Posted tagged ‘Equal Pay Day’

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Must Reads For The Week 12/23/17

December 23, 2017

States Partner to Sue Massachusetts, California Over Costly Livestock Bans, at reason.com. Should States have the right to ban the sale of veal, eggs and pork that comes from animals confined to small cages? The real question is; should each individual consumer be allowed to keep his right to make this decision for himself? Or shall the force of the State take this decision away from him?

American, United, And Delta Airlines Should Compete Instead Of Crying To Uncle Sam For Help, at carpediemblog. As we have said many times, When businesses are just starting they love competition. But when these same businesses gain a sizable share of a market, they now use their energy to keep new competitors out of the market. The only entity with the power to keep competitors out, is the Federal Government. So big corporations lobby individuals in government to pass laws making it harder for startups to enter the market. This is crony capitalism. It is not free market capitalism.

Whirlpool Has Washington In A Spin Cycle, by George Will, at sltrib.com. Another example of crony capitalists lobbying government to take out their competition. In this case American companies like Whirlpool want to keep out competition from abroad by getting Government to impose “tariff-rate-quotas”. Of course the consumer suffers the consequences of these government policies through higher priced goods.

‘Equal Pay Day’ This Year Was April 4th – The Next ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ Will Be On May 30th, 2028, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemb.og. Men work in more dangerous occupations than women. Men had 4,803 occupational deaths in 2016. Women had 387 occupational deaths in 2016. Is that fair? Of course it is. Because men work in more dangerous professions than women. It is also fair that men make more money over all because they choose to work in higher paying professions than the professions in which women choose to work.

Consumers Are Smarter Than Bureaucrats, by Lee Friday, at mises.org. Government agencies have consumers best interest as their top priority….. Yeah, right!!!! Canada’s ‘Competition Bureau’ is suing Hudson Bay Company because of deceptive price practices for the last four years. This is an example of a law suit looking for a victim. Why do I say that? Because as the article says, “The regular prices of the sleep sets were so inflated above what the market would bear that sales at the regular prices were virtually non-existent…” How could have this ever gone to court? No business can get away with ‘price gouging’. Why?  Because as prices rise, less will be sold. And in this case nothing was being sold.

Have We Reached NFL, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com. It is not just because of the politicization of NFL that people aren’t watching the NFL.

DON’T TRUST PEOPLE WITH POWER

DOJ Opens Probe Into Bundy Prosecutors Who Hid Evidence, at zerohedge.com. The break down of the rule of law starts with Government. This is another example of law breaking by our government betters. If these abuses of power keep happening, the credibility of law enforcement will continue to crumble. Shining light on corruption is the only way to get our out of control government agencies under control. In the long run this is a good thing.

FBI Edits To Clinton Exoneration Go Far Beyond what Was Previously Known; Comey, McCabe, Strzok Implicated, at zerohedge.com. Another example of the break down of the rule of law. The FBI fixed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email investigation. Individuals in higher level positions of every government agency are political. They are not unbiased public servants. Their bias is toward protecting the status quo of big government. Which means their incentivized to “finesse” the law to help their own people on the one hand, and bring down the people who want to shrink the size and scope of government on the other.

Congress To Investigate Obama Efforts To Thwart a DEA Investigation Of Hezbollah Drug Trafficking, at zerohedge.com. Do establishment insiders not understand why we are loosing trust in government institutions. Politics is why the plug was pulled on this investigation. Political incentives are more powerful than doing what is right.

Nikki Haley vs. Hillary Clinton

Lets compare our last two Secretaries of State.

Nikki Haley flips the bird to the UN in this speech before they voted on condemning the U.S.  decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, stating that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel.

Hillary Clinton condemns anti-Islam video. The date of this speech is September 13, 2012. Do you remember what happened on September 11, 2012?

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Is There A Wage Gap Between Men And Women?

April 4, 2017

The ‘gender pay gap’ is a myth which has been spread for years. I have been reading about this ‘fake cause’ since I can remember. In 1984 Thomas Sowell covered this topic in chapter 5 of his book “Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality”.

Here is a Prager University video by Christina Hoff Sommers explaining the statistical fudging that takes place when the gender pay cause becomes bigger than the truth.

THOMAS SOWELL  addresses this topic in my article: “The ‘Equal Pay Day’ Canard” .

In this article titled: Equal Pay Day Is An Annual Event That Spreads Statistical Misinformation About The Gender Pay Gap, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog, Mark J. Perry says choices made about hours worked, type of work, and marriage and motherhood are three of the deciding factors on how much a person is paid. Women and men make different choices in these three areas. When you compare men and women who make the same decisions the wage gap is negligible.

Mark J. Perry’s article titled: “Equal Pay Day’ This Year Is April 4th – The Next ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ Will Be On January 21st 2029, shows how men work in riskier jobs than women. Thirteen men die while working on the job for every one women who dies on the job. Riskier jobs pay more. Choices have consequences.

Ignorance Perpetuates This Myth.

Supposedly smart people are ignorant when it comes to the gender pay gap. Here are two articles showing this ignorance.

The Chief Operating Officer Of Facebook Appears Clueless When It Comes To The Wage Gap, at economicjournal.com.

Ivanka Wage Gap Ignorance, at economicpolicyjournal.com.

We don’t have to be ignorant about issues like this. All we have to do is look beyond the rhetoric of the people pushing the cause.

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Must Reads For The Week 12/24/16

December 24, 2016

Monday Humor? Obama Warns Trump On Use Of “Executive Orders” at zerohedge.com. The “pen and a phone” guy is telling Trump to do as I say not as I do. Quote from Obama: “Keep in mind, that my strong preference has always been to legislate when I can get legislation done. In my first two years I wasn’t relying on executive powers because I had big majorities in the Congress…..even after we lost the majorities…..I bent over backwards consistently to try to find compromise and a legislative solution to some of the big problems that we’ve got.”

Maine Gas Distributor Won’t Deliver To Trump Supporters, at lifezette.com. This man has the right to do with his property as he wishes. If he doesn’t want to sell to a particular person, so be it. So explain to me why some bakers were forced out of business for not first producing and then selling a wedding cake to a gay couple. The wedding cake is a special order item, it didn’t exist at the moment the couple attempted to ordered it. When you go into a bakery and they are out of glazed doughnuts, can you force them to produce one for you? No one has a claim to the property of another individual. Except the IRS

Ivanka Trump Told By Artist To Take Their Work Down From Her Walls, at dailymail.co.uk. Am I missing something here. These artists don’t own these paintings. They created these paintings but they don’t own them. Ivanka owns them. If they don’t want them hanging on her walls they should offer to buy them back. Ivanka might sell them for double the price she paid for them.

Baby Boomers Increasingly Having Social Security Checks Garnished To Cover Student Loan Payments, at zerohedge.com. The government wants its payments from the debt serfs.

Equal Pay Day This Year Was April 12th. The Next Occupational Fatality Day Will Be On Feb. 19, 2027, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Over 90% of the top 20 most dangerous occupations are filled by men. In 2015 there were 4454 men killed in fatal occupational injuries compared to 367 women. This doesn’t seem fair. What can be done to have a more equitable distribution of these deaths?

This chart from carpediemblog (here) shows the 20 most dangerous jobs.

jobdeaths

Notice police and sheriff’s patrol officers are in 19th place, and fire fighters are not in the top 20. Should we call  people who are in the top 18 most dangerous occupations “heroes” for performing the jobs in the fields they freely decided to enter? Could these people also be considered “first responders”. Aren’t farmers, roofers, miners, refuse collectors etc responding to people’s demands?

Here Are Two Fake News Stories. Another Hijab Hoax: University Of Michigan Student Claimed Man Threatened To Set Her On Fire, by John Sexton, at hotair.com. And this. Police: Muslim Woman Made Up Story About Attack At The Hands Of A Trump Supporter, at usatoday.com. Both presented with no comment.

Commuter-In-Chief: Obama Sets New Single-Day Clemency Record; More Than Previous 11 Presidents Combined, at zerohedge.com. I know no one is vetting people who come in to this country. Who is vetting the people Obama is letting out of prison?

It’s Going To Take Men With Guns To Stop The Suburban Deer Uprising, by John Davidson, at thefederalist.com. Deer are becoming a nuisance animal. The deer herd has to be reduced because the amount of damage the deer are causing.

Save The Snowflakes Testimonial, at MRCTV.org.

 

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Must Reads For The Week 4/16/16

April 16, 2016

I HATE POLITICS!

Donald Trump Blasts Colorado GOP For ‘Corrupt System’ In Picking Delegates, at foxnews.com. Here are a couple of comments. If you are going to play in the political arena, you have to know all the rules in order to compete against the people who do know the rules. It doesn’t matter what you think of the rules, because you are not in a position to change them. I’ll use a golf analogy to explain Colorado, because Donald Trump plays golf.

Trump is playing Cruz in a match and on a par 4 Trump hits his tee shot in the fairway and Cruz hits his tee shot in a water hazard. Trump hits his second shot on the green. Under the rules, Cruz can play his ball from the water hazard with no penalty, play another ball from the tee with a 1 stroke penalty, drop a ball two club lengths from where his ball last crossed the hazard and play it form there with a 1 stroke penalty, drop a ball behind the hazard as far back as he wants as long as he keeps it in line with the flag and the point where his original ball last crossed the hazard (and you thought delegate rules were complicated) with a 1 stroke penalty. Cruz decides on the fourth option. He drops his ball 150 yds from the green which is his perfect 7 iron distance. He hits his third shot to two feet and taps in for par. Trump three puts for a bogey. Trump now complains the the rules pertaining to water hazards are corrupt. He says it isn’t fair that someone can hit it in the water and win the hole. Cruz knew the rules and used what he thought was his best option. He didn’t cheat. He played within the rules.

What if this situation was reversed and Trump hit his ball in the hazard. He than plays his third shot from the tee because not only does he not know all the rules, the caddie he hired doesn’t know the rules. After he loses the hole he complains the rules are convoluted and impossible to understand. The rules are set up so golf insiders have the advantage. The rules about hazards, water hazards, lateral hazards and out of bounds should all be the same. These rules of golf are set up so golf insiders have the advantage.

If you’re playing a competitive game (which is what politics is) you must first know the rules of the game so you don’t lose because of what some would consider a ‘loophole’. The truth is either Trump didn’t know the rules, in which case he isn’t the winner he thinks he is. He didn’t know the rules and is just trying to spin his way out of his ignorance. Or he did know the rules and decided the cost of doing what Cruz did in Colorado was to high compared to the political hay he could make by complaining about the rules after the fact. The truth is Cruz used the rules to his advantage and Trump didn’t. If you want the rules changed you have to figure out a way to use the existing rules to get in positions of power. When you get enough like minded people in these positions, you will now be able to  change the rules. The establishment became the establishment through this process. The rules are written to protect the position of the status quo by making it difficult for outsiders to overthrow them. The only way to change the status quo party system is through the electoral process. Unfortunately this change is slow and incremental which means non political people get burnt our and lose interest.

‘Equal Pay Day’ This Year Is April 12; ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ Will Be In 2027, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. The gender pay gap is another political scam. Since politicians continue to think they can gain by politicizing this issue, it is apparent that we haven’t done enough to educated the ignorant. Educating the ignorant isn’t a one time and your done proposition because our education system is constantly producing new generations of ignorant citizens.

Quotation Of The Day, On The Real Minimum Wage Of $0.00 An Hour, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Here is another issue that is a winner for politicians and a loser for minimum wage workers. Here is all you need to know about minimum wage. Less is demanded at a higher price than a lower price. This includes labor. Quote from the article by Thomas Sowell: “Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, that is the wage many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force.” Read Minimum Wage Laws Create Unemployment and Income Inequality Part II: Increase The Minimum Wage and The New, Old, Buzz Words, “Income Inequality“.

Union Leaders Champion Higher Minimum Wages But Support Loopholes To Exempt Union Workers, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Do as I say not as I do! Unionized hotels in L.A. have been granted an exemption from paying the higher minimum wage that L.A. city council mandated. Excerpt from the article: “Critics see this as a cynical collusion between politicians and big-city labor interests. By making unions the ‘low-cost option’ for businesses seeking to avoid paying better wages, they assert, the exemptions are designed to drive up union membership – and revenue from dues – at the expense of workers.”

Campaign Lies, by Thomas Sowell, at jewishworldreview.com. From the article: “If you took all the lies out of political rhetoric, how much would be left? Apparently even less than usual this year…..The success of campaign lies depends ultimately on how willing the public is to be stampeded without bothering to stop and think.”

 RELIGIONS AREN’T EQUAL!

Canadian Newspaper Censors Refugee Abuse Of School Children, at tammybruce.com. Muslim refugees criminal behavior is happening all over the world. This is close to home. We are not exempt from this.

Gay Air France Attendants Refuse To Fly To Iran, Fear Executions, at tammybruce.com. Homosexuals are figuring out who they should fear. It’s not Christians who are carrying out executions.

ECONOMICS

The Fed Can’t Save Us, by Robert J. Murphy, at mises.org. Excerpt from the article: “Janet Yellen and her colleagues are stuck with a giant asset bubble that her predecessor inflated. If they begin another round of asset purchases, they might postpone the crash, but only by making the subsequent reckoning that much more painful…You don’t make the country richer by printing money out of thin air, especially when you then give it to the government and Wall Street.”

Cash Banned Freedom Gone, by Thorsten Polliet, at mises.org. In order for central banks (Government) to steal your money with negative interest rates, the Government must first ban cash. If negative interest rates are implemented and people still have the ability to take their cash out of the banks, Negative interest rates are useless.

Austria Just Announced A 54% Hair Cut In Senior Creditors In First Bail In Under New European Rules, at zerohedge.com. An example of government force being used to steal people’s money. I know…It can’t happen here!

THE DAY AFTER TAX DAY

“Brutus” And Our Brutal Taxes, by Gary Galles, at mises.org. One of our founders Robert Yates was a profit when he talked about the taxing power of the federal government over 200 years ago. His predictions are amazing.

101 Years Of The Income Tax, at zerohedge.com.

CARTOONS

 

 

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The “Equal Pay Day” Canard

April 9, 2014

Thomas Sowell

I have read Thomas Sowell’s analysis concerning this topic since I stumbled upon his writings in 1995. I thought he had driven as stake through the heart of  “the gender pay gap” myth. I wasn’t going to post anything about this topic, but reading and listening to the news this week has changed my mind. Since I couldn’t possibly cover this topic as authoritatively or as eloquently as Thomas Sowell, I’m not even going to try. I’m going to let him do it in his own words.

QUOTE FROM THOMAS SOWELL’S ‘KNOWLEDGE AND DECISIONS’

Here is an excerpt from my favorite book, Knowledge and Decision, which Dr. Sowell wrote in 1980:

“With women the key variable is marriage. Even before “affirmative action” quotas, women in their thirties who worked continuously since high school earned slightly more than men in their thirties who worked continuously since high school. In the academic world, where many discrimination charges have been filed under affirmative action, female academics earned slightly more than male academics when neither were married  – again even before “affirmative action” – and unmarried female Ph.D.’s who received their degrees in the 1930’s and 1940’s became full professors in the 1950’s to a slightly greater extent than did unmarried male Ph.D’s of the same vintage. In short, the male-female differences in incomes and occupations are largely differences between married women and all other persons….the clear-cut income parity (or better) among women who never married suggests once again that systemic variables have more to do with the statistics than the intentional decisions at the work place at which the statistics were collected.”

He wrote this in 1980 so it’s safe to say that the gender pay gap canard was used as a political bludgeon for many years prior to 1980.

THOMAS SOWELL ON FIRING LINE

Dr Sowell is discussing the gender pay gap issue in this video from 1981.

Click, Firing Line – Thomas Sowell  w/ William Buckley Jr. 1981, to watch the whole show.

 THOMAS SOWELL ARTICLE “THE REAL WAR ON WOMEN”

Here is an article by Thomas Sowell titled, The Real ‘War On Women’. It was written in 2012, and covers the same gender pay gap fallacy. Here are some excerpts form the article.

“The old — and repeatedly discredited — game of citing women’s incomes as some percentage of men’s incomes is being played once again, as part of the “war on women” theme.”

“When you compare women and men in the same occupations with the same skills, education, hours of work, and many other factors that go into determining pay, the differences in incomes shrink to the vanishing point — and, in some cases, the women earn more than comparable men.”

“But why let mere facts spoil the emotional rhetoric or the political ploys to drum up hysteria and collect votes?”

THOMAS SOWELL ON ‘UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

Here is a video of Thomas Sowell in 2008 on,Uncommon Knowledge, with Peter Robinson, talking about Gender Bias and Income Equality.

QUOTE FROM THOMAS SOWELL’S ‘ECONOMIC FACTS AND FALLACIES’

In Economic Facts And Fallacies, Chapter 3 titled, Male-Female Facts And Fallacies, covers gender pay gap and much more. Here is an excerpt form the chapter.

“Even when women and men earn the same incomes in the same occupations, differences in the distribution of the sexes among different occupations lead to differences in their average incomes.

“In principle it does not matter whether the attorney is male or female but, in practice, with women more often than men carrying the burden of domestic responsibilities for children and the care of the home, careers that involve much unpredictable night and weekend work are less attractive to women. Having it all – a career and a family and an upscale lifestyle- is fine but doing it all is often harder for a woman, given the usual division of domestic responsibilities between the sexes and the inevitable differences in childbearing.”

“Moreover since men are never pregnant, women are disadvantaged in such work by the physical limitations of pregnancy, which can be work limitations as well in obs that require long, irregular and unpredictable hours,….”

Related Article – The New, Old, Buzz Words, “Income Inequality”, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Income Inequality II: Increase The Minimum Wage, at austrianaddict.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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