Re: Exposing your paycheckpaycheck

Considering this starts with a false premise, its that much worse.

The wage gap is bogus.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 
Peter Chattaway
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 4:14 PM
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver
Subject: [DADL-OT] Exposing your paycheckpaycheck

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/exposing_your_paycheck_mMdT1f6iC62YdIfe8Y2DZP

A proposed law would do it -- all it in the interest of 'fairness'

by Kyle Smith
Last Updated: 11:31 PM, November 20, 2010
Posted: 10:39 PM, November 20, 2010

Now that the midterm elections are over and a lame duck session of Congress has 
convened, the Democrats in charge can take a deep breath, put aside all the 
campaign rhetoric and get back to doing what they do best: destroying jobs.

Sitting on Harry Reid's desk is a little-noticed economic hand grenade with its 
pin half-pulled called the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that has already passed 
the House and might well pass the Senate if Reid can put down a Republican 
filibuster. Dirty Harry has to be feeling lucky these days, having won reelection 
by a comfortable margin, and he's proven before that when it comes to 
ultra-liberal legislation he's willing to shoot first and worry about colleagues 
caught in the crossfire later.

The Paycheck Fairness Act seeks to finally end pay differences between men and 
women. It's one of those well-intentioned pieces of righteousness that sounds like 
it was cooked up in an Ivy League womyn's studies workshop circa 1988. For years, 
such business-illiterate ideas have led only to harmless campus marches where 
students can pretend they're standing up to Nixon and Vietnam. But today seminar 
thinking has a way of making it all the way into the real economy.

Women earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. So what?

Men and women, you may have noticed, don't do the same work. After 40 years of 
aggressive cultural sensitivity training about how women can (and should!) be 
miners, movers, truckers, soldiers, construction workers, firemen - oops, 
"fighters" - and maybe even sperm donors, women continue to prefer the office. 
They still gravitate towards jobs that involve lower stakes, shorter workweeks and 
a preference for personal relationships over ruthless competition. By 2005, 
according to American Medical Association stats, 73% of pediatrics residents were 
women and 64% of dermatology residents were women - but 69% of residents learning 
surgery were men. Should it surprise us that zit analysis pays less than 
cardiothoracic surgery?

When you factor in experience, education, overtime (which men are more likely to 
accept) and some other factors, the real pay gap is more like five cents on the 
dollar, according to a 2003 study by Baruch College economist June O'Neill. As 
Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute points out, if so many women are 
getting treated unfairly, why were only 942 complaints about paycheck sex bias 
filed with the EEOC in 2009? And why were more than 95% of those complaints ruled 
baseless?

Yet the bill would require even very small businesses to submit a sheaf of 
detailed employment data to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulators - 
even if no complaint has been filed. That burden would destroy lots of small firms 
that create actual goods and services and instead invent phony oversight jobs for 
the DC leech-ocracy.

"Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income," the 
Professor in Chief said in July, as if the bill would simply cause more income to 
rain down from our employers. Wouldn't businesses who were required to equalize 
pay simply take it from Sam and give it to Susie?

The PFA would require employers to disclose salary information so that Susie would 
have a right to know what Sam is making. Nothing can go wrong there, right? If you 
think your office is irritating now, imagine a place where everybody knew 
everybody else's numbers. Once you and your cubicle neighbor were swapping jokes 
about the office coffee. Now whoever makes less is bound to hate the other. And if 
you make the same amount? Maybe you'll both hate each other because you're both 
convinced you're worth more. Lawyers working on commission would be authorized to 
pursue feminist class-action shakedown lawsuits that would include all women in 
the firm unless they expressly opt out.

Office culture would be worse than the law of the jungle - it would be like high 
school.

A dynamic economy is a hive of inequality. A collapse in the housing market means 
unemployment rises drastically for men in the construction industry - and in 
finance. Job stability, too, is a valuable consideration in selecting a job. 
Teachers, nurses and government workers didn't suffer huge layoffs. Could men's 
penchant for riskier, more stressful and (consequently) higher paying jobs be the 
reason our wives outlive us by a decade? Hey, Professor - I'll support the 
Paycheck Fairness Act if you give me a Lifetime Expectancy Fairness Act.


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