Tweet
It's like the 70s was a different Universe...
-
12-17-10 Mohamed Bouazizi NEVER FORGET
Stadtluft Macht Frei
Killing it is the new killing it
Ultima Ratio Regum -
Rates haven't been raised this time.Originally posted by Kidicious
Those guys were suppose to jump off the buildings.
Comment
-
Not price controls, but Obama is on board with government regulation of wages.Have you heard of any recent serious push for price controls, for instance?
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It's baaaack!! Yes, "comparable worth," which faded out around the same time the Bay City Rollers were disbanding, is making a comeback, under the euphemism "pay equity". To wit: the Fair Pay Act of 2007. Introduced by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in April (Illinois Sen. and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is one of 15 co-sponsors) the Act notes the existence of wage differentials between men and women.
This is true; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2005 female full-time wage and salary workers made 81% of what men did. What is more dubious, though, is the assumption that is the heart of the Fair Pay Act: that discrimination is the reason for all or most of the difference. And the act's remedies are absurdly misguided, injecting the federal government into the most routine pay decisions.
Granted, Obama did not write the bill, but he did sign on to it - the only presidential wannabe of either party to do so. Obama is a serious man and a serious candidate who presumably did not go out of his way to associate himself with this legislation in a burst of whimsy. But the Fair Pay Act, despite its anodyne title (who's against fair pay?) is the result of profoundly unserious economic thinking. That Obama put his name to it has to give pause.Comment
-
Do we have any indication that it now has garnered more support? Obama is a whacky liberal, but not many others are.
I guess there are some artifacts from that time period. Rent control comes to mind. But that (in its worst form) still survives only in those areas untouched by the light of Reagan's glory -- some of our cities.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
-
I don't know if it has garnered more support since last year. At any rate, the situation is going to change after the election. I hope it won't get more support, but that really depends on how liberal the expanded Democratic caucus ends up being.Do we have any indication that it now has garnered more support? Obama is a whacky liberal, but not many others are.Comment
-
Recent (40 years) history suggests that a larger majority Dem caucus and president will be a fractious affair.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
-
Those Presidents weren't The One, though.
Comment
-
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It's baaaack!! Yes, "comparable worth," which faded out around the same time the Bay City Rollers were disbanding, is making a comeback, under the euphemism "pay equity". To wit: the Fair Pay Act of 2007. Introduced by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in April (Illinois Sen. and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is one of 15 co-sponsors) the Act notes the existence of wage differentials between men and women.
This is true; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2005 female full-time wage and salary workers made 81% of what men did. What is more dubious, though, is the assumption that is the heart of the Fair Pay Act: that discrimination is the reason for all or most of the difference. And the act's remedies are absurdly misguided, injecting the federal government into the most routine pay decisions.
Granted, Obama did not write the bill, but he did sign on to it - the only presidential wannabe of either party to do so. Obama is a serious man and a serious candidate who presumably did not go out of his way to associate himself with this legislation in a burst of whimsy. But the Fair Pay Act, despite its anodyne title (who's against fair pay?) is the result of profoundly unserious economic thinking. That Obama put his name to it has to give pause.
Ridiculous spin of the Ledbetter Act. It's nothing more than clarifying the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to specify that wage discrimination occurs whenever discriminatory wages are given, not only when it was originally set. Great Society civil rights, not New Deal wage controls."Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-BokononComment
-
**** Dan, the Ledbetter Act (House version of the Senate's Fair Pay Act) passed 225 to 199. Luckily it got killed in committee in the Senate, but how confident are we that that will happen again?Comment
-
I'm reading James K. Galbraith's new book The Predator State. I suspect there might be similar things suggested in there. At the very least there's an attack on the dogma of the free market. In some ways the book goes too far I think, but it does in general suggest we look at evidence rather than rely on the dogma that markets are always right.Originally posted by DanS
They did all sorts of weird stuff before Reagan. Have you heard of any recent serious push for price controls, for instance?"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."
-Joan RobinsonComment
-
Yeah, but Gents doesn't like stuff like facts and civil rights.Originally posted by Ramo
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It's baaaack!! Yes, "comparable worth," which faded out around the same time the Bay City Rollers were disbanding, is making a comeback, under the euphemism "pay equity". To wit: the Fair Pay Act of 2007. Introduced by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in April (Illinois Sen. and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is one of 15 co-sponsors) the Act notes the existence of wage differentials between men and women.
This is true; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2005 female full-time wage and salary workers made 81% of what men did. What is more dubious, though, is the assumption that is the heart of the Fair Pay Act: that discrimination is the reason for all or most of the difference. And the act's remedies are absurdly misguided, injecting the federal government into the most routine pay decisions.
Granted, Obama did not write the bill, but he did sign on to it - the only presidential wannabe of either party to do so. Obama is a serious man and a serious candidate who presumably did not go out of his way to associate himself with this legislation in a burst of whimsy. But the Fair Pay Act, despite its anodyne title (who's against fair pay?) is the result of profoundly unserious economic thinking. That Obama put his name to it has to give pause.
Ridiculous spin of the Ledbetter Act. It's nothing more than clarifying the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to specify that wage discrimination occurs whenever discriminatory wages are given, not only when it was originally set. Great Society civil rights, not New Deal wage controls.A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.Comment
-
Yes, I'm sure it does. But the question is how much support such a viewpoint will garner from the broad public.Originally posted by Victor Galis In some ways the book goes too far I think, but it does in general suggest we look at evidence rather than rely on the dogma that markets are always right.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
-
Yes, Ramo's message-board comments are more factually-based than my CNN article...Yeah, but Gents doesn't like stuff like facts and civil rights.Comment
-
Your CNN article is total ****. It fails to describe in anything close to concrete terms what the legislation actually does.
Here's the summary:
7/31/2007--Passed House amended.
(This measure has not been amended since it was reported to the House on July 18, 2007. The summary of that version is repeated here.)
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 -
Section 3 -
Amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to declare that an unlawful employment practice occurs when: (1) a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice is adopted; (2) an individual becomes subject to the decision or practice; or (3) an individual is affected by application of the decision or practice, including each time compensation is paid. Accrues liability, and an aggrieved person may obtain relief including recovery of back pay for up to two years preceding the filing of the charge, where the unlawful employment practices that have occurred during the charge filing period are similar or related to practices that occurred outside the time for filing a charge. Applies the amendments of this paragraph to claims of compensation discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Section 4 -
Amends the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 to declare that an unlawful practice occurs when a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice is adopted when a person becomes subject to the decision or other practice, or when a person is affected by the decision or practice, including each time compensation is paid.
Suggesting that this is NRA-style wage controls is absurdly ignorant."Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-BokononComment
-
That oh so detailed summary (of the House bill, not the Senate one) doesn't provide any information on how the bill would be enforced if it were passed into law. Do you have any evidence that the following is not true?
The Fair Pay Act takes a sledgehammer to deal with this gnat-sized differential. Under its provisions, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) would create criteria determining whether a given job is dominated by one sex; employers would have to send the EEOC every year a listing of each job classification, the race and sex of those holding such jobs; how much they are paid; and how such pay was determined. The goal of all this is to ensure that people in "equivalent" jobs are paid similar wages. "The term, 'equivalent jobs', according to the legislation, "means jobs that may be dissimilar, but whose requirements are equivalent, when viewed as a composite of skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions." And who would decide what is equivalent? The federal government, of course. Forget the price signal: Congress is on the job!Comment
Comment