Tag: equal protection

Categories
folly general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies too much government

The Hypocrisy Gap

wage gap, pay gap, sexism, Equal Pay Day, illustration

You may have missed it. I wasn’t so lucky. This past Tuesday was “Equal Pay Day.”

“[T]he typical woman who works full-​time earns 79-​cents for every dollar that a typical man makes,” President Barack Obama said, repeating what we have already been told ad nauseum about the “wage gap” between men and women.

The “detailed calculation” used to determine this “gender wage gap”?

“Experts” simply added up all the money earned by all the men and all the women (subcategoried) and then divided by the number of men and women, respectively. No accounting for

  • the actual jobs performed,
  • hours worked,
  • education,
  • risk,
  • work history

… or any other factor.

Using this statistic make sense if all people — brain surgeons and taxi drivers alike, having worked every day for the last 40 years or re-​entering the workforce after decades away — should earn the exact same amount.

Communism.

It is already illegal to pay a woman less than a man for the same work. Yet, on the WhiteHouse​.gov page entitled, “This Is Why Today is Equal Pay Day,” the prez says “we must rid our society of the injustice that is pay discrimination.” The website insists that, Obama “has made equal pay a top priority.”

Then, why does a pay gap exist between the men and women working for Mr. Obama? According to the Washington Post, “The White House has not narrowed the gap between the average pay of male and female employees since President Obama’s first year in office …”

The good news? Equal Pay Day is over.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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wage gap, pay gap, sexism, Equal Pay Day, illustration

 

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Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom U.S. Constitution

Equally Unequal

Two court cases come to our attention, courtesy of Cato’s Ilya Shapiro. Both involve the favoring of members of one group over another.

The Sixth Circuit ruled that a voter-​approved amendment to the Michigan state constitution outlawing racial preferences in college admissions would violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause. The amendment states in part that Michigan public colleges and universities shall “not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.…”

In his dissent, Judge Richard Griffin writes: “The post-​Civil War amendment that guarantees equal protection to persons of all races has now been construed as barring a state from prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race.” Shapiro calls the decision Orwellian.

The other case involves California law banning sellers of eyewear who are not state-​licensed optometrists and ophthalmologists from conducting eye exams and selling glasses at the same place of business. The law prevents national eyewear chains from competing effectively in California (since customers prefer to get their glasses and eye exams in one shop).

Cato joins an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up the California case. Shapiro also says that because there are two conflicting lower-​court decisions on the Michigan question, the Supreme Court is likely to add that case to its docket.

Let’s hope all further rulings are based on a clear-​sighted respect for equal rights under the law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.