Judakel

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

You said: "While on the job, women either do as much work as men or are simply too unproductive to be viable employees." and you are ignoring the 3rd option, they are less productive than men and receiving less money for it. That's Block's whole argument.

Are you an economist yourself? In that case, which school of economics is your preferred one?

I did not ignore his argument. I explained why he was simply wrong. You even quoted the section where I explained why he was wrong. There is literally no incentive for an employer to continue paying someone (even if it is less money) for lesser work. His third option is a fiction and you've taken my dismissal of it as simply "ignoring it". When an employer hires someone, they factor in the most they are willing to pay someone for the desired work into their budget. They don't reign it in if the work is shoddy since they get nothing out of it. It would be better in the long run to simply hire someone else who won't do shoddy work. They would save more money that way. Not a single employer will look at an under-performing employee and say "we will keep him on, but pay him less". Nor do they hire someone on the expectation that they will "work less, but at least we can pay them less". The gap comes about well after someone has been hired, and it can simply not come about due to poor performance. Poor performers get fired. Block didn't even bother to prove his point. He just threw together a blatantly illogical explanation that fits with his Darwinian, free-market bullshit. I can see how, if you believe in the free market, you might be tempted to apply it to microeconomics in the way he has. Unfortunately, that nonsense is only passable in macroeconomics, and even there people have caught on.

It should be fairly obvious where I land as far as schools of economics are concerned.

I am an employer myself and the only thing that is obvious to me is that you are talking about a theoretical employer that doesn't exist. And again you are calling Block darwinian and bullshitter, ad hominem all over.

All human beings are different, equal work is nonsense. I have 250 employees and they are not equally productive. Even those performing the same tasks.

I'm going to play some games now, it's 9:46 pm here in Argentina. 'Night.

An ad hominem attack is when someone attacks the person instead of the argument. I can attack the person as much as I like, as long as I attack the argument too. This employer does exist, because he is a rational actor in the field of economics. Something most employers are. If your employees are not roughly equal in their productivity while working the same number of hours and having the same duties, then I am not sure why you have kept them on. You do realize that no one expects exactly the same amount of productivity, but as far as it is measurable, all individuals performing the same function should be equally productive in your Darwinian wonderland.

If they were equally productive I would pay them the same as in your: equal work, equal pay. As they are not, I pay them proportionally to the subjective, not easily measurable, productivity.

Calling Block names is foolish and coward as he is not here to defend himself. Calling me names is just rude and I don't appreciate it.

Then you are an unethical employer, for you cannot measure their "lesser productivity" in anything more than subjective ways, yet see it fit to nonetheless quantify this unmeasurable productivity in their paychecks. The very nature of what you're doing is so incredibly chilling, because the productivity of these employees may one day rise to meet that of the others, but since you have nothing but your own subjective opinion as to their levels of productivity, you may continue to pay them as if they are doing poor work.

Do you know, my dear entrepreneur, why most businesses try to avoid such methods? It isn't ethics, surely. Most businesses under a capitalist system are not concerned with ethics. Not, it is for the following reasons: One, it can be taxing to keep an eye on the productivity of every employee so that your own subjective, half-assed assessment can determine whether they will get a raise or not, and two, there is very little motivation for improvement were these comparatively poorly paid employees to find out that they are seen as poor workers deserving of fewer wages.

By the way, I love the fact that, as far as I can tell, you only looked at your business and decided to declare a more rational approach as only existing in theory. Someone should tell most mid-large size business owners that.

I am sorry you're such a diehard Austrian fanatic that you think it is foolish to mock Block. Believe me, Block has heard everything I've mentioned here many times over from other sources. He has not defended himself particularly well when confronted.

You assume a lot of things.

Nobody lives in a vacuum, I know a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and some of them are big and we talk about these kind of stuff a lot.

I don't determine productivity of all my employees by myself. I don't even know some of them, they work in different provinces (states for the US). Other people do that for me.

Measuring productivity is hard and you seem to ignore it. I'm both a Mechanical and an Electrical Engineer and I have studied Taylor, Fayol and others in subjects of productivity. In a factory is easy to measure the output of some people, however it's very hard to measure the productivity of a secretary, a lawyer and even an accountant.

Diehard Austrian fanatic? Unethical? Half-assed assessments?

As I said, you assume too much.

By the way, do you and your rich friends realize Walter Block also thinks the income disparity between blacks and whites is due to blacks being lazy? I wouldn't put it past what seems like a cadre of exploiting compadres, but I am just wondering.

@Archaen said:

@Judakel said:

@Archaen said:

@Judakel said:

@Archaen said:

@Judakel said:

@Archaen said:

@Judakel said:

@Archaen said:

@Judakel said:

@Archaen said:

The point, though is that it's not sexism that is causing women to make less money, it's a biological desire to have children and raise them themselves. If your position is that we should as a society give women paychecks from the government for the time they're not working when they leave work early or take a few years off for child-rearing that is an absolutely fine position to take. It just has absolutely nothing to do with discrimination or sexism unless you're counting the biological makeup of men and women as sexism.

I am not really sure why you think the fact we don't "give women paychecks from the government for the time they're not working when they leave work early or take a few years off for child-rearing" is anything but sexism. Don't you understand that sexism is discrimination based on biological sex or gender?

It would be exactly that, discrimination based on gender, to do a job and have to stay overtime and get paid the same amount as a woman who went home after 7.5 hours of work just because she was born with ovaries.

The assumption here, once again, is that this woman is being unfairly "rewarded". This is wrong and the exact reason I assume you don't view raising a child as work on par or more difficult than working at an office.

The business owner is not profiting from a woman doing less work for him and instead going home and working for society, if that's how you prefer to think about it. You cannot expect the business owner to hire a woman and a man but pay them both the same amount of money each year when she is only doing 85% of the work as the man for his business. If you think we as a society should subsidize women not working through taxes and checks from the government, fine, but expecting private businesses to cover that expense is crazy.

No, there is no "how you prefer to think about it". You claimed it was sexist. I pointed out it wasn't. We weren't talking about economics in that exchange. Don't say it is fine if I expect that we as society cover such expenses, but then claim it is crazy to suggest businesses should cover it themselves. Either way, that money would be coming out of these businesses. That's the way the economy works.

That money would only come out of those businesses if you taxed them extra for it. If you instead taxed workers then business expenses would not go up unless the employers decided to pay for it. Having children is not something that business owners consider an expense or even an investment. Our government also doesn't consider it an expense or an investment but have taken pains to make it illegal to discriminate against those that do decide to raise children. Your argument is that we, as a people, should value raising children more. That's fine. There's nothing discriminatory in play, though. The pay gap is entirely due to women making their own choices about what they value in life. Men choose money over raising children, more women choose the opposite, and that's the end of the story. Recent studies of urban non-married 18-30s has shown that women actually get paid more per year in total than men, possibly due to the current education gap (more women than men are graduating with advanced degrees these days).

Look, I am not sure where the thought process breaks down for you, but let me walk you through the problem once again. The fact women are the only ones that can have children, and the fact having children is a necessary part of life in order for our civilization to survive, pretty much means at some point, it will be absolutely necessary for a woman to have a child. Necessary for everyone's benefit, not just their own. They fulfill a necessary role with their biology and they are being punished for it by receiving fewer opportunities for advancement due to fulfilling this role - in most instances. This is in large part responsible for the wage gap. You agree with me on this. The part you seem confused about is the part where we treat raising children as a necessity rather than a choice. I am done being patient with you, so just get your head out of your ass and think about the consequences were it truly a choice they could walk-away from in their lives. Some do, but most could not. It would be a terrible crisis, and the fact most of them are willing to do it in no way negates the fact it is not really a choice.

I am not really sure what you're not getting here. It doesn't get more "born into a role that will end up in discrimination 9-times-out-of-10 in our current climate" than that. Now, keep in mind that men can just as easily step into this role if they so wish (at least the rearing part), but understand that many times societal pressures will ensure it is women who perform this task. There is no "choice" about it. Stop using that language. It is intellectually dishonest and naive.

One last point concerning "choice": Even if it were a choice that no outside factors ensured women would make most of the time, there is still absolutely no logic behind the idea that they should be punished for it. None. Someone has to do this job and they should not give up the prospect of an equally bright future to men in order to perform this necessary task. You are punishing people for doing something you couldn't live without. It makes no fucking sense. Make no mistake about it, it is absolutely a punishment to have your financially independent future derailed because you are performing a necessary task.

THAT is the end of the story.

The fact more women than men are graduating from college is another issue altogether, but in no way does it negate concerns for the wage gap that still negatively affects an overwhelming number of women. Don't even try to go that route.

That's just it, women aren't being passed over for promotions or failing to get raises. They're just voluntarily working less because they prefer spending time with their children and they're getting exactly the amount of money equal to the time they worked. If you just take what they make an hour and multiply it out to make it equivalent to the amount their male colleagues work all of a sudden they make exactly the same amount over their lifetimes. There is no discriminatory practice involved. There's no sexism involved.

Your argument about childbirth being a necessary thing for society doesn't mean anything to the business owner, who pays x dollars for y productivity because he gets z dollars for every xx product created. He does not get any money for the productivity that is absent when the woman decides to work less than full time, so why should the business owner be required to compensate the woman for the hours she doesn't produce anything for his business? It also doesn't account for the child-rearing itself being a thing that many women actually enjoy doing. It fulfills many women and they gladly trade a few dollars of income for more time to spend with their children.

I am going to give this one more shot. I will answer sentence for sentence. Follow along.

Yes, they are being passed over for promotions and failing to get raises. What do you think accounts for the wage gap? The fact it is voluntary does not negate the fact they are being passed over. Raising a child is work, so no, they are not getting exactly the amount of money equal to the time they worked. If work HAS to be productivity for their employer, then we don't have to demand the money come directly from their employer. I suspect this is where your brain starts to break down, since it just seems so unfair that an employer pay for something other than goods and labor that directly impacts their bottom line. Fine, let's have the government take the money from the employer and give it to the parent raising the child. As I said, either way businesses are paying for it, even if you tax the employees. I love the retard math you pulled at the end of the first paragraph. Your definition of "work" is lacking.

It should mean something to the business owner. My entire argument is that it should. Stop answering with "Well, this capitalist fuck gives no shits". That's not really a problem. We have the government take it away from him if he won't do it. One way, or the other. It is the ethical thing to do.

The fact women enjoy has no bearing on whether a wage gap should exist or not. Love doesn't provide a financially independent future. What a stupid argument that is.

Wow. I apologize everyone for wasting my time trying to enlighten this person on the facts of income and sex. I hope someone else has found my explanations and the articles I've posted enlightening. This one is a lost cause who wants everyone else in society to pay women for the hours, weeks, months and years that they decide of their own free will not to work. Good luck, you bright, shining star.

You didn't post any facts on income and sex. You posted opinions backed by data that, when adjusted in order to even out the hours, still showed an income disparity.

@JoshyLee said:

@Judakel said:

@JoshyLee said:

Is it innocuous though? This faux-political bullshit on a site that s supposed to be entertaining? Patrick has had this chip on his shoulder for a while and it seems he's only really saying it because it will be controversial and increase page views. He's making a simple stupid story that doesn't even have to do with the American video game industry into some sensationalist tabloid-level "journalism" so he can get attention.

The entire reason he was brought in was to bring more people to the site. I cannot believe you people hate Patrick when you really should hate the people who hired him. They quite clearly stated that he was brought in to create more original content like this and that would in-turn generate more views.

They brought him in because of his work such as the Infinity Ward thing. This stuff he's doing now has nothing to do with gaming news. It's tabloid crap that has no business on a site like this. He can put it on his fucking livejournal.

It is gaming-related. I don't think you know what tabloid crap is. He is doing editorials, which is also part of the reason he was brought in. This is all explained in the first podcast he was in on.

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

You said: "While on the job, women either do as much work as men or are simply too unproductive to be viable employees." and you are ignoring the 3rd option, they are less productive than men and receiving less money for it. That's Block's whole argument.

Are you an economist yourself? In that case, which school of economics is your preferred one?

I did not ignore his argument. I explained why he was simply wrong. You even quoted the section where I explained why he was wrong. There is literally no incentive for an employer to continue paying someone (even if it is less money) for lesser work. His third option is a fiction and you've taken my dismissal of it as simply "ignoring it". When an employer hires someone, they factor in the most they are willing to pay someone for the desired work into their budget. They don't reign it in if the work is shoddy since they get nothing out of it. It would be better in the long run to simply hire someone else who won't do shoddy work. They would save more money that way. Not a single employer will look at an under-performing employee and say "we will keep him on, but pay him less". Nor do they hire someone on the expectation that they will "work less, but at least we can pay them less". The gap comes about well after someone has been hired, and it can simply not come about due to poor performance. Poor performers get fired. Block didn't even bother to prove his point. He just threw together a blatantly illogical explanation that fits with his Darwinian, free-market bullshit. I can see how, if you believe in the free market, you might be tempted to apply it to microeconomics in the way he has. Unfortunately, that nonsense is only passable in macroeconomics, and even there people have caught on.

It should be fairly obvious where I land as far as schools of economics are concerned.

I am an employer myself and the only thing that is obvious to me is that you are talking about a theoretical employer that doesn't exist. And again you are calling Block darwinian and bullshitter, ad hominem all over.

All human beings are different, equal work is nonsense. I have 250 employees and they are not equally productive. Even those performing the same tasks.

I'm going to play some games now, it's 9:46 pm here in Argentina. 'Night.

An ad hominem attack is when someone attacks the person instead of the argument. I can attack the person as much as I like, as long as I attack the argument too. This employer does exist, because he is a rational actor in the field of economics. Something most employers are. If your employees are not roughly equal in their productivity while working the same number of hours and having the same duties, then I am not sure why you have kept them on. You do realize that no one expects exactly the same amount of productivity, but as far as it is measurable, all individuals performing the same function should be equally productive in your Darwinian wonderland.

If they were equally productive I would pay them the same as in your: equal work, equal pay. As they are not, I pay them proportionally to the subjective, not easily measurable, productivity.

Calling Block names is foolish and coward as he is not here to defend himself. Calling me names is just rude and I don't appreciate it.

Then you are an unethical employer, for you cannot measure their "lesser productivity" in anything more than subjective ways, yet see it fit to nonetheless quantify this unmeasurable productivity in their paychecks. The very nature of what you're doing is so incredibly chilling, because the productivity of these employees may one day rise to meet that of the others, but since you have nothing but your own subjective opinion as to their levels of productivity, you may continue to pay them as if they are doing poor work.

Do you know, my dear entrepreneur, why most businesses try to avoid such methods? It isn't ethics, surely. Most businesses under a capitalist system are not concerned with ethics. Not, it is for the following reasons: One, it can be taxing to keep an eye on the productivity of every employee so that your own subjective, half-assed assessment can determine whether they will get a raise or not, and two, there is very little motivation for improvement were these comparatively poorly paid employees to find out that they are seen as poor workers deserving of fewer wages.

By the way, I love the fact that, as far as I can tell, you only looked at your business and decided to declare a more rational approach as only existing in theory. Someone should tell most mid-large size business owners that.

I am sorry you're such a diehard Austrian fanatic that you think it is foolish to mock Block. Believe me, Block has heard everything I've mentioned here many times over from other sources. He has not defended himself particularly well when confronted.

You assume a lot of things.

Nobody lives in a vacuum, I know a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and some of them are big and we talk about these kind of stuff a lot.

I don't determine productivity of all my employees by myself. I don't even know some of them, they work in different provinces (states for the US). Other people do that for me.

Measuring productivity is hard and you seem to ignore it. I'm both a Mechanical and an Electrical Engineer and I have studied Taylor, Fayol and others in subjects of productivity. In a factory is easy to measure the output of some people, however it's very hard to measure the productivity of a secretary, a lawyer and even an accountant.

Diehard Austrian fanatic? Unethical? Half-assed assessments?

As I said, you assume too much.

I am so sorry. Let me do some quick rearranging here. Okay, there. Carry over everything I said to this new set of conditions. Whomever is doing it on your behalf is incapable of doing it, for the exact same reason you and I seem to agree on.

I never claimed measuring productivity was easy. In fact, one could almost say that my point was precisely that it wasn't easy! For the jobs we're talking about, anyway. If it is hard (you really mean impossible) to measure the productivity of certain employees, then you are not justified in paying individuals fulfilling the same role different wages. Simple. Face it, these estimations your people are making for you are, at best, guesstimations. If they are fulfilling the same role on paper, then they should get paid the same. If it is so obvious that there is a disparity in performance, then you probably shouldn't keep them employed.

Beyond that, I think you and I have gotten completely off-topic. The idea was that you shouldn't pay women less than men for doing the same job. From that, you took issue with my observation, based on sound economic principles, that there is literally nothing in it for you to hire someone and pay them less for less productivity over the same amount of time as someone you pay more for more productivity. You'd be better off either hiring a more productive person to fill that role, or hiring a more productive person for less amount of time in order to accomplish the same amount of work the shoddy worker accomplishes full time.

@JoshyLee said:

Is it innocuous though? This faux-political bullshit on a site that s supposed to be entertaining? Patrick has had this chip on his shoulder for a while and it seems he's only really saying it because it will be controversial and increase page views. He's making a simple stupid story that doesn't even have to do with the American video game industry into some sensationalist tabloid-level "journalism" so he can get attention.

The entire reason he was brought in was to bring more people to the site. I cannot believe you people hate Patrick when you really should hate the people who hired him. They quite clearly stated that he was brought in to create more original content like this and that would in-turn generate more views.

@Archaen said:

I have indeed read the entirety of your data and it DOES NOT say what you think it does. It compared "median income" for "full time work". "Full time work" for a woman is an average of six hours less per week than "Full time work" for a man. Median income does not take into account that women work less for "full time work" and is therefore inaccurate. If women's "median income" were the same as men's in your graphs then men would actually be making less per hour of work than women. The articles from Forbes and CBS are based on the analysis you linked and clearly explain why they do not accurately depict reality. You are operating on outdated, flawed data.

Here is another article for you to read entitled "Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html

Please try harder than the Huffington Post.

No, you did not read the article I linked to, because in the article I linked to it clearly explains that they compensated for differing hours in their mathematical model and still found a discrepancy. IF you're going to insult my intelligence, just be upfront about it. I am game for all that business. I am not game for someone being willfully obtuse and making me point out obvious things.

@Archaen said:

That's just it, women aren't being passed over for promotions or failing to get raises. They're just voluntarily working less because they prefer spending time with their children and they're getting exactly the amount of money equal to the time they worked. If you just take what they make an hour and multiply it out to make it equivalent to the amount their male colleagues work all of a sudden they make exactly the same amount over their lifetimes. There is no discriminatory practice involved. There's no sexism involved.

Your argument about childbirth being a necessary thing for society doesn't mean anything to the business owner, who pays x dollars for y productivity because he gets z dollars for every xx product created. He does not get any money for the productivity that is absent when the woman decides to work less than full time, so why should the business owner be required to compensate the woman for the hours she doesn't produce anything for his business? It also doesn't account for the child-rearing itself being a thing that many women actually enjoy doing. It fulfills many women and they gladly trade a few dollars of income for more time to spend with their children.

I am going to give this one more shot. I will answer sentence for sentence. Follow along.

Yes, they are being passed over for promotions and failing to get raises. What do you think accounts for the wage gap? The fact it is voluntary does not negate the fact they are being passed over. Raising a child is work, so no, they are not getting exactly the amount of money equal to the time they worked. If work HAS to be productivity for their employer, then we don't have to demand the money come directly from their employer. I suspect this is where your brain starts to break down, since it just seems so unfair that an employer pay for something other than goods and labor that directly impacts their bottom line. Fine, let's have the government take the money from the employer and give it to the parent raising the child. As I said, either way businesses are paying for it, even if you tax the employees. I love the retard math you pulled at the end of the first paragraph. Your definition of "work" is lacking.

It should mean something to the business owner. My entire argument is that it should. Stop answering with "Well, this capitalist fuck gives no shits". That's not really a problem. We have the government take it away from him if he won't do it. One way, or the other. It is the ethical thing to do.

The fact women enjoy has no bearing on whether a wage gap should exist or not. Love doesn't provide a financially independent future. What a stupid argument that is.

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

@Judakel said:

@crcruz3 said:

You said: "While on the job, women either do as much work as men or are simply too unproductive to be viable employees." and you are ignoring the 3rd option, they are less productive than men and receiving less money for it. That's Block's whole argument.

Are you an economist yourself? In that case, which school of economics is your preferred one?

I did not ignore his argument. I explained why he was simply wrong. You even quoted the section where I explained why he was wrong. There is literally no incentive for an employer to continue paying someone (even if it is less money) for lesser work. His third option is a fiction and you've taken my dismissal of it as simply "ignoring it". When an employer hires someone, they factor in the most they are willing to pay someone for the desired work into their budget. They don't reign it in if the work is shoddy since they get nothing out of it. It would be better in the long run to simply hire someone else who won't do shoddy work. They would save more money that way. Not a single employer will look at an under-performing employee and say "we will keep him on, but pay him less". Nor do they hire someone on the expectation that they will "work less, but at least we can pay them less". The gap comes about well after someone has been hired, and it can simply not come about due to poor performance. Poor performers get fired. Block didn't even bother to prove his point. He just threw together a blatantly illogical explanation that fits with his Darwinian, free-market bullshit. I can see how, if you believe in the free market, you might be tempted to apply it to microeconomics in the way he has. Unfortunately, that nonsense is only passable in macroeconomics, and even there people have caught on.

It should be fairly obvious where I land as far as schools of economics are concerned.

I am an employer myself and the only thing that is obvious to me is that you are talking about a theoretical employer that doesn't exist. And again you are calling Block darwinian and bullshitter, ad hominem all over.

All human beings are different, equal work is nonsense. I have 250 employees and they are not equally productive. Even those performing the same tasks.

I'm going to play some games now, it's 9:46 pm here in Argentina. 'Night.

An ad hominem attack is when someone attacks the person instead of the argument. I can attack the person as much as I like, as long as I attack the argument too. This employer does exist, because he is a rational actor in the field of economics. Something most employers are. If your employees are not roughly equal in their productivity while working the same number of hours and having the same duties, then I am not sure why you have kept them on. You do realize that no one expects exactly the same amount of productivity, but as far as it is measurable, all individuals performing the same function should be equally productive in your Darwinian wonderland.

If they were equally productive I would pay them the same as in your: equal work, equal pay. As they are not, I pay them proportionally to the subjective, not easily measurable, productivity.

Calling Block names is foolish and coward as he is not here to defend himself. Calling me names is just rude and I don't appreciate it.

Then you are an unethical employer, for you cannot measure their "lesser productivity" in anything more than subjective ways, yet see it fit to nonetheless quantify this unmeasurable productivity in their paychecks. The very nature of what you're doing is so incredibly chilling, because the productivity of these employees may one day rise to meet that of the others, but since you have nothing but your own subjective opinion as to their levels of productivity, you may continue to pay them as if they are doing poor work.

Do you know, my dear entrepreneur, why most businesses try to avoid such methods? It isn't ethics, surely. Most businesses under a capitalist system are not concerned with ethics. Not, it is for the following reasons: One, it can be taxing to keep an eye on the productivity of every employee so that your own subjective, half-assed assessment can determine whether they will get a raise or not, and two, there is very little motivation for improvement were these comparatively poorly paid employees to find out that they are seen as poor workers deserving of fewer wages.

By the way, I love the fact that, as far as I can tell, you only looked at your business and decided to declare a more rational approach as only existing in theory. Someone should tell most mid-large size business owners that.

I am sorry you're such a diehard Austrian fanatic that you think it is foolish to mock Block. Believe me, Block has heard everything I've mentioned here many times over from other sources. He has not defended himself particularly well when confronted.

@Archaen said:

The example of the women in my highly technical field was to illustrate how women are actually voluntarily creating the wage gap themselves and there is no discriminatory practice at play. The data points to the same conclusion. When women actually do the same job and work as many hours as men they make as much money in a year. They simply don't do that because they choose to value other things than money more often than men do.

It doesn't illustrate that because it is anecdotal evidence. It is completely worthless in even supporting the already existence data. The data does not point to the same conclusion anyway. The data I linked to, which I suspect you still have not fucking copied on to your URL bar, shows a wage gap for women who work the same job for the same amount of time. This discussion has been settled, and unlike you I provided actual graphs with a methodology description. Not some editorial.

@Archaen said:

That money would only come out of those businesses if you taxed them extra for it. If you instead taxed workers then business expenses would not go up unless the employers decided to pay for it. Having children is not something that business owners consider an expense or even an investment. Our government also doesn't consider it an expense or an investment but have taken pains to make it illegal to discriminate against those that do decide to raise children. Your argument is that we, as a people, should value raising children more. That's fine. There's nothing discriminatory in play, though. The pay gap is entirely due to women making their own choices about what they value in life. Men choose money over raising children, more women choose the opposite, and that's the end of the story. Recent studies of urban non-married 18-30s has shown that women actually get paid more per year in total than men, possibly due to the current education gap (more women than men are graduating with advanced degrees these days).

Yeah, you're right. It is not as if taxing workers would negatively affect spending. Fuck me. This is economics 101. This is why you tax businesses and the rich first, in all matters. This is also why I said that the money will be coming out of businesses no matter what.

Look, I am not sure where the thought process breaks down for you, but let me walk you through the problem once again. The fact women are the only ones that can have children, and the fact having children is a necessary part of life in order for our civilization to survive, pretty much means at some point, it will be absolutely necessary for a woman to have a child. Necessary for everyone's benefit, not just their own. They fulfill a necessary role with their biology and they are being punished for it by receiving fewer opportunities for advancement due to fulfilling this role - in most instances. This is in large part responsible for the wage gap. You agree with me on this. The part you seem confused about is the part where we treat raising children as a necessity rather than a choice. I am done being patient with you, so just get your head out of your ass and think about the consequences were it truly a choice they could walk-away from in their lives. Some do, but most could not. It would be a terrible crisis, and the fact most of them are willing to do it in no way negates the fact it is not really a choice.

I am not really sure what you're not getting here. It doesn't get more "born into a role that will end up in discrimination 9-times-out-of-10 in our current climate" than that. Now, keep in mind that men can just as easily step into this role if they so wish (at least the rearing part), but understand that many times societal pressures will ensure it is women who perform this task. There is no "choice" about it. Stop using that language. It is intellectually dishonest and naive.

One last point concerning "choice": Even if it were a choice that no outside factors ensured women would make most of the time, there is still absolutely no logic behind the idea that they should be punished for it. None. Someone has to do this job and they should not give up the prospect of an equally bright future to men in order to perform this necessary task. You are punishing people for doing something you couldn't live without. It makes no fucking sense. Make no mistake about it, it is absolutely a punishment to have your financially independent future derailed because you are performing a necessary task.

THAT is the end of the story.

The fact more women than men are graduating from college is another issue altogether, but in no way does it negate concerns for the wage gap that still negatively affects an overwhelming number of women. Don't even try to go that route.