Tag: equality

Categories
ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies

Paid/​Unpaid Labor Gap

wage gap, gender gap, women's rights, pay

The “gender pay gap” is a big deal for some folks, who worry about women earning less than men.

Democrats, for example, often talk as if the issue were about women doing the same jobs as men but getting paid less. But that’s not what the stats about wage differences by sex (that women earn, in America, 78 percent of what men earn) actually track.

Women en masse tend to earn less because it just so happens that women, in general, work in the paid labor market fewer days and hours (often taking more time off to birth and raise children) — as well as choose lower-​paying careers — than men.

It’s about time and productivity. And the choices we make.

Melinda Gates is concerned about something similar to this “wage gap.” She is interested in task dissimilarities between men and women. She’s not a nut about the subject, though. In her contribution to the annual letter of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she notes that America is the most equal regarding a statistical paid/​unpaid “gender gap.” Women work more time in unpaid labor elsewhere, globally (including Europe) than do men elsewhere, globally.

Funny, I’ve never heard any “We’re No. 1” chants, congratulating Americans on the tiniest gender gap on the planet.

Certainly, we don’t need a new program to help women catch up with men … but for all to be equally free to catch up with their own dreams. Around the world workers need more innovation and, well, free-​market capitalism — to free women (and men) from drudgery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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wage gap, gender gap, women's rights, pay

 

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Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Comparable Worth?

The federal government encourages a certain “spin” regarding wages and salaries. Both taxation and regulation enforce a kind of accounting fraud in nearly all wage contracts. Employees receive a statement when they get paid, but that statement is not complete. Only half of an employee’s Social Security contributions are listed, for example — though, from the employers’ point of view, that unlisted “employer’s contribution” is just as much a part of a workers’ wage as the amount written on the check.

Most folks don’t see a full dollar-​value listing of their benefit package at time of payment, either.

Of course, some things just can’t be accounted for in money terms.

In charming, smaller towns — like, say, Traverse City, Michigan, or Port Townsend, Washington — folks have been known to explain those towns’ somewhat depressed wage rates with a rhyme: “The view of the bay is part of your pay.”

And then there’s job security.

In a 2012 report comparing private sector jobs to federal government jobs, the benefit of public sector job security went unacknowledged. Naturally enough.

What we learn is that government employees tend to make a bit more that private sector employees, but, when you include benefit packages, their rates of remuneration are much higher — 16 percent higher.

But then, if to prove that the government really is all about equality, it’s not at the top end that government workers prove wildly overpaid; it’s at the less-​credentialed “low end.” These job pay 36 percent more than comparable private sector jobs.

What is often not addressed in the wage and benefit debate is the fact that lower-​skilled private sector workers are also disproportionately harmed by federal regulation, subsidies and other misguided policies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.