Many, many of us have heard the following numbers – contained within a Leftist talking point.
Barack Obama: ‘It’s Time’ to Close Gender Wage Gap:
“Over the course of her career, a working woman with a college degree will earn on average hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a man who does the same work….
“So to anyone who says ’77 cents on the dollar sounds pretty close to equal’ – I say your math is bad.”
Actually, it’s Obama’s math that’s bad. Woefully, exceedingly so.
“You know that ‘women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar’ line you’ve heard a hundred times? It’s not true….
“The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers.
“But that is very different than ’77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.’
“The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. That’s not at all the case.”
When factoring in naturally occurring variations and variances between human beings conducting their lives the way they see fit – the “wage gap” nigh entirely disappears:
“‘Full time’ officially means 35 hours, but men work more hours than women. That’s the first problem: We could be comparing men working 40 hours to women working 35.
“How to get a more accurate measure? First, instead of comparing annual wages, start by comparing average weekly wages. This is considered a slightly more accurate measure….
“But we’re still not close to measuring women ‘doing the same work as men.’ For that, we’d have to adjust for many other factors that go into determining salary….
“The big differences are in occupation and industry. Women congregate in different professions than men do, and the largely male professions tend to be higher-paying.
“If you account for those differences, and then compare a woman and a man doing the same job, the pay gap narrows to 91 percent. So, you could accurately say in that Obama ad that, ‘women get paid 91 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.’…
“(T)he 91 percent statistic suggests a much more complicated set of problems. Is it that women are choosing lower-paying professions or that our country values women’s professions less? And why do women work fewer hours?
“Is this all discrimination or, as economist Claudia Goldin likes to say, also a result of ‘rational choices’ women make about how they want to conduct their lives.”
I know this comes as a galloping shock to far too many people – but men and women are DIFFERENT.
To look at a population of 130 million-plus working adults – and try to boil down trillions of different life and work choices, life and work circumstances and relative good and bad luck to one stupid “wage gap” number is…really quite stupid.
Which at one point the Obama Administration actually admitted.
White House Concedes Wage Gap is a Myth, 77 Cent Talking Point Inaccurate:
“The Administration and its allies know this statistic is false and grossly misleading.…
“(A)fter being challenged by the media, White House official Betsey Stevenson conceded the wage gap was flawed saying, ‘If I said 77 cents was equal pay for equal work, then I completely misspoke,’ and apologized, ‘I certainly wouldn’t have meant to say that.’”
Except she did say it. Her boss repeatedly said it.
Obama ran a reelection campaign ad – on this fake wage gap. Entitled “First Law,” it refers to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.
In which he brags the first law he and the Democrat Congress passed – was supposed to have closed the wage gap.
Except, of course, it didn’t. Because you can not repair things that don’t actually exist.
So Democrats are STILL pounding us with this lie.
Fight For Equal Pay Continues 10 Years After Ledbetter Act
From March 2019:
House Approves Bill to Close Gender Pay Gap:
“All 242 Democrats voted for the measure to tackle gender-based wage discrimination, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her top lieutenants had declared a top priority, with a record 102 women serving in their caucus.”
So ten years after Democrats passed a bill they claimed would close the wage gap – they again passed another bill they claim will close the wage gap.
That’s not stupid at all.
And because Washington, D.C.’s monstrous bureaucracy shambles on – regardless of whom we elect to allegedly run it – Obama is STILL afflicting us with titanic stupidity based upon this titanic lie. This from January 16, 2020:
Social Engineering Run Amok in the Department of Labor:
“A few years ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released two reports detailing enforcement and litigation abuses by the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or OFCCP.”
Please remember: This is the same Labor Department Obama was incessantly citing when lying about the fake wage gap.
These ongoing, undead bureaucratic assaults on the private sector have nothing to do with wage discrepancies – and everything to do with picking the pockets of the bureaucracy’s victims:
“Instead of holding firms accountable when they engage in real discrimination against their employees, the agency has become a government arm for securing high-dollar settlements on dubious grounds….
“OFCCP recently extracted its largest ever settlements from Goldman Sachs and Dell Technologies — $10 and $7 million, respectively — and, shortly before that, got $4.2 million from Bank of America. But those numbers pale in comparison to the $400 million OFCCP alleges that Oracle Corp. owes to female, Asian, and African American employees.
“The only thing more astonishing than the amount of money sought is the flimsiness of the government’s case.
“To prove its discrimination claim, OFCCP relies entirely on a statistical analysis that fails to reflect the labor market’s great complexity.
“For instance, the government uses crude controls for employee education and experience, both of which have a large impact on compensation.
“For education, OFCCP considers only an employee’s degree level but not whether the degree is actually relevant to the job performed.
“As for experience, it considers only the employee’s age and time at Oracle, omitting both length at the current position — which is where the most useful experience is gained — and the relevance of prior work.
“OFCCP, in other words, thinks that any employees of the same age and with the same tenure with their current employer possess the same experience.
“OFCCP’s analysis also treats employees with the same job title as similarly situated, creating more grounds for discrimination claims. However, a software engineer working on databases does very different work than one who develops artificial intelligence.
“Yet if the worker in the higher-demand field, who can therefore demand higher pay, happens to be Caucasian or male, while the other is female or a minority, then the government concludes the pay disparity is due to discrimination by Oracle.
“In short, the government fails to compare like employees to like, and it doesn’t control for perfectly innocent variables that explain pay differences.”
The Obama-era Labor lawsuit against Oracle – is a total and complete fraud.
But the huge coin the government is looking to steal from Oracle – is very real.
After patiently dealing with this undead nonsense for nearly three years post-Obama – Oracle decided they’d had enough.
Oracle Sues Department of Labor to End Obama-Era Discrimination Lawsuit
I ain’t particularly litigious – but I hope Oracle’s suit quickly squashes this Obama-holdover nonsense.
And they get full remuneration for the time, effort and coin they were forced to waste on this Obama-holdover nonsense.
And if it is possible for Oracle to get Pain and Suffering coin on top of it all – I would be all for that too.
Yes, I know the Labor Department’s money – is actually our money.
So we don’t up their budget one cent – to prevent them from offsetting the lawsuit payout.
They have to do without – for having forced Oracle and our court system to deal with their insanity.
And here’s hoping they…MAYBE…will then learn something as a result.
Ok – that last part is entirely wishful thinking.
This first appeared in Red State.