
Oh, and the amount of improvement for the lives of American women--which, remember, was the reason for this bill to begin with? ZERO.
Clearly President Obama has not considered (or doesn’t care) the long-term consequences of this direction of action. And this is another flaw of liberal thinking: They rarely consider the long-term consequences of their actions or policies. They are motivated more by a philosophy of, “If it makes us feel good about ourselves, let’s do it.” (Dennis Prager has discussed this flaw of liberal policy-making.)
Incidentally, if you think I am off-base about the wasted money companies will have to earmark for lawsuits or threats thereof, John Stossel already documented that the same article cited above:
If they aren’t discriminating, why do companies give out multimillion-dollar settlements? “They’re afraid ... of getting publicity for a year saying that they’re anti-female, so you settle,” Farrell said. […]
[A]ctivists say America needs a law like the one passed in Ontario where employers must rate every job to make sure women are paid fairly.
Companies say the law is complicated and costly. “We spent months, spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars on this project to do a 3-cent adjustment that may not have even been necessary,” said Sheldon Caplan, who works for a Canadian company that sews and sells sofa cushions.
While the law may have helped some women increase their wages, a broader study in The Canadian Journal of Economics found the law has had “no effect on the wage gap.”
We don’t need a law, Caplan said. Any company that discriminates by sex or anything other than work ability will have higher costs. “I hope my competitors discriminate. I want my competitors to discriminate because then they will go out of business,” he said.
Again, these are the likely results of Obama’s bill. It perfectly exemplifies the liberal philosophy of “equality of result,” as opposed to “equality of opportunity.” To liberals like President Obama, it makes no difference how the gender pay discrepancy may have come about; it just has to be discrimination by those evil men.
But wait, you might be thinking. Isn’t Obama himself a man? Why yes, he is. Which brings us now to …
III. Liberal Hypocrisy
And now finally, the icing on the cake: Despite President Hope&Change’s alleged devotion to ensuring women’s rights (and minority rights, blah blah freaking blah) in the workplace, his own record reveals a major discrepancy. Back in September it was discovered that, on the average, Obama paid his female campaign staff members 78 cents for every dollar his male staff earned. By contrast, at McCain headquarters—who during the campaign Obama accused of not caring about equality for women!—female staffers were making $1.04 for every male-earned dollar.
This article by Deroy Murdock, which I posted at the time the story came out, explains it all:
On gender pay equity, Obama only talks the talk
… Obama’s 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or $45,152, on average.
Why this disparity? One reason may be the underrepresentation of women in Obama’s highest-compensated ranks. Among Obama’s five best-paid advisers, one was a woman. Among his top 20, seven were women.
Again, on average, Obama’s female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the 77-cent threshold that Obama’s campaign Web site condemns. However, 83 cents do not equal $1.00. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama’s rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender John McCain on this issue.
Obama responded Aug. 31 to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s Republican vice-presidential nomination. Palin “seems like a very engaging person,” Obama told voters in Toledo, Ohio. “But I’ve got to say, she’s opposed--like John McCain is—to equal pay for equal work. That doesn’t make much sense to me.”
Obama’s criticism notwithstanding, McCain’s payment patterns are the stuff of feminist dreams.
McCain’s 17 male staffers split $916,914, thus averaging $53,936. His 25 female employees divided $1,396,958 and averaged $55,878.
On average, according to these data, women in John McCain’s office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, all other things being equal, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per dollar paid to her male counterpart—while adding $10,726 to her annual income – by leaving Barack Obama’s office and going to work for John McCain. […]
In short, these statistics suggest that John McCain is more than fair with his female employees, while Barack Obama—at the expense of the women who work for him—quietly perpetuates the very same pay-equity divide that he loudly denounces. Of all people, the Democratic standard-bearer should understand that equal pay begins at home.
IV. Conclusion
Do you understand now how Obama and Democrats are playing you? While you’re still swooning over how caring and compassinate President Hope&Change is, you’re being completely distracted from the fact that this bill will do nothing but make one of the Democrats biggest special interest groups, the trial lawyers, infinitely wealthy. Not to mention the fact that neither Obama nor the bill he has signed ever took into consideration the facts behind the alleged wage gap. Finally, this bill will most likely end up destroying jobs, the complete opposite of President Hope&Change's promise to the American people.
The long and the short of it is that this bill never should have seen the light of day.
Now, at this point—if not earlier—you might be accusing me of being a chauvinistic discriminatory male. If this is the case, read the cold hard facts presented in this blog post over and over again until it finally sinks in your thick liberal skull!
Recent Comments