Unsurprising there hasn’t been much change when their survey methodology doesn’t capture most of the relevant data.
From interviews and citations by female academics and economists who study and write on it, the Freakonomics podcast hosts interview these experts on why the often quoted stat of national mean is an oversimplification of a complex issue. freakonomics.com/…/the-true-story-of-the-gender-p…
Just like the commonly quoted unemployment statistic is a poor measure of employment in the country, a simple national mean leaves out almost all meaningful analysis, and actual deliberate or systematic pay discrimination is much more rare than headlines would have you believe.
Please stop with this narrative that the uncontrolled gender pay gap is meaningless. It is not. From the 2024 Gender Pay Gap Report:
“The uncontrolled gender pay gap is not less meaningful than the controlled gender pay gap. It reveals the overall economic power disparity between men and women in society and how wealth and power are gendered. Even if the controlled gender pay gap disappeared — meaning women and men with the same job title and qualifications were paid equally — the uncontrolled gap would demonstrate that higher-paying positions are still disproportionately accessible to men compared to women.”
The uncontrolled gender pay gap is hence an extremely succinct number at summarizing all forms of economic disparity. Yes, controlling for factors such as education and job titles - but the controlled pay gap is meaningless in a post equal pay for equal work environment. Everyone already knows that education and job titles determine most of your salary - hence these are called “bad controls” in the literature. The problem is now that women do not receive the same levels of access to education and higher level job titles, a phenomenon which is captured very well by the uncontrolled gap.
Please stop with this narrative that the uncontrolled gender pay gap is meaningless. It is not.
It very much is useless.
The uncontrolled gender pay gap is hence an extremely succinct number at summarizing all forms of economic disparity.
Succinct, as all good statistical analysis should be. It gives you no actionable information.
Yes, controlling for factors such as education and job titles - but the controlled pay gap is meaningless in a post equal pay for equal work environment.
What? Then stop talking about pay equity if you’re not interested in that issue.
The problem is now that women do not receive the same levels of access to education and higher level job titles, a phenomenon which is captured very well by the uncontrolled gap.
But access to education and higher level job titles are not the sole factors that are controlled for. Several studies have noted that women have different priorities in the workforce, and some women choose to be the primary caregiver to children or elderly parents.
So why would you use a statistic that doesn’t control for several variables, which I just mentioned, to better understand access to education or higher level job titles?
There are already statistics that deal with educational attainment by sex. If that’s your focus, why would you ignore a data set that directly addresses your area of study to instead focus on the effect caused by what you want to study? That would be analogous to studying covid by looking at a data set regarding fevers, while ignoring data sets specifically tailored to covid. Sure, undoubtedly some of those fevers were caused by covid, but many were not.
Also, if women’s access to education is caused by, or heavily correlated with, the uncontrolled gender pay gap, then why do more women than men have a bachelor’s degree or higher? Isn’t that antithetical to the uncontrolled gender pay gap that tells us that women make nearly 20% less than men?
In 2022, 39.0% of women age 25 and older, and 36.2% of men in the same age range, had completed a bachelor’s degree or more…
When you’re directly comparing the pay of a male executive against that of a female barista, it is very much meaningless.
Employment choices, priorities, and decisions factor very heavily into how much people get paid. Take those choices, priorities, and decisions into account, and the so-called “wage gap” almost completely disappears.
compare to only 273% (and ~ six tenths) for the federal minimum wage since jan 1, 1978 (was $2.65, is $7.25). it would be ~ $39/hr if it increased at the same rate at CEO pay over that time frame.
Alternative analysis for the WSJ: CEOs endure crisis after crisis - CEOs pay has shown massive cuts on several occasions in the last few years. While average workers salaries have steadily grown in the last 45 years, the pay of CEOs has been regularly affected by enormous cuts, sometimes as much as 45℅.
Bozo McGill, representative for the CEOs in distress: “maybe it’s time to stop caring about the poor. Let’s reduce taxes for the CEOs, otherwise they won’t afford a Lambo a month anymore”
The problem is these people in the top positions don't see anything wrong with this.
I remember telling my republican friend that companies could easily raise worker pay. He laughed said that hamburgers would cost $20. I said you don't need to raise the price of the product, the people at the top could make less money. He then said "Oh, they are NOT going to do that."
Well of course they don’t see anything wrong with this, they’re getting paid not to see anything wrong with it. They’re paid astronomical amounts of money to keep the status quo by people even richer than them.
They always say this, but when you mention the Nordic countries where wages are at least twice ours and fast food is pretty much the same cost, they start ranting about how any country that properly uses socialism doesn’t count.
And they almost always end up saying something racist
Right, but the hypothetical person this person is talking to fires back with “that Nordic country doesn’t count cause that’s socialism”
I’m a Florida native so I’ve had this conversation with someone, and they’re implying the reason why burgers aren’t $20 is because of some weird centralized control of prices while also conflating social programs with socialism (and not the economic system)
Well, helping those people realize that the government can do shit and it not be socialism, because words have actual meanings, is a great way to get them to stop voting against their own self interest, imo.
It’s why I constantly die on this hill on this site to people who think universal healthcare is socialism, and call themselves socialists as a result.
Cutting CEO pay would not affect worker pay that much.
Fortune 500 CEOs make, on average, about 17MM a year. The average Fortune 500 company has 52k employees.
If you split their entire paycheck among just the bottom 50% of employees you’re looking at like $3 per hour. That’s… okay. But now you don’t have a CEO, and this isn’t really sustainable with any sort of inflation.
If you instead raise prices one cent on whatever product or service, you almost certainly will have more money to divvy up among employees, and it’s sustainable.
Worth noting I’m for a federal cap on CEO pay but that’s more to address the runaway nature of the CEO market, and its downstream effects.
I think your decimal may be off. For full time work, looks like ~36 cents per hour, assuming full time. But, for many it would be even worse. For Walmart, completely eliminating the CEO pay could increase the bottom 50% earners annual income by a whopping $22.
I agree with the overall sentiment tho. More than what this article shows, I’d be interested to see the percentage and dollar amount increase in disposable income among various cohorts within the top 10 percent incomes.
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