Unionization for thee, but nor for me

Look For Union Hypocrisy Label At Media Matters

How are markets responding to global warming?

John Tammy at Forbes has an interesting take on global warming: Rather than listen to the overly emotional arguments from both sides, look at how people with actual skin in the game are responding. That is, if people with money on the line aren't bailing on coastal property, then maybe the coasts will be around for a while longer.

Are Global Warming Alarmists Shane Smith And Bill Maher Moving To Texas?

Global Warming's True Believers Are Screaming At The Proverbial Scoreboard

More on American oligarchs

Oligarchy in the Twenty-First Century: Think rich conservatives rule the world? Think again.

Perhaps the plutocrats ARE in charge

If one were so inclined, it would be pretty easy to connect some dots and come up with a story about how a couple of billionaires have bought themselves a president who is willing to risk natural and human disasters in return for campaign cash:

Billionaire Dem environmental activist Tom Steyer vows “efforts to defeat Keystone will continue”

Warren Buffett Cashes In on Railroad Tank Cars

Accidents Surge as Oil Industry Takes the Train

Obama administration delays decision on Keystone XL pipeline again

The real issues surrounding the gender wage gap

As indicated in my post from yesterday, the notion that the "gender wage gap" is a measure of workplace discrimination is absolute nonsense.  Most of the gap is the result of women's choices about balancing career, family, etc., and not discrimination in pay.  As I mentioned briefly in that post, by being so obviously innumerate, those who claim otherwise are probably harming their own cause. That is, by using this trumped-up measure, they are making it too easy to avoid the actual issues.  Here are two issues off the top of my head:

1. Are women's choices about career, family, etc. made freely, or is it discrimination that leads them to not even try to succeed in male-dominated professions or to work as many hours as men do? My own experience and observations indicate that the most important determinant of women's choices is that they are the ones who God has decided will bear children. One might point out that women didn't choose this state of affairs, but one must admit there is little that government can do to change it. But I think the question of discrimination affecting women's choices is a real issue. Even if women's choices are mostly a product of biology, some of them are not. Megan McArdle has a nice discussion of this issue.

2. After adjusting the gender wage gap for women's choices, the gap almost--but not quite--disappears. Most research is able to explain all but 2 to 5 percent of the gap, but fails to note that a gap of that size is perfectly consistent with there being a great deal of wage discrimination. For example, a 2 percent gap can occur if one-quarter of all working women are being paid 8 percent less than the otherwise identical man doing the exact same job; or if one in ten women are being paid 20 percent less. Wage discrimination on either of these scales should be worth looking into. The focus on the easily debunked gap of 23 cents on the dollar means that more-accurate measures of discrimination are ignored too easily. But maybe those who choose innumeracy do so because they want to force the idea that all women are discriminated against all the time.

If you like your phony numbers, you can keep them. Period.

RAND study: By our estimate, 3.9 million people signed up for ObamaCare, not 7.1 million like the White House says

The President didn't mean that HE discriminates, only that we do

Apparently the ridiculously idiotic use of the gender wage gap to measure discrimination applies only to everyone else, but not to the White House.  Among White House staffers, women make only 88 percent of what men make.  But the president's spokesman says that if you account for other factors the gap disappears, so it's unfair to use the gap to indicate discrimination. If only he'd had the decency and honesty to make these corrections for everyone else.

Update: When the White House loses CNN, you know they're in trouble.  Who next? MSNBC?

When economists sell their soul, II

Anyone with half a brain knows that President Obama's claim that the so-called gender wage gap shows the extent of sex discrimination in the workplace is complete bull. Every year this number is trotted out, and every year it has to be redebunked. It is a very tiresome exercise. The claim is so ridiculously stupid and so easily debunked that it probably sets back the cause of eliminating actual workplace discrimination because the discussion centers on the idiocy of the number.

Apparently, even one of the president's personal economists couldn't bring herself to stick to the script. Betsey Stevenson is a member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers and a very accomplished professional economist. Now, any economist who is able to talk about the wage gap as a measure of discrimination is either a ridiculously bad economist or a soulless shill. Stephenson is not the former and she is having a tough time becoming the latter.  

After spouting the nonsense about the gender wage gap at a news conference she was asked a simple question about whether or not is actually shows what she had just claimed it to show. Being a good economist who is having troubling selling her soul, she immediately crumbled from the party line.  She tried to save it, but her brain was not letting her soul be sold for so little.  I can't really give her kudos for this, so I'll just give her a single kudo.

Update: I think I will take back the kudo. Stevenson's performance was just too pathetic and she ended up sticking to her original lie.

Update: Go here for further points about the gender wage gap.