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July 06, 2008 Barack Obama and Equal Pay for WomenBy Selwyn DukeAlthough the Illinois senator has vowed to make pay equity between the sexes a priority in his administration, it has been revealed that he doesn't practice what he preaches. Writes CNSNEWS.com:
Now, some might call Obama a hypocrite. Isn't he guilty of the very invidious discrimination he claims plagues America? It's certainly easy to take this tack, and many on my side will have a field day doing so. Yet, such an analysis only qualifies us for a job such as, well, working in a leftist senator's office. Let's look a little deeper. Treating this topic recently, I cited member of the fairer sex Carrie Lukas, who wrote:
I then added:
So it's entirely possible that Senator Obama is a sexist, misogynistic creep who gleefully rubs his hands together and laughs demonically while scheming to persecute his female employees. Maybe he has nothing better to do. But far more likely is that the aforementioned factors explain his office's inter-sex pay differential. Perhaps his male employees work more hours, have been more likely to accept promotions involving greater responsibility, have more experience, sacrificed "personal fulfillment" and instead chose more lucrative fields, and/or have greater seniority. Whatever the reasons, I'm quite sure of one thing: The phenomenon is attributable to natural, market-based factors and not a conscious desire to disenfranchise women. Of course, I could nonetheless level charges of invidious discrimination in an effort to score political points -- just as the senator has done. Instead, though, I will extend him a fairness that he denies to the millions of American businessmen he demonizes through implication. That is the right thing to do, Mr. Obama. Ironically, fairness is what leftists claim to want to achieve when issuing their feminist, 77-cents-on-a-dollar rallying cry. Yet this is an often ambiguous concept. "OK, Duke," you say, "you want specificity? How about equal pay for equal work?" Well, that's an interesting concept. I once read that female fashion models earn three times as much as their male peers. Then, it's well-known that heavyweight boxers make more than lightweights. Would you support government intervention to ensure pay equity among fashion models and boxers? I mean, as for the latter, lightweights have to train as hard and also endure ruinous blows. Of course, you might point out that to succeed in the lightweight division, you only have to beat lightweights, but to keep your teeth in the heavyweight division, you have to beat heavyweights, a more difficult task. So it's fair, isn't it? I agree, but often fairness is reckoned very differently when the lower-paid group has been assigned victim status. For instance, in tennis, there long was talk about the "grave injustice" of offering female players less prize money at Grand Slam events. Yet it's the same as in boxing. Whether or not the women train as hard, the fact remains that to succeed in women's tennis, they only have to vanquish women, not the far stiffer competition on the men's tour. Thus, in either sport, it's ridiculous to rally for equal pay based on an equality argument because the systems are inherently unequal, in that both lightweight boxers and female tennis players are offered an arena in which to compete that excludes the best competition. Yet the competitors do have recourse. If lightweights want the glory and purses of the heavyweights, they can move up into that division. Likewise, if the women want the men's money, they should play on the men's tour. Yet this doesn't explain the discrimination against male fashion models in an industry where all and sundry compete in the same arena. They all do "equal work," don't they? Perhaps, and this is the problem with advocating social engineering in the name of fairness. What we earn has nothing to do with idealistic notions of fairness but is determined by the value the market -- our fellow citizens, in other words -- assigns to our labors. Is it fair that rap thugs and sports stars earn more than doctors and teachers? Is it fair that mainstream media propagandists who peddle the wage-gap myth earn more than an alternative-media journalist who tries to debunk it (well, that's not fair!)? Not just female fashion models but also heavyweight boxers and male tennis players earn more money for one reason, and one reason only. It has nothing to do with performing more arduous or impressive work but because the market values them more highly. At the end of the day, the only question is who will determine wages and on what basis? Should it be 300 million citizens or a small number of politicians and bureaucrats, a market democracy or market autocracy? In other words, all of us, every day -- through what we buy, watch and show interest in -- essentially "vote" on what will get produced, how much people get paid, etc. Are we fair? Again, fairness is a hard thing to reckon. I can't boast about our embrace of shock jocks and reality television, but I will use a variation on a famous Winston Churchill line: Market democracy is the worst system in the world . . . except for all the rest. I'll take the "unfairness" of the market over that of pseudo-elite politicians any day. Now let's contrast these two models. Actually, the market does in fact discriminate. It compensates those who work longer hours, accept greater responsibility and risk, prevail over stiffer competition, and/or have great "drawing power" more than those who don't, for instance. (This is why I used the modifier "invidious," meaning "likely to create ill will," earlier in this piece -- not all discrimination is created equal.) And, as I illustrated, certain groups benefit from this moral discrimination, such as heavyweight boxers and men. Then there are groups privileged simply because of what they are, such as female fashion models (however, "what they are" makes their employers more money). Now, I ask again, should the government intervene on behalf of lightweight boxers and/or male fashion models? Regardless of your answer, a Big Brother market autocracy won't. What it will do is train its sights on only politically-incorrect targets, such as men. Thus, in the name of eliminating discrimination, statists are creating second-class groups which are told that they alone may not enjoy compensation commensurate with the market's assessment of their worth, simply because it's fashionable to discriminate against them. You see, when jockeying for votes by playing group politics, some groups must be cast as villains. And guess what, men, you're one of them. Now that's what I call invidious. Not surprisingly, this social engineering is already having an effect. In this article, writer Carey Roberts explains:
And this is just the beginning. The left will never acknowledge that men earn more due to legitimate market forces, and since trumping those forces isn't easy, expect more government action to achieve "fairness." I wrote about this in my piece, the one I cited earlier:
The implications of such government meddling are more profound than you may think, in that it harms women and children as well. As I went on to explain:
So we can choose the discrimination of the market's meritocracy or that of the statists' bureaucracy. I, for one, will settle on the people's determinations every time. I say this even if they do sometimes give us things such as rap thugs, reality television, and Barack Obama.
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Comments
How a Great Dream can change. I hope you consider:
Obama's "I Have a Dream" Speech Rough Draft Found In Caffe Latte Establishment!!!
July 5, 2008 by zachjonesishome
Found at: http://zachjonesishome.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/obamas-i-have-a-dream-speech-rough-draft-found-in-caffe-latte-establishment/
Posted by: ZachJonesIsHome | July 6, 2008 06:20 AM
One other point along the line of competition in athletics:
It's not like the advertising and endorsement and ticket sales are through the roof to watch womens soccer or womens basketball. So since they don't draw the revenue on their own merit do we close the gap with taxpayer funded subsidies?
Alot of these players are paid by the amount of revenue they themselves generate.
Posted by: Ryan | July 6, 2008 07:36 AM
Yet more proof that Barry Obama is no knight.
He will not court the majority of American women. No one who gets less than 55% of the votes of American women can win this year's Presidential election.
Posted by: Zbigniew Mazurak | July 6, 2008 09:23 AM
"The phenomenon is attributable to natural, market-based factors and not a conscious desire to disenfranchise women."
So? This argument gets any other employer nowhere. The government still makes him correct the "discrepancy." Therefore, the Democrats should be made to drink from their own cup; after all, fair is fair.
Posted by: Gordon Paravano | July 6, 2008 09:25 AM
Great article except that female tennis players frequently DO win the same prize as the men while never having to compete with the best... or even having to play 5 sets!
Posted by: Gene Hopp | July 6, 2008 09:42 AM
The liberals have abandoned the demand for "equal pay for equal work" and replaced it with "equal pay for comparable work".
And they want a (liberal) bureaucracy to decide what comparable work is.
One can only imagine how convoluted that could become. No, actually, the rational mind couldn't begin to imagine the irrationality that would result from the new math crowd that takes a situation when A = 2 and B = 1, then comes up with a result that A = B.
Posted by: Scott | July 6, 2008 11:00 AM
It's not so much the hypocrisy of Obama as the probable ramifications and and extrapolation of extenuations.
There will surely be a phalanx of Justice Dept branch lawyers ready to enforce Barack's promise of "equal pay" for women.
The next logical step is "equal pay" for blacks and gays.
The only one that will be fire-able will be white boy.
A gay black woman will certainly be able to sit on her butt all day doing nothing, and collect a fat check. Should she be fired, Barack will have a team of lawyers on your ass!
We can't sell our houses to whom we please. If we refuse to sell it to some white boy thug, that's OK. It is also OK to refuse sale to a good white boy.
But a black thug? "Discrimination".
There goes the neighborhood.
And to tell the truth, I certainly like a lot of black people. I can live amongst good black folks with no problem, just like my Smoke Bend ancestors did.
But it gets VERY old seeing the rights of Americans squashed.
Free enterprise. Contract. You work hard and smart, and you get rewarded....................down the drain.
More income shifting. It's entitlements now, and you pay for public schools but can't utilize them. It apparently could get very much worse.
Think about it. Barack's Supreme Court justices will surely support anything he and a Democratic Congress throws at us. The Supreme Court is right now tied 4-4, with wobbly Kennedy going whatever side he get out of bed.
And the more illegal immigrants we get, the better the chance that the leftists will further seal our fate.
Welcome to diversity.
For the record: why should 20,000,000 Mexicans have the right to illegally enter the country, and not a few thousand Japanese stuck on that little island?
I like Mexicans.
But I don't like suicide.
Posted by: paul marchand | July 6, 2008 11:56 AM
"He will not court the majority of American women. No one who gets less than 55% of the votes of American women can win this year's Presidential election."
You probably mean no Democrat who gets less than 55% of women's votes can win. Bush never won a majority of women's votes, although he did close the gender gap considerably from 2000 to 2004.
Still, women, specifically white women, are the key to this year's Presidential election.
African-Americans are strongly behind Obama. Hispanics are leaning toward him. On the other hand, white men are strongly behind McCain.
Women may not be thrilled with Obama, but McCain isn't doing any better. In fact, the polls give Obama a huge lead over McCain among women. (McCain's strong support among men is what's keeping him in it.)
If McCain can figure out how to reach out to women like George W. Bush did, he will win the election easily. He doesn't have to win women, he just can't afford to get blown out. If not, Obama will become President.
Posted by: Jim | July 6, 2008 02:33 PM
All Obama does is pander to different victim classes. Your a victim I can fix it!!!
Name me one sicial program that works for these victims? Wake up people be self supported and quit trying to fit into a victim category. I am not a victim!!!!
Posted by: shannon | July 6, 2008 05:55 PM
It's ok, he will make a speach and say, "This office is not the office I knew when I started this campaign". Not my fault.
Posted by: C Kern | July 6, 2008 07:02 PM
The worst part of this typically destructive and devisive Leftist Myth is that (almost) none of the Democrats who routinely use it to bash men/Republicans/Big Business actually believe it. No one with a rudimentary knowledge of statisitics or a basic understanding of humanity should fall for this particular Big Lie, yet you hear it spouted all the time for the purpose of delegitimizing American Society. Its popularity attests to the effectiveness of the destruction of public education by the Democratic Party.
Posted by: Beef | July 9, 2008 10:09 AM
Compare what men and women make in the same jobs in the same industry with the same experience and qualifications. When examined this way you will find little or no difference. What we actually have is an occupation pay gap.
Just consider some of the fields where men far outnumber women: Commercial fishing, longshoremen, oil rigger, farmer, merchant sailor, plumber, electrician, carpenter, auto mechanic, heavy equipment operator, coal miner, truck driver. Consider some of the fields women outnumber men: Secretary, day care worker, nurse, cashier, maid service, primary school teacher, librarian, hair dresser. Women prefer not to do jobs men are willing to do that are physically demanding, dirty and dangerous. (Men are 10 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed on the job than women.)
All the areas where women have entered the job market increases the supply of labor. Is it any wonder those wages and salaries are less than for those jobs they don't compete for? Could it be that men gravitate to job categories that pay better and women choose jobs less for the pay scale than to avoid the physically demanding, dirty and dangerous ones? Is that an anti-woman conspiracy or millions of people making choices for themselves?
Posted by: T M Colon | July 9, 2008 06:07 PM
YES,.We Shall Sustain,.and
Flourish,..With ( Each Others
Help),....Aah ,.LOL,........
GOD to be included Aah 1st!
AMEN !
Posted by: Rev.Mark | July 12, 2008 04:04 AM
YES,.We Shall Sustain,.and
Flourish,..With ( Each Others
Help),....Aah ,.LOL,........
GOD to be included Aah 1st!
AMEN !
Posted by: Rev.Mark | July 12, 2008 04:04 AM
This may be a "laughable" matter, but not to the naturally born leaders who are devoted to their employers today. I am speaking of woman who are responsible, who are intelligent, and who are assets to the organization(s)where they have spent most of their valuable time and abilities. However, salary increases for women should not come easy. The women who have extensive work backgrounds, skills, and education are the most deserving. They are tired of looking up to and being beaten down by the incompetence of this world. In other words,if they are exceptional women,they need to get paid.
Posted by: Peggy B. | July 19, 2008 07:11 PM