Is this like how you "knew" that FlyWf never posted anything about Anwar Al-Awlaki? How'd that work out for you, moron?

You've proven yourself to be a miserable judge of predicting liberal behavior every time you try, yet still you press on. It's pretty amazing to watch.

Would you say this creates an issue where a new employee may not be given a chance to work in a role where they are willing to accept less money? Especially a woman?

It would be a detriment to the company to ever allow this, as it would create the impression that they are underpaying someone.

I speak from this from experience, where I actually told my employer I'd be willing to be paid less to take a position so I could learn it, as I was completely inexperienced. They agreed, and for years I was under the actual pay band. If they were worried about looking inappropriate about underpaying minorities, they possibly would be inclined to decline.

Unless a significant number of a company's employees are operating under such agreements, I doubt it would have any material effect on the statistics. Bearing in mind that the proposed law only impacts larger corporations. So I don't think it would create much pressure.

Also I don't see why, in the highly unusual case that this became significant, the company couldn't simply explain the cause of the gap in its reporting. Obviously employees who intentionally entered such an agreement would find it difficult to sue.

Basically my answer to your first question is "Sure, hypothetically, but I see no reason to worry about it."

WN, if you were running a large company, would you support or not support publishing wages?

I'd support it, obviously. I'm not sure why you think I would advocate a policy I wouldn't be personally willing to implement. :P

Just to be clear, the law doesn't require publishing wages, as in detailed information for every employee. It requires providing statistical data in aggregate.

I am skeptical about all of this. It almost seems as if some of you wish to create an actual problem where you question there may possibly be one.

Another question - if a study proved that never married, childless women who have been continually in the workforce make the same as their male counterparts, would you still support this?

I think it's clear from your description of the study ("single, childless, continually in the workforce") that you're basically asking whether I'd support this policy if there was data that suggested strongly that the wage gap was entirely or almost entirely a consequence of workforce experience differences due to maternity leave.

I'll say in general that if analyses of the wage gap were to settle upon causes that are non-discriminatory and unreasonable to try to change through this kind of policy, then I'd stop supporting the policy. The kind of result you're asking about is in that direction, and so the answer is potentially yes, but it depends on the details. Especially with only a single study. How generalizable are the results? But, there is clearly some point where the strength of the conclusions from new research would speak against this kind of policy. It's hard to locate the exact threshold in the hypothetical.

Also, I would be interested (not just in the hypothetical) in considering how reasonable wage penalties for time off for maternity really are. I would love to be able to compare the penalty faced by women to penalties faced by men for taking similar amounts of time off, if that is possible to study. I don't believe this currently exists. Or I haven't found it.

What if things changed (I don't think this is currently the case, based on existing research) such that childless women did not face a wage gap (after controlling for all the usual human capital factors), but women with children faced a gap that was disproportionate to the actual economic effects of their time off? There is already some circumstantial evidence that this happens, although there's definitely not enough research on this topic to draw strong conclusions. In this case I might feel that the UK policy is no longer the right approach, but not think that therefore there is no further problem. Given that it's necessary for most families to have two working parents, I would view labor market forces that excessively penalized mothers for having children to still constitute something of a social problem.

You got me mixed up with someone else. Srs stop posting you're an embarrassment.

There is a reason why I'm asking these questions. I really want to get to the bottom of your motives here. If you said "current forces put pressure on both parents working so if the companies get stuck with paying families a little more, I'm in favor of that", I could understand. I may not agree in it's fairness, but I would understand.

Personally, I feel that if my son worked harder than my daughter, he should be compensated accordingly. The reverse also holds true. I think women should be compensated for time off due to pregnancy and delivery and I also believe there should be tax relief to help with childcare, etc. But what I don't believe is that the entire compensation structure should come under pressure due to outside intervention.

I truly do not believe that we are discriminating against women. I think if you had a closed-door meeting with men who work for a company and someone suggested for females be paid less a riot would break out. I know I wouldn't support that even if it meant I would benefit.

Furthermore this bastardization of men and our intentions wears on me. I'm older than you do maybe it's a bit unfair but maybe as you get older you'll feelings will line up more with mine. I was raised to love and respect women and this constant feeling of suspicion towards men concerns me. It is no wonder so many young men these days are lost and confused and don't want to get married due to the unbelievable amount of risk they take by getting married and having children.

I think that's bad for everyone. I see the results of all this in society and I really question if what we are doing is net good or net bad. It really seems kids and young adults are totally lost these days, and it makes me very nervous.

Hahahaha wow are you a serious dumb**** and an embarrassment. It's right here:

How much of a ****ing moron do you have to be to deny posting something you wrote, like, two days ago? Here I thought JiggyMac had "dumbest newcomer of the year" on lock but man you have made one hell of a midyear push at unseating him. You are truly special.

Ah, fair enough.

<Devil's Advocate>
I don't think (1) and (2) necessarily have to be in tension. When it is said that "~all of the current wage gap is due to factors other than discrimination" I don't think "discrimination" has to encompass "social pressures" for the argument to work.

The legislation is a burden put on companies. If companies are not discriminating against women, then any pressure put on companies that changes their behavior is fundamentally distorting the market at this specific point of contact; negotiation of compensation.

If other social behaviors outside of employer/employee dynamic are creating other distortions, then the solution is either to ignore those distortions or to treat them at the source. Trying to correct for it later at the point of hire creates inefficiencies and places an unfair burden on companies to correct perceived problems that they are not responsible for causing.

Further, while I think it is true that as you move towards perfect information, outcomes of a negotiating will move towards the optimal solution, I don't think this relationship is necessarily linear.

Definitely complete information is better than partial information, and complete information is better than no information, but it strikes me as non-obvious that partial information will always be better than no information, especially when that information is selective.
</Devil's Advocate>

I don't know who Flywf is, and I never claimed he in particular said or didn't say anything. I was speaking w/r liberals and liberal media. They certainly didn't throw a hissy fit over it. Try and pay attention before you make posts, you really do sound like a complete lunatic when you misrepresent stuff like this.

LOL he's the guy you were responding to, and LOL at trying to lie your way out of getting blatantly exposed like this

To be fair, you basically stated that you were disregarding all study. If we "keep it to the realm of deduction" then we are left trying to create political views from first principals while ignoring a wealth of information available to us. I don't think that is very efficient.

Fair enough.

You were essentially given a choice between a competent centrist and a buffoon and you choose the buffoon. There is almost no logical defense for that.

Fair enough, I guess. wil318466 is basically on record stating that this one issue changed him from a liberal to a Trump supporter.

I mean, people calling each other names is pretty standard for internet discussion. It is very much an emotional response to be so triggered by being called a racist or a bigot or whatever that it prevents you from presenting your logical argument.

I'm not even sure what "are you against LOVE" is supposed to be referencing. An argument for gay marriage? Are you against gay marriage?

This is a non sequitur. First of all, the word "conceived" seems to imply that it was made up, but this is clearly not the case. The gap is real, that is not in dispute. The dispute is about the causes of the gap and whether we should do anything about it.

Secondly, you appear to be using "The pay gap was conceived and pushed forward by 2nd wave feminists in the 1970s. It was 78 cents then, and it's still 78 cents." as evidence for "The fact is progressive arguments aren't about equality, tolerance or any other new-wave virtue. They are about power, and they won't stop until their share of it is absolute." but the second quote doesn't follow in any logical way from the first.

Like, this moron expect us to believe that the "you" in that sentence was talking to liberals and not to Fly. Here's literally the sentence before that one:

"liberals", "them", "they" - not "you". You're too ****ing stupid to get away with what you're trying, DODN, save us all the embarrassment and just stop. It's pathetic.

I think it's a reasonable sentiment, although I'd prefer that "paying families more" not come at the expense of single working women. That said, I'm not suggesting regulation forcing it to happen. I think it's an interesting topic for people to think about who dismiss complaints about the wage gap on the basis of argument about maternity leave. What sorts of behavior do we think society ought to incentivize?

Sure. I think most people agree with this.

I think there's plenty of room for various interventions that don't fundamentally alter the entire dynamics of the labor market.

The evidence suggests that you are wrong.

Sure. I've made this point repeatedly. Discrimination doesn't mean just intentional discrimination. The entire premise of the wage gap disclosure law is that you don't need to do anything else because simply making people aware of unconscious biases or unintended structural problems will lead them to fix it.

Again, see above. I've never accused some vast majority of men of misogyny or intentional discrimination. I agree that the ideal of "gender neutral equality" is fairly pervasive now in our culture. Yet the evidence suggests that some issues tied to traditional gender beliefs linger. There is no doubt that "gender equality" is a pretty modern ideal. As I said before, we've undergone tremendous changes in our society in the last 50 years in this regard. Noticing that we haven't arrived at a perfect society is not the same as saying men don't love or respect women, or don't hold equality as an ideal.

At the same time, I've also personally witnessed more than enough examples of blatant sexism to pretend that sexism in various forms doesn't still exist. But I think it's usually quite different than an anti-suffrage ad from the 1910s, for example.

Because you're Dunning-Krugering yourself and thinking there's no way they can be this stupid, that's why.

Ok let's try again.

When you read this article, does it make you pause or rethink your argument at all?


http://content.time.com/time/busines...015274,00.html

BWAHAHAHA THAT WAS THE GRUNCHIEST GRUNCH I'VE EVER GRUNCHED BECAUSE HOLY GODDAMN **** AT THE VERY NEXT POST

No. Because I was the first person in this thread to cite that article here

Although, I'll also reiterate something else I said in that post about this:

I wanted to say DoNot just annihilated the field but then I remembered Jiffy's performance in the FAKE CNN thread and honestly, this thing is gonna be a photo finish.

This is the type of trolling that should get a snap-ban, btw, imo. It's just sooo lameee.

Just keep telling yourselves I addressed someone I'd never even seen here before, when clearly from the post I was addressing 'liberals' w/r to the assassination of the American citizen by Obama.

LOL still ****ing that chicken, the guy whose post he quoted = "never even seen here before".

I've already told you, dude, you are not smart enough to pull this **** off.