No, Calfornia's Equal Pay Act will not help women(or Actress)

[A2K78]

Apparently this economically clueless guy seem to think that Jerry Brown's Equal Pay Act is going to magically help women...the problem is when you take real world economics into consideration(not the fairytale/keynesian type) .e.g. supply and demand when it come to labor, like the minimum wage not only this just another type of price control but another law that is going to hurt those it intends to help...in this case employers being reluctant to hire women...

ttp://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-californias-fair-pay-act-will-help-women


on the Hollywood side of this...I expect to fully aid the exodus of more production from the state of California.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-hollywood-fair-pay-20151008-story.html

speaking of, some great resources on why equal pay/minimum wage price controls are stupid:

https://mises.org/library/obamas-economic-war-women
https://mises.org/library/what’s-behind-gender-wage-gap
http://tomwoods.com/podcast/the-equal-pay-day-scam-april-08-2014/

 

[The Bman]

The justification to the "79 cents to every man's dollar" is "earn" and "make". "Earn" covers the entire work force not taking individual jobs into consideration. "Make" would be the individual job and the amount of money a person can get from working in that field.

The United States being a free society, men and women have the right to choose what field of labor they enter. If more women choose to have a job as, say, a financial advisor (just using it as an example) and more men choose to be engineers, then there's going to be a difference in pay considering those are two completely different jobs. No discrimination taking place here. Now if the employer doesn't hire someone more qualified than another because of gender (or race, sexual preference, or any biological or ethnicity circumstances) we have a problem.

Back to the topic at hand, if you think the pay gap is something that needs to be fixed, then you're wrong because it doesn't exist in the first place. The "79 cents" claim is misinterpreted and there is no solution needed because people - regardless of gender - can study for certain career fields and pursue them. Thinking that paying women more than men for lower-paying jobs is a solution is nuts because that would support matriarchal ideologies as opposed to true equality.

 

[TenEightyOne]

The justification to the "79 cents to every man's dollar" is "earn" and "make". "Earn" covers the entire work force not taking individual jobs into consideration. "Make" would be the individual job and the amount of money a person can get from working in that field.

The United States being a free society, men and women have the right to choose what field of labor they enter. If more women choose to have a job as, say, a financial advisor (just using it as an example) and more men choose to be engineers, then there's going to be a difference in pay considering those are two completely different jobs. No discrimination taking place here. Now if the employer doesn't hire someone more qualified than another because of gender (or race, sexual preference, or any biological or ethnicity circumstances) we have a problem.

Back to the topic at hand, if you think the pay gap is something that needs to be fixed, then you're wrong because it doesn't exist in the first place. The "79 cents" claim is misinterpreted and there is no solution needed because people - regardless of gender - can study for certain career fields and pursue them. Thinking that paying women more than men for lower-paying jobs is a solution is nuts because that would support matriarchal ideologies as opposed to true equality.

The articles talk about pay equality for the same work, not why women may or may not choose jobs with lower pay.

 

[The Bman]

The articles talk about pay equality for the same work, not why women may or may not choose jobs with lower pay.

Then it's simple; report it. There are laws already in place to enforce equal pay. If mouths are kept shut about it, nothing will be done.

 

[Imari]

This sort of stuff seems odd to me. If an employer can get away with paying any class of people or any individual less, then they will. They make more money that way, and that's kind of what they're set up to do.

An employee gets to decide whether or not they're willing to work for the wage being offered. I just resigned from a job not so long ago because my employer wasn't paying me enough for the value that I provided to the company. They're welcome to try and find someone else to do the job as well for the wages they were paying me, I'm not going to drag the market down by settling.

This is the thing. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If women think that they have to settle for being paid less, then employers can get away with paying them less and they will. If women simply don't accept jobs that are underpaid, then the employer is faced with the choice of paying the same for whoever they hire, and they take the best candidate regardless of gender.

You can try and legislate this stuff to some degree, but I feel like it's never going to be a real solution. The real solution is to stop taking jobs that are underpaid.

From the second article:

"I think now it's my responsibility to fight in my deals so that I'll be paid the exact same as a guy in the same position as I am," Emily Blunt told The Times last month. "That's what I'm fighting for now, and if they don't want to come up with that, I might not do it. I'm OK walking away. If they're going to be stingy and not be equal, then I'm not so interested anymore."

 

[ExigeEvan]

But the reality is that free labour movement isn't a reality.

It may be difficult to find another job, you may fear your employer finding out, you may lose benefits over a probationary period, you may have limited means to commute.

It's all well and good looking at this at a professional level where the differences might be several thousand, but the reality is the gender pay gap exists top to bottom.

 

[VolkswagenX]

But the reality is that free labour movement isn't a reality.

It may be difficult to find another job, you may fear your employer finding out, you may lose benefits over a probationary period, you may have limited means to commute.

It's all well and good looking at this at a professional level where the differences might be several thousand, but the reality is the gender pay gap exists top to bottom.

Where does it exist? Show me actual proof of women earning less than men for doing the same job and having the same amount of experience.

 

[Imari]

But the reality is that free labour movement isn't a reality.

It may be difficult to find another job, you may fear your employer finding out, you may lose benefits over a probationary period, you may have limited means to commute.

And all these things are exactly the reasons that employers use to beat down any employees wages. Not just women. At pretty much every workplace I've ever been at there's been at least one employee who has been woefully underpaid for the value that he or she provides, simply because the company knows that because of their circumstances or personality that they won't push back.

If you feel that you need to accept lower wages because of circumstances, then that's a choice that you make as an employee. That's part of the bargaining process, you're not automatically owed the same amount as someone who bargained better than you.

While this would be easy if everyone was just paid a proportion of whatever value they generated for the company, it doesn't work like that. You get paid whatever you can bargain the company into paying you. In that sense, it's a lot more like poker than it is a transaction at the store. At the store, there's a price for a bag of crisps and that doesn't change much. A poker hand is worth whatever you can convince your opponent to bet, almost entirely independent of it's actual value.

An employee is somewhere in between. You have some known value, a widget-maker may always be worth somewhere between 40k and 60k a year. But within that range it's an employee's job to try and convince the company that they're worth more, and a company's job to try and convince the employee to settle for less. If you're in circumstances that limit your potential to accept other jobs, then the company can and should use that to get as much value out of you as possible.

It sucks as an employee sometimes, but that's how it works. If you feel you're being underpaid, you have to be able to get out there and fight for it. Rarely will you just be handed more money simply because it's the right thing to do, companies definitely don't work like that.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Where does it exist? Show me actual proof of women earning less than men for doing the same job and having the same amount of experience.

I would also like to see this evidence and controlled for variables as well.

 

[ExigeEvan]

I would also like to see this evidence and controlled for variables as well.

Where does it exist? Show me actual proof of women earning less than men for doing the same job and having the same amount of experience.

Well that's half the issue, 2 people are never the same, so to provide 100% comparable results isn't possible. However, we can look at whole bodies of evidence that do support that position. For example, VwX asks for people having the same experience. Well how about no experience as in just graduated? [Main article]

An example of it existing? Well 2 small councils in Wales paid out £11 million pound in compensation due to gender wage inequality. Or another that went to tribunal.

And all these things are exactly the reasons that employers use to beat down any employees wages. Not just women. At pretty much every workplace I've ever been at there's been at least one employee who has been woefully underpaid for the value that he or she provides, simply because the company knows that because of their circumstances or personality that they won't push back.

Completely agree. However, there is evidence to support that women placed in this position are on a lower wage than men. My point was never that men are unaffected by this 'employment trap', but that the free labour market isn't as fluid as you make it.

If you feel that you need to accept lower wages because of circumstances, then that's a choice that you make as an employee. That's part of the bargaining process, you're not automatically owed the same amount as someone who bargained better than you.

How many low-paid hourly workers actually get into pay negotiations with their employer? I expect very few.

It sucks as an employee sometimes, but that's how it works. If you feel you're being underpaid, you have to be able to get out there and fight for it. Rarely will you just be handed more money simply because it's the right thing to do, companies definitely don't work like that.

And that's what women are doing, they're fighting for equal pay. And yet you seem to be telling them they shouldn't?

 

[Imari]

Completely agree. However, there is evidence to support that women placed in this position are on a lower wage than men. My point was never that men are unaffected by this 'employment trap', but that the free labour market isn't as fluid as you make it.

I'm not claiming that it's fluid. I'm claiming that people have a choice. A employment contract is an agreement between two parties. If one of the parties feels that they're not getting the value that they deserve out of the agreement, then they shouldn't sign.

How many low-paid hourly workers actually get into pay negotiations with their employer? I expect very few.

Indeed, very few. Although if you take unions into account, possibly not that few. That's one of the main points for unions, after all, that they provide bargaining power to employees who would otherwise have very little, mostly due to the fact that their skills are so low that they can easily be replaced by just about anyone.

And that's what women are doing, they're fighting for equal pay. And yet you seem to be telling them they shouldn't?

Then I haven't explained it well.

This thread started with women fighting for legislation for equal pay. I think that's a nice step, but it's not going to solve the problem. There are way too many edge cases to ever be able to legislate truly equal pay.

I think what needs doing is that women need to start refusing jobs for which they're underpaid. I think that is the correct method of fighting this, and obviously plenty of women are still not doing it as the wage gap still exists.

I think it's fair to say a lot of women won't bother because they're not even aware that wage equality is a thing that they should be paying attention to, and others simply aren't in a position to bargain. That's fine, that could happen to anyone, and in some situations is absolutely the correct choice. But those people don't care and can't care respectively, so they're not really in the discussion.

The women who are in a position to bargain and yet don't are perpetuating a problem. Companies have learned that they can offer women less and they'll take it. As wrong as it may be, the companies are the spoilt child who has learned that they can have ice cream instead of broccoli for dinner if they behave in a certain way. It's tough, and the situation is absolutely not of the making of the women who are getting stiffed by it, but they're the ones in a position to effect change.

They have to find ways to be able to say no. Otherwise, they'll continue to be taken advantage of. Expecting companies to voluntarily make less money seems insane to me, whereas many women absolutely have the power to at least attempt to change their situation.

 

[Swagger897]

What I take from this whole thread is that women aren't asking their employers for higher pay....

Nothing to deal with men are asking for higher pay (where's the proof for that to have an argument that women aren't), or companies are knowingly paying women less then men, not due to women asking for it.

To me this is a joke really, having legislation to help them get around a problem, not solving it though....

 

[Johnnypenso]

Well that's half the issue, 2 people are never the same, so to provide 100% comparable results isn't possible. However, we can look at whole bodies of evidence that do support that position. For example, VwX asks for people having the same experience. Well how about no experience as in just graduated? [Main article]

An example of it existing? Well 2 small councils in Wales paid out £11 million pound in compensation due to gender wage inequality. Or another that went to tribunal.


Completely agree. However, there is evidence to support that women placed in this position are on a lower wage than men. My point was never that men are unaffected by this 'employment trap', but that the free labour market isn't as fluid as you make it.


How many low-paid hourly workers actually get into pay negotiations with their employer? I expect very few.


And that's what women are doing, they're fighting for equal pay. And yet you seem to be telling them they shouldn't?

Proof to me should be easy to find. Pick several occupations. Survey men and women with equal levels of experience and let's compare their wages. Should be pretty simple. When I see that I'll believe it. We shouldn't need to rely on small, obscure anecdotes for what is supposedly a wide ranging and massive problem. We're talking literally trillions of dollars here. The evidence should be so massive as to be incontrovertible no?

 

[Joel]

When you control for everything that makes up the wage gap, the wage gap doesn't exist! Take that feminism!

 

[VolkswagenX]

Well that's half the issue, 2 people are never the same, so to provide 100% comparable results isn't possible. However, we can look at whole bodies of evidence that do support that position. For example, VwX asks for people having the same experience. Well how about no experience as in just graduated? [Main article]

An example of it existing? Well 2 small councils in Wales paid out £11 million pound in compensation due to gender wage inequality. Or another that went to tribunal.


Completely agree. However, there is evidence to support that women placed in this position are on a lower wage than men. My point was never that men are unaffected by this 'employment trap', but that the free labour market isn't as fluid as you make it.


How many low-paid hourly workers actually get into pay negotiations with their employer? I expect very few.


And that's what women are doing, they're fighting for equal pay. And yet you seem to be telling them they shouldn't?

When you control for everything that makes up the wage gap, the wage gap doesn't exist! Take that feminism!

Can you show proof that it does exist? Can you point out one company, that pays women less than men per hour? Of course both having the same experience.

 

[Joel]

Can you show proof that it does exist? Can you point out one company, that pays women less than men per hour? Of course both having the same experience.

That's not really the point. I don't really believe cigar chomping fat cat bosses are just deciding to pay women 20% less. The point isn't that there's overt sexism and discrimination happening, the point is that we know that on a macro scale women receive 78 cents on a man's dollar. That isn't disproven by a wage gap not existing when you make an apples to apples comparison within a specific industry and level of experience. The wage gap mostly comes down to the lack of apples to apples comparisons that exist in well paying fields.

The reason I was sarcastic about the calls to account for experience, job choice, hours worked, etc. Is because those are what makes up the wage gap in the first place. I understand that the wage gap is in large part because well paying jobs in oil and gas, police work, engineering, construction, skilled trades, etc. are almost exclusively done by men. Then there's the massive disparity among C level executives, the highest paying jobs in the world are an old boys' club.

Another big part of it is child care. I'm a business student in university, and I know tons of women who are every bit as capable and competent as the men in my classes. We'll have similar career paths for the next 10 years. The reality is that when all the men and women I've gone to school with are 35 years old, the men might have 3 years more experience because they didn't go on paternal leave. That experience difference makes a big difference in who gets promoted to management positions.

Now we can talk about what factors make up the wage gap some more and I probably won't disagree. Men work longer hours, don't take paternal leave, and work in higher risk/generally more well paying fields. The important question is why that's the case. Why are women not choosing to work in these fields, and why are women on average working shorter hours and having less experience? Why are women almost always the ones taking parental leave and putting their careers on hold? Why do women choose not to work certain well paying careers?

 

[ExigeEvan]

Does anyone here dispute the Sun is largely Hydrogen and Helium? Has anyone here ever seen, or been aware of Sun samples being captured and examined by NASA?

There seems to be a lack of understanding of statistical data, evidence and reality in this thread.

No I can't find 2 people of exact same age, experience, ability and education that just happen to be opposite sex, amd employed in the same role at the same company and simultaneously.

But I can sell you some tartan paint and a long weight.

 

[VolkswagenX]

So nobody can show proof of women working the same job earning 22 % less than men? Jeez I can do it for my own job and can easily explain why I earn more annualy than my female college's. I work 8 hours more every week! Only one of them has kids but she only works 24 hours a week (i work 40).

Feminists need to stop pretending that most men are in high paying jobs. Most men are middle class and work 40 hours a week (where I live).

The pay Gap is a myth when you judge by facts that actually matter. Nobody is forcing women into social studies instead of going into stem fields.

 

[Joel]

This is exactly what I was getting at. Nobody thinks your co workers should be paid the same as you get for 40 hours for working 24 or 32 hours. Instead of having a whine about feminism, why not think about how we can encourage women to work in higher paying male dominated fields, or encourage work hours to be more equal?

And with the wealthy thing, it's not that all men are millionaire CEO's, it's that (almost) all millionaire CEO's are men.

 

[A2K78]

Jennifer Lawrence, like the clueless/economically ignorant Patricia Arquett demontrat how much she is a failure at economics...

http://us11.campaign-archive1.com/?u=a5b04a26aae05a24bc4efb63e&id=64e6f35176&e=1ba99d671e#wage

What I find interesting about her complaining about what she's being paid, she seem to forget that actors by definition are a independent contractors/freelancers and has been ever since the death of the studio system(where actors were actual employees of a particular studio).

 

[Exorcet]

why not think about how we can encourage women to work in higher paying male dominated fields

First we should ask if we need to. Is it "natural", for lack of a better term, that men and women split every job 50/50? Or would it be skewed even in the absence of all bias?

 

[IforceV8]

So nobody can show proof of women working the same job earning 22 % less than men? Jeez I can do it for my own job and can easily explain why I earn more annualy than my female college's. I work 8 hours more every week! Only one of them has kids but she only works 24 hours a week (i work 40).

Feminists need to stop pretending that most men are in high paying jobs. Most men are middle class and work 40 hours a week (where I live).

The pay Gap is a myth when you judge by facts that actually matter. Nobody is forcing women into social studies instead of going into stem fields.

Here are a couple of articles but I am sure that you will dismiss them as feminist liberal propaganda.
http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

http://www.aauw.org/2014/03/27/personal-stories-of-the-gender-pay-gap/




and you will really hate this woman

 

[Johnnypenso]

Does anyone here dispute the Sun is largely Hydrogen and Helium? Has anyone here ever seen, or been aware of Sun samples being captured and examined by NASA?

There seems to be a lack of understanding of statistical data, evidence and reality in this thread.

No I can't find 2 people of exact same age, experience, ability and education that just happen to be opposite sex, amd employed in the same role at the same company and simultaneously.

But I can sell you some tartan paint and a long weight.

No one disputes that women on the whole make less money than men. The question is why. If men and women in the same occupation, at the same company, with the same experience, are doing the same work and getting different wages, that's a wage gap. If 75 million women are in occupations that on the average pay less, and they have on average less experience (primarily due to child care I would assume) then there is no wage gap. There is an experience gap or an occupation gap. Legislation isn't needed to fix that. What are you going to do, legislate that women have to all of a sudden be steelworkers, or plumbers or engineers or whatever fields they tend to avoid? Or are you going to legislate that employers must pay them the same money even though they have been out of the workforce for several years raising children?

If one assumes this is a problem, and I don't, but assuming it is, the answer is to encourage women to take up different types of occupations and/or perhaps have a greater emphasis on men taking maternity leave and/or staying home with the children. But if we assume that men and women are making relatively free choices as to their occupations, it's wasted taxpayer money to encourage otherwise IMO. Likewise, passing legislation to force employers to close a legitimate wage gap will only make businesses less efficient and therefore less competitive and will encourage them to not hire less skilled, less experienced employees because they'll have to pay them the same as their more highly skilled and experienced staff.

 

[Lion-Face]

Here are a couple of articles but I am sure that you will dismiss them as feminist liberal propaganda.
http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

The problem with this 'proof' is it's earnings related. If two people are in full time work, but one goes on unpaid holiday for a couple of weeks that year. Then that one person will EARN less even if they are paid the same hourly wage. These graphs only show one side of the story, they show that full time workers over a year earn x amount. It doesn't take into account job type, position, hours worked etc.

If a company can hire women and save ~20% on wages for the same job, then why are men employed at all? If you go buy a TV, two different makes do the exact same job and one is 20% cheaper, no one would buy the more expensive one. There is absolutely no reason to, it does the exact same job, just more expensive. So why are men employed at all in America based on those stats?

 

[Swagger897]

So why are men employed at all in America based on those stats?

 

[Imari]

Holy snot. Look at how much more you earn if you're Asian!

I would have said looking at this that "being a woman" is probably not the sole cause of low female wages, and possibly not even the primary cause. That there are gaps like that between Asian, Caucasians and "other" tend to signify that there's more going on here, and that possibly women have some of the same issues that black, Pacific Islanders, Am. Indians and Hispanics do. I'd be surprised if at least some of the same factors that lead to racial disparity don't lead to sexual disparity as well.

It's been illegal to discriminate based on race in the U.S. for some time (like, 50 years or so), and it doesn't appear to have removed the racial wage gap. Hence, I'm even more dubious about any legislation based solution to the sexual wage gap.

 

[Swagger897]

and it doesn't appear to have removed the racial wage gap

Lets not confuse racially discriminating someone, and people who honestly don't give a 🤬 about what they do in their life. There is a difference, a clear difference, between work ethics among what race you are, when each are put in the same place.

And that is the problem highlighted.... no figure can truly tell us how much of this, or who does that, unless it is 100% equal among both sides of the story. That chart doesn't tell us hours worked, days taken off, positions worked, seniority, but nor does it tell us what we might view as simple things like attitude towards the job, and qualities of the job itself.

Until we have charts with full encompassing data, nothing posted here will make a damn..

 

[Joel]

First we should ask if we need to. Is it "natural", for lack of a better term, that men and women split every job 50/50? Or would it be skewed even in the absence of all bias?

The same argument could be applied to the status quo. Is it natural that only ~5% of the CEO's of fortune 500/S&P 500 companies are women? That only a handful of heads of government are women? That only 11% of engineers are women? I also never said anything about a 50/50 split.

 

[Exorcet]

I also never said anything about a 50/50 split.

Fair enough, but specifically trying to encourage more women makes it seem like there are not enough of them. If so, what are the proper ratios?

I don't really agree with the idea of boosting a specific group. I think instead the goal should be on removing bias. Let everyone that wants to be an engineer get a good shot at instead of trying to get every woman into engineering. As awesome as I think the job is, some women don't agree, perhaps even the vast majority don't.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I need to get to the Ontario Human Rights Commission right away and complain about all those racist Asians making more money than me and holding me back