Brexit

Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are entirely the opinion of the author and are in no way be interpreted as a statements of fact nor as professional or personal advice of any kind. If in doubt, research it yourself.

TLDR: Einstein defined insanity as performing the same actions but expecting a different outcome. If you like everything about the EU and where it's headed then vote stay. If you don't then vote leave.

First off, anybody that says they know what will happen if Britain leaves the EU is talking arse. The situation is completely unprecedented. Any time anybody says that something will happen, without qualifying it with "might", in relation to the potentially leaving the EU they are lying.

Secondly, both sides are pretty terrible at making their argument. You've got one side making a laughable job of fearmongering by saying that Europe will end up at war if we leave, that Northern Ireland will go back to how it was 30 years ago, that the UK will split up and that that the country will go bankrupt. Then there's the other side with Boris Johnson talking about bendy bananas. It's Upper Class Twit of the Year Vs a guy nobody likes, a guy who is arguably a war criminal, and the guy in charge on Black Wednesday.  You couldn't even make a parody of how crap they are.

Here's a few examples of the things I've seen from people on both sides.

If we leave our economy will collapse

The treasury says GDP could decrease by 6% in 2 years if we leave, which it equates to £4,300 per household. It is however a government report and the government is backing the Remain campaign, so it's fair to say that it's in their interest to paint a picture that is a little bleak. They also says that house prices will fall if we leave. This is a bad thing if you're looking to sell in the near future, but if you're looking to buy then it's quite the opposite. Cass Business School actually performed an academic review of the claims and states that the treasury "grossly exaggerated" the impact of leaving the EU. The full review is available here.

The CBI, who also back the Remain campaign, estimate a 25-28% GDP growth by 2030 if we leave and a 29% growth if we stay(that's an overall difference of 0.78-3.88%). They also estimate that unemployment would fall in the longterm if the UK leaves. http://news.cbi.org.uk/news/leaving-eu-would-cause-a-serious-shock-to-uk-economy-new-pwc-analysis/leaving-the-eu-implications-for-the-uk-economy/

Professor of Applied Economics at Cardiff University Business School Patrick Minford seems to be of the opinion that our cost of living will actually immediately decrease by 8% if we leave the EU and adopt free trade.

OpenEurope thinks that if we leave the EU our GDP could be as low as 2.2% lower or as much as 1.6% higher, but expects the more likely figure to be between -0.8% and +0.6%, by 2030.

However, just because the GDP is better or worse does not mean you as an individual will be better or worse off. Trickle down economics is bollocks.

Most people seem to agree though that there will be uncertainty and the stock market and the pound will likely dip immediately following the referendum whatever the result. It might be worth waiting a week or two before you buy those shares.

We send £55million a day to the EU

No. That's the gross figure(~£18billion per year) not taking into account our rebate(~£5billion) or the amount that the EU spends on us (~£4.5billion). This works out at just over £23million per day. https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/

The EU is undemocratic

While Remainers will argue that the public can vote to elect MEPs every 5 years just like general elections, they fail to see how the EU is different. In a national election you're ideally voting for people that will make the laws you want, but in the EU MEPs don't get to make laws, only the European Commission can do that. We do not get to elect the commissioners either, the MEPs do that, but their choice is limited. The European Council (Heads of states, the council president, and the commission president) chooses a candidate for president which the MEPs get to accept or reject. If rejected another candidate is chosen within a month and the process continues. Once accepted the new commission president, along with the European Council, chooses his/her 7 (yes SEVEN) vice presidents and 20 commissioners, one from each member state. The MEPs can ask the commission to propose legislation, but they cannot do it themselves. Likewise the public might be able to take part in a public consultation from time to time, but they themselves do not get to make any suggestions either. Just to make this point clear: Nobody who you elect gets to actually propose anything, they just get the choice of agreeing or disagreeing with someone else's proposition. It's like you're in Birmingham and want to get to London(~120 miles), and you're asked "Do you want to walk to London?". You might want to suggest catching the train or bus or driving yourself as they would be more efficient, but you can't. You can either walk, or stay where you are.

The current head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, is not exactly a fan of democracy either.

We wouldn't get a trade deal with the EU if we left

The aforementioned professor Minford states that the EU would want a trade deal with us quite desperately. We have a trade deficit with the EU, they sell us a lot of goods at inflated prices, and they'd probably like that to continue. Even if they don't I'm sure a few of the other 85% of the worlds population would like to do business.

The Express also reported that Britain would not lose any existing trade deals by leaving.

Barack Obama said we'd be at the back of a queue for a trade deal if we left

Firstly, he was almost certainly asked by David Cameron to say something along those lines.

Secondly, he's on his way out so who cares what he thinks? His replacement is probably going to be either Donald Trump or Satan Hillary Clinton. Trump's a businessman so he'll likely be looking to do business, and I'm sure a relatively small donation to The Clinton Foundation would secure Hillary's support. Just ask Saudi Arabia. Thirdly, the EU doesn't have a trade deal with the US anyway. We won't lose anything, we just won't gain something. Realistically we'll be no better or worse off than we are now. TTIP is not necessarily going to be in the publics best interests anyway.

Matt Damon/Michael Moore said Brexit was bad

That's called an appeal to false authority. WTF does Matt Damon know about it? All he did was say that Brexit was bad. If he can't cite any valid reasons with evidence to back that up then he's talking cock.

Big businesses say we'd be better off staying

That's because they like the protectionism of the EU. They don't know for sure what's going to happen if that disappears so they're erring on the side of caution.

The CBI for example talks about staying in a reformed EU. The problem with that is there is no guarantee that what we'll ever get is a reformed EU. In fact, recent evidence suggest that we absolutely would not.

If we leave we lose all the good things, like workers rights and consumer standards

Not necessarily. We already have better regulations in some regards. There'd also be a good deal of negotiation and some of the things that aren't part of our law could get written in.

Leaving the EU puts 3-4 million jobs at risk

That's a gross exaggeration at best and at worst an outright lie. According to FullFact, A 2000 research paper by South Bank University found that an estimated 3,445,000 jobs depend on trade with the EU, not membership of the EU. A 2000 paper by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research stated "there is no a priori reason to suppose that many of these [jobs], if any, would be lost permanently if Britain were to leave the EU."

The Institute of Economic affairs wrote a briefing on the subject too.

If we leave we'll still have to stick to EU standards and regulations anyway so we might as well stay

No. We'd have to maintain EU standards when trading with the EU, which is an ever shrinking percentage of our exports, currently around 9% of GDP. For the other 91% of GDP we'd be free to do whatever we wanted. We do have some EU regulations written into our own law, but we would also be free to repeal those.

90% of economists back remain

It's impossible to tell. The Ipsos Mori poll this figure was taken from was sent to 3,818 economists where 88% of the 639 that responded thought the UK would be negatively affected over the next 5 years if we left the EU. To put it more accurately, 14.72% thought Brexit would have a negative affect over the next 5 years, 2.02% thought the effect would be positive, and 83.26% did not reply.

People can come and go to Britain as they please

Not quite. We do still have border operations as we're not part of the Schengen area. EU citizens however are free to move here and frequently do. Net EU migration was 184,000 last year alone (compared to 188,000 non-EU imigrants http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-net-migration-statistics), which does put a strain on hospitals and schools and results in increased house prices. That said, EU migrants have an employment rate of 78%, which is higher than that of UK nationals. Leaving the EU is expected to result in a net immigration drop of 84,000 per year. The actual immigration figures will be higher however as these cited official statistics do not include short term immigration, which is people staying for between a month and a year.

In any case, both EU and non-EU immigration need to fall for the government to reach it's targets.

Some people might argue that immigration is beneficial, but that is debatable to say the least. What is known is that immigration tends to negatively impact low paid workers and positively impact high paid workers

Some might argue that a drop in net immigration of 84,000 would still leave a net immigration of 288,000 per year, and as such would not solve the problems of the population growing faster than can be adequately handled so can be ignored. Using that logic why bother to eat anything? You're only going to be hungry again a few hours later. This is referred to as a Nirvana Fallacy.

You're racist if you want to leave the EU/something about immigration

That's referred to as an ad hominem fallacy. It's generally interpreted that the person making use of it is doing so because either they don't have a valid argument to present or they can't counter yours.

I think the European Convention on Human Rights is being abused and I want to leave

It is being abused. It's outdated and no longer fit for purpose, however leaving the EU will not affect it as it's an entirely separate matter. It's also written into British law in it's outdated form. You can thank Tony Blair for that. His wife's a barrister who co-founded Matrix Chambers, specialising in human rights, at the time but I'm sure there was no conflict of interest.

If Britain leaves the EU it's not like the rest of Europe is going to sever all ties and watch as the country floats off into the Atlantic and sinks. There are indications that the French, Dutch and Czechs all want a referendum on their EU membership as well.

Personally I've never really trusted the EU. It was sold to us as a single market but now it feels like it's evolved into a way of bringing all of Europe under the control of a select few without going to war. The single European currency was the first step. Typically if a country gets into economic trouble they can devalue their currency to increase foreign trade. If you have a shared currency you can't do that. If however you can merge all the nations into just one centrally controlled superstate then you get to treat the whole thing as a single economy with a single economic policy. No more Greece getting into trouble and Germany, France, Britain et al bailing them out. No more Greece, Germany, France or Britain at all.

Then there's the proposed formation of the EU army that Juncker has been wanting for a long time. As far as I'm aware every member state already has it's own army so there's really no need to create an EU army. Unless of course the EU would be looking to use it as a tool to enforce its will on its constituent nations. FullFact points out that the UK would need both a referendum and a vote in parliament before it could hand common defence powers to the EU.

Sargon of Akkad made a video discussing the EU.  

The Gender Pay Gap

Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are entirely the opinion of the author and are in no way be interpreted as a statements of fact nor as professional or personal advice of any kind. If in doubt, research it yourself.

According to various groups that either have an agenda (Feminists, SJW's, Hillary Clinton, the left wing media) or don't know how to correctly interpret statistics (all of the above) there is a huge and unfair disparity between what men and women are paid "for the same work". These groups will tell you that it's down to some "vast right wing conspiracy" or "the patriarchy" or "misogyny" or some other such nonsense and that women are discriminated against and are only paid some percentage of a mans wage for doing the exact same job.

This is nonsense, and I'm going to explain why.

Where does the myth come from?

Simply, bad interpretations of data. The currently touted figure is that women are paid ~77% of a mans wage for the same work. The "for the same work" bit is complete bullshit. Anybody who tells you "for the same work" is either lying to your face or has been taken in by someone who was lying to theirs. As for the percentage part, that figure is arrived at using the following method:

1. Add up the total annual wages for all the women in the country,
2. Divide the total above by the number of women workers in the country,
3. Do the same for the men,
4. Express one as a percentage of the other.

This is flawed for a number of glaringly obvious reasons. Just some of the things it doesn't take into account include:

• People working in different fields
• People having different specialisations in the same field
• People being employed on a full time or part time basis
• People working overtime
• People receiving promotions
• Differences in qualifications
• Differences in experience
• Differences in time employed at their current job
• People taking time off work
• People negotiating wages

Now let's examine some of the above the more quantifiable differences above.  For the rest of this post direct quotes taken from the sources will be in this colour, and my own comments opinions or interpretations will be in italics. Statistics quoted come from the sources linked. I've also noted some real examples of differences in pay due to gender at the bottom, as well as a host of links to other related articles.

Women don't negotiate their wages as much as men(sort of)

A small study (74 participants) at Carnegie Mellon found that when volunteers told they would be paid $3 for their time, 8 times more men than women asked for more money. A larger group (153) was told that the payment would be negotiable between $3 and $10, and 58% of women and 81% of men asked for more. Another study asked masters degree graduates whether they had negotiated starting salaries for their jobs. 12.5% of the women had compared to 51% of the men. the negotiators managed to get an average of 7.4% more. These studies came about because a group of female PHD students lodged a complaint that all of the male PHD students on their course were teaching classes by themselves whereas they(the females) were only teaching assistants. The reason for this as it turned out was that the males had actually asked to teach whereas the females had not.

Another study from the US National Bureau of Economic Research shows that women don't negotiate their wages as much as men do unless it is explicitly stated that negotiating is an option, in which case they negotiate more.

In job adverts where the wages were not explicitly stated as being negotiable (herein T1), 31.9% of women and 46.6% of men applied. Where the wages were explicitly stated as being negotiable (T2) 33% of women and 41.2% of men applied. More women than men prefer an environment where they don't think they will have to negotiate their salary.

In T1, 8.2% of female applicants and 10.6% of male applicants chose to negotiate over wages.

In T2, where the wages were explicitly stated as being negotiable, 23.9% of female applicants and 22% of male applicants negotiated.

When the possibility of negotiation is ambiguous more men (by about 29%) will try to negotiate, but when it is an explicit option more women(~8.6%) will.

If we were to go by the results of the USBER study, and assume that negotiating wages would get you a 4% better deal on average(the 7.4% for the masters graduates seems a little high for the average job), that there is an even split between jobs advertising the possibility of negotiation and jobs that do not, and all other things being equal, this would account for a wage gap of 0.01%, or 0.02% if you use the 7.4% figure. If we use the Carnegie Mellon figures for numbers of negotiators we can account for a difference of 1.51% @4% salary increase or 2.75% @7.4% salary increase.

To get a more precise idea of how this would contribute to the wage gap there would need to be a study of what proportion of jobs advertise the possibility of negotiating wages, if there was a difference between higher paid and lower paid jobs in that respect, and if people going for higher paying jobs were more or less likely to negotiate than the average. From my own previous experiences with job hunting in the past most adverts did not specifically state that wages were negotiable, however that is too small and narrow of a sample size to be of value.

Women have more sick days than men

The UK Office of National Statistics Labour Force Survey from 2013 shows that on average women lose 2.6% of their hours to sickness each year whereas men lose 1.6%.

Assuming this sick leave is unpaid, and all other things being equal, the sick day difference alone accounts for a pay gap of just over 1%.

A greater percentage of women than men will take time off work, reduce their working hours, turn down promotions or stop working entirely for family reasons.

A Pew Research Survey from 2013 ( a nationally representative sample of 2,002 adults, including 1,254 parents) determined the following:

42% of mothers had reduced their work hours, compared to 28% of fathers,

39% of mothers had taken "significant" time off work (fathers 24%),

27% of mothers had quit their job to take care of family responsibilities (fathers 10%)

13% of mothers had turned down a promotion (fathers 10%)

As there's no way of quantifying how much mothers and fathers had reduced their work hours by (either in real or relative terms), or a precise definition of what constitutes a "significant" amount of time off work, and if we assume that the parents who had left the workforce entirely aren't included in average wage statistics, we are left with the figures on promotions.

According to WorldatWork, in 2011 8.4% of employees received promotions and their average increase in pay as a result of a promotion was 7.4%. If we take into account ratios of male and female workers (69.703m women to 79.131m men), assume promotions were split accordingly, and also assume equal hours worked and hourly pay, this alone accounts for a wage gap of 0.02%. Again, a tiny figure, but the only one calculable from the available data and also the smallest difference in the 4 figures above.

This CNN article cites a study in the Harvard Business Review as stating that 40% of women have taken time off of work compared to just 1/4 of men. It also says that men tend to leave in order to change career or start a business (the type of action that may result in higher earnings) but that women tend to leave for family reasons (most likely to result in no income).

Men tend to work longer hours than women.

From the US Bureau of Labor Statistics

"On the days they worked, employed men worked 52 minutes more than employed women. This difference partly reflects women's greater likelihood of working part time. However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked longer than women—8.4 hours compared with 7.8 hours."

From the chart data, the average day for a man is 8.1 hours whereas for a woman it is 7.3 hours. Assuming a linear relationship between hours worked and wages paid, and assuming the same fields of work with the same pay scales, this 0.8 hour difference alone accounts for a pay gap of just under 10% of the mans wages. This is even without taking into account overtime. It is also worth noting however that hours worked and wages paid do not scale linearly, and as such the difference in pay due to working time alone will be greater than the 10% figure we've used.

Longer hours are paid disproportionately more than shorter hours.

Harvard professor of economics Claudia Goldin talks to Freakanomics

"But, really the lion’s share of the difference is due to the fact that in every occupation, just about, women receive less than men. And they’re receiving less than men for a host of reasons, one of which is that they’re not working the same amount of time. And in many occupations, working more hours or being there when the firm wants you to be there earns you a lot more."

"By and large, it appears that there’s just a very high cost of temporal flexibility in certain occupations."

From page 21 of A GRAND GENDER CONVERGENCE: ITS LAST CHAPTER, regarding MBA recipients

"Three factors explain 84 percent of the gap. Training prior to MBA receipt, (e.g., finance courses, GPA) accounts for 24 percent. Career interruptions and job experience account for 30 percent, and differences in weekly hours are the remaining 30 percent. Importantly, about two-thirds of the total penalty from job interruptions is due to taking any time out."

"Women with children work 24 percent fewer hours per week than men or than women without children."

"MBA moms with high-earning spouses have labor force rates that are 18.5 percentage points lower than those with lesser-earnings spouses. They work 19 percent fewer hours per week (when working) than those with spouses below the high-income level."

From page 26

"What, then, is the cause of the remaining pay gap? Quite simply the gap exists because hours of work in many occupations are worth more when given at particular moments and when the hours are more continuous. That is, in many occupations earnings have a nonlinear relationship with respect to hours. A flexible schedule often comes at a high price, particularly in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds."

Essentially the more hours you work the greater your hourly rate of pay.

Women entrepreneurs pay themselves less than men do

A Forbes editorial

"When female entrepreneurs pay themselves a salary (and they do just 41% of the time in contrast with 53% of their male peers), they earn $60,000. Male founders write themselves much fatter paychecks–$78,000 on average."

Although it might not be as simple as women just choosing to pay themselves less.

"Of course there’s another element to the entrepreneurship pay gap: on the whole women-owned firms are smaller than men-owned operations and pull in lower revenues on average."

According to the National Women's Business Council 36.3% of nonfarm and privately-held businesses are owned by women. This would mean that the difference in entrepreneurs pay (~23%, where have we seen that figure before?) when factored into the overall picture would account for a paygap of 2.89%. However, I have doubts about the Forbes article. Firstly, the page it links to regarding the 41%/53% and pay rates makes no mention of those figures at all. Secondly the NWBC Fact Sheet states that 89.5% of women owned businesses have no other employees, which if the 41% figure is correct would mean that some 5.8 million women are working for themselves without being paid.

Men tend to work in less desirable jobs, which also pay more

This article on CBS News also states that men choose to work in higher paying fields, are more likely to work in more dangerous jobs or in uncomfortable or isolated locations, work unsociable hours, and work in higher stress and higher paid specializations within a given field.

The real pay gap is much lower than 23%, if it exists at all

This article from the Huffington Post covers a study by the American Association of University Women(AAUW) "Graduating to a Pay Gap". By looking at the numbers the pay gap is actually around 6.6%. A 2009 study by the US Department of Labor "Gender Wage Gap Final Report" also shows that when taking into account career and family attributes the pay gap drops to between 4.8% and 7%. The AAUW study also doesn't take into account wage negotiations (which we determined above to account for a pay gap of between 0.1% and 2.75%), and it is overly broad with occupational and education categories.

Individual choice is likely the reason for the difference in pay between men and women

Gender Wage Gap Final Report prepared by CONSAD Research Corporation for the US Department of Labor

"Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action.  Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

Results & Conclusion

Let's put everything quantifiable above together and see what we have with a few additional statistics.

Bureau of Labor Statistics: The US workforce is made up of 79,131,000 men and 69,703,000 women.

Survey of Income and Program Participation, unpublished tabulations: Estimated mothers in the US is 85.4 million (2009)

Survey of Income and Program Participation: Estimated fathers in the US is 70.1 million (2008)

Department Of Labor: Labour force participation for mothers is 69.9% and fathers is 92.8%

Here is a summary of the few differences we've managed to quantify:

Negotiating wages: 0.01% - 2.75%

Sick Days: 1%

Parents turning down promotions: 0.01%

Average working day: 10%

When you add the above you can account for a pay gap of between 11.02% and 12.76%. If you look at them collectively (as in reality these terms will tend to multiply together) you can account for a pay gap of between 10.69% to 13.82%. We've managed to reduce the pay gap from 23% down to 10-13% in just one blog post. Now, I'm sure some people will argue that we've not been able to account for that last 10-13%, but we've not taken into account any of the following differences.

• People working in different fields
• People having different specialisations in the same field
• People receiving promotions
• Differences in qualifications
• Differences in experience
• Differences in time employed at their current job

There's also some articles linked below that have revised the pay gap down to between 4.8% and 7%, again without accounting for all of the factors above.

It's at this point we should also remember the burden of proof. If someone wants to tell you that women are paid less than men because of some gender bias then it's up to them to prove that is the cause. It is not up to anybody to disprove a point that has not first been proven.
"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" -Christopher Hitchens

Apart from the data above, just use some common sense. Large corporations really care very little for factors other than their bottom line. Profits and dividends keep the shareholders happy, and when your execs are given stock options  they themselves become shareholders. As a result, it's in their direct interest to make as much profit as possible. With this in mind, please examine the small table below.

	Current				Hiring an all-female workforce
Company	Profit	Wages	% Female		Wages	Profit	Difference	% Increase
Shell	2,200.00	12,558.00	30.00%		10,386.32	4,371.68	2,171.68	98.71%
Unilever	7,220.00	5,474.00	32.00%		4,549.85	8,144.15	924.15	12.80%
Barclays PLC	2,073.00	4,954.00	48.92%		4,298.17	2,728.83	655.83	31.64%
ARM	414.80	246.70	17.00%		197.69	463.81	49.01	11.82%
BAE	1,090.00	5,052.00	20.00%		4,077.61	2,064.39	974.39	89.39%
RM	16.47	56.89	33.86%		47.51	25.86	9.39	56.97%

The above table is an example of a few companies showing their profit before tax and wage bills(in millions), as well as the percentage of their workforce that is female. On the right hand side of the table we can see what their wage bills and profits would look like if the "women are paid 77% of what men are paid for the same work" myth were actually true. If the myth were true then simply by hiring all women ARM (processor manufacturer) could increase their profitability by over 11%, Barclays by over 31%, and Shell by a whopping 98%. Does anybody really think a huge company like Shell is going to turn down the opportunity to increase their profits by 98%?

Real gender pay gaps

There are however a few industries where pay gaps exist solely because of gender.

Porn: articles from Alternet and The Daily Star both indicate that female performers are paid in the region of 60-67% more than male performers.

Modelling: Fortune reports that female models make around 47.5% more than males, with the top highest paid female supermodel (Gisele Bundchen) being paid almost 17 times (1700%) as much has her male counterpart. Even the reported 10th highest earning female is paid over 250% of the highest paid males earnings.In fact if you add up the the earnings of the top ten male and female models, the women make $105million whereas the men only bring in $7,645,000. The top 10 males in total would only place 4th on the women's list. This equates to a pay gap of 92.72% of the women's earnings, or 1,273% of the mens.

I would also be willing to wager that female strippers and escorts out-earn males by a considerable margin but I couldn't find any data on the subject.

Tennis doesn't have a pay gap as there is parity between genders for prize money, however there is a `work gap` and a `skill gap`. Men play until one competitor has won 3 sets (3-5 sets total) whereas women only play until 2 sets(2-3 sets total) have been won. This would indicate that women do somewhere between 40% and 100% of the work of the men for the exact same prize money, which pro-rata equates to a wage of anything up to 250% of that of the men(a wage gap of 150% of the mens wage). There have also been a number of times when men and women have competed against each other. The most recent being at the 1998 Australian open where the Williams sisters claimed they could beat any man outside the top 200. Karsten Braasch, at the time ranked 203, accepted and played them back to back for a single set each. He beat Serena 6-1 then Venus 6-2. In this instance it is clear to see that women tennis players are paid the same as men for doing less work of vastly inferior quality.

Links

A few articles that point out how the gender wage gap is a myth, a fallacy or a lie

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-gender-wage-gap-is-a-myth-2012-07-26

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_wage_gap_myth.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/don-t-blame-discrimination-for-gender-wage-gap.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-that-we-end-the-equal-pay-myth/

Men tend to make education choices that relate to higher earnings, and when controlling for several outside factors the gap drops to between -1% and 5%

http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2009/12/do-men-or-women-choose-majors-to-maximize-income

Pay statistics are invalid as they don't compare like to like (2010)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/vickiwoods/7957186/Sorry-ladies-Im-not-worried-about-wage-gaps.html

Contrary to feminist propaganda, there is no discrimination in science

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/women_science_no_discrimination_says_cornell_study-75984

Between the ages of 22 and 30 women earn 8% more than men

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576250672504707048.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/opinion/22Sommers.html

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html

Female corporate directors are paid ~15% more than men (2007)

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0752118220071107

Women CEOs are paid ~40% more than men, receiving 30% pay increases while men took cuts (2010)

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10630664

More than 1/3 of working dads would leave their jobs if their spouse made enough to support the family (2007)

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/Careers/06/13/dads.work/index.html

Equality at home happens when mothers let go (2009)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-04-equal-parenting_N.htm

Buzzfeed's Yellow Journalism: What Does The Gender Wage Gap Actually Look Like?

Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are entirely the opinion of the author and are in no way be interpreted as a statements of fact nor as professional or personal advice of any kind. If in doubt, research it yourself.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term "Yellow Journalism", as I myself was until a few weeks ago, it means sensationalised or exaggerated articles with eye-catching/click-baiting titles with little or no research. With that explained, onto the video:

 

 Coming straight out with an assertion. No examining data to discover if men really do make more money than women, or why, just going ahead and presuming that's the case. 

Lie. Not at the same job. This figure appears to have been taken from the Institute for Women's Policy Research link they have cited as a source in their description. The source doesn't give details of how they arrived at their 77% figure, although from their pdf files it looks like it's the same flawed method as always. Add up all the yearly earnings of all the women in the US, divide by the number of women, do they same for men, express one as a percentage of the other. More on this below. 

Taken from the `Fact Sheet` " The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation" by the Institute for Women's Policy Research. I've briefly gone into the flawed methodology used above. Also, don't salespeople tend to be paid a percentage of their sales and get bonuses for meeting targets? Without seeing any further data it's impossible to make an accurate assessment, but just going on the propaganda video and what I've just written I would have to assume that one gender is underperforming.

From the New York Times article. I've gone into the articles below. 

Again the flawed IWPR data .

It's actually "Janitors and building cleaners", also taken from the IWPR data. 

Once again, IWPR.

IWPR

IWPR

IWPR

From the New York Times article.

So they've made some assertions and have backed them up with data gathered via a flawed methodology. They've just presented the data as is with no explanation in the video or description as to why. At least they linked their sources which do a somewhat better job.

With that in mind, let's look at what their sources actually say. 

Institute for Women's Policy Research http://www.iwpr.org/initiatives/pay-equity-and-discrimination

Hardly an unbiased source as it's in their interest to continue to perpetuate the narrative of female victimhood in order to convince people that such an institute is needed.

Their method for determining the pay gap is fundamentally flawed as it doesn't take into account:

• People working in different fields (except where it specifies a particular job, obviously)
• People having different specialisations in the same field
• People being employed on a full time or part time basis
• People working overtime
• People receiving promotions
• Differences in qualifications
•  Differences in experience
• Differences in time employed at their current job
• People taking time off work
• People negotiating wages

Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/08/13/bad-news-from-the-top-the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-c-suite-is-still-womens-fault/

Interestingly this article cites that "even in entrepreneurship where women are writing their own checks!" women are paid less than men. In her article regarding entrepreneurs pay her source for the differing pay rates doesn't appear to show the figures she quotes at all, and when compared to figures from the National Women's Business Council her numbers don't make sense. Anyway, allegedly when women decide how much they are going to pay themselves they pay themselves less than men. Whose fault is that then!? When the author quotes people (including women) who say that women not negotiating their wages are lowering the bar for everyone who comes after them, she brushes it off with "I don’t believe pointing fingers at ourselves is getting women anywhere". Much better to point the finger at men and avoid any responsibility at all isn't it? 

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-because-of-gender-not-jobs.html?_r=0

Although this article doesn't actually provide specific data or sources for its assertions that the pay gap exists between men and women within the same occupations(other than to say Claudia Goldin, Harvard University, but no details of what paper or study), it does actually provide a reason for it. The jobs with the pay gaps tend to be ones that disproportionately favour working much longer hours, ie, someone working 80 hours gets paid more than double what someone working 40 hours is paid. Essentially the pay gap is down to men working much longer hours than women and not any nefarious conspiracy. The author of the article then says that men are the problem by not placing enough value on spending time with their families instead of working such long hours. So her solution is not that women should work longer hours to match up to the men, but instead that men should work shorter hours so that they get paid less. Again, nothing like scapegoating someone else to avoid personal responsibility is there?

Bureau of Labour Statistics http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2011/ted_20110216.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2011/ted_20110216_data.htm

Just a selection of statistics regarding median weekly earnings of men and women, not controlled for anything.

Pew Research http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/08/on-equal-pay-day-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

This source actually goes some way to explaining the pay gap, saying "women were more likely to say they had taken career interruptions to care for their family" and providing the following statistics:

39% of mothers say they had taken a significant amount of time off work, compared to 24% of fathers

42% had reduced their hours (28% of fathers)

27% had quit work altogether (10% of fathers)

13% had turned down a promotion (10% of fathers)

Again, this shits all over the narrative that Buzzfeed was trying to assert in their video. It's almost as if Buzzfeed didn't even bother to read their sources.

The Guardian `journalist` hasn't seen the Matrix

Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are entirely the opinion of the author and are in no way be interpreted as a statements of fact nor as professional or personal advice of any kind. If in doubt, research it yourself.

I was watching a video by Sargon Of Akkad where he brought up this article from the Guardian, titled "Will Matrix film-makers coming out as women turn off men's rights activists?".

I wouldn't normally give a crap about The Guardian, but I thought this article perfectly highlights the kind of nonsense, fact-free journalism that you can find from the regressive left.

Directly under the title are the words "It’s ironic that a film popular with men fearing a world controlled by women turns out to have been made by transgender siblings". It then goes on to describe the film The Matrix (1999) as being "built on the ideas that dreams happen to everyone, all at once. They’re mass produced – which means that your most private thoughts are put there by someone else.". It's almost like the person writing the article has never actually seen the film they're writing about. Let's break down what the article says about The Matrix so far.

"men fearing a world controlled by women"

Is it? I don't think anybody thinks that women run the world. It is true however that women are given certain advantages over men that feminists typically refuse to acknowledge.

"built on the ideas that dreams happen to everyone, all at once."

No. The film is built on the idea that almost everybody is trapped inside the same simulation under the belief that it is real. 

"They’re mass produced – which means that your most private thoughts are put there by someone else."

No. Even inside The Matrix, your thoughts are your own. Everything else however is part of the simulation.

Now some more of what the article says.

" As Parker Molloy points out at Flavorwire, there’s a “delicious irony” in the fact that the directors of The Matrix are trans women."

I'll get to the "delicious irony" part later, as this one is a little bit sticky. At the time The Matrix was filmed, both Wachowski's were publicly identifying as male. As I understand it the older sibling Lana (formerly Larry) came out as transgender in 2002, although she says she had been unsure about her gender since being at school. Lilly (formerly Andy) came out as transgender in 2016. This brings about what I find an interesting question. At what point does a person become transgender? At the time The Matrix was released they were Andy and Larry, The Wachowski Brothers. Clearly they were identifying, at least publicly, as male. Does their apparent later decision the transition retcon their previous identities, or are they to be considered male up until a certain point? And when would that point be? Would it be at the point of them being unsure in terms of gender, at the point they decide to make a change, at the point they start taking hormones, at the point they start wearing what is typically considered female clothing, or some other time? If the decision to transition retcons previous gender identity then does that mean that for years they were using the `wrong` bathrooms and changing rooms? What would this mean for people like Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner who won 2 gold medals in men's decathlon?

" That’s because The Matrix is one of the most celebrated cultural touchstones of the men’s rights movement – and MRAs hate transgender women."

Citation needed. I don't know much of the MRA movement, except that to know that feminists see it as a bad thing so it's probably ok, but I've never actually seen or heard of someone identifying as a MRA hating on transgender people.

What's also worth nothing is that the linked article(I didn't add this, it was in the original) is about a feminist film maker who suffered feminist backlash when she made a balanced film about the Mens Rights movement after her investigation led to her beliefs changing. She mentions not being able to secure funding as there was no grant application category for a men's film but several for women and minorities, not being able to find an executive director who wanted to make a balanced film and not a feminist one, and was accused of making propaganda by David Futrelle of the We Hunted The Mammoth website (pot, kettle) for not making a films that didn't show MRA's in a bad light. Futrelle's open letter can be read here. The comments section is just a flood of self-righteous indignation and ad hominem attacks, so pretty standard feminist fare.

Back to the original article, that describes the red pill/blue pill scene, then says " MRAs refer to “taking the red pill” as the moment they realize that women control the world, and men are the oppressed underclass."

This would seem to indicate that the author is saying that women do rule the world and that men are the oppressed underclass, and that the red pill is the moment that MRA's come to realize that. I'm not sure I buy that, I'm also not sure MRA's think that way either. Feminists and SJW's on the other hand do believe that men rule the world as some secret oppressive patriarchy and that women are an oppressed underclass. It almost seems like the author is projecting.

" This is of course not at all what happens in the film; Neo discovers his world (or our world) is a mental construct created by malevolent computers, not by women."

It seems like half way through writing this the author decided to actually watch the film. Incidentally, " mental construct created by malevolent computers" makes me think of `social construct created by patriarchy`, which is how intersectional feminists see gender.

The author then whines about how Trinity is better trained and more committed than Neo but that Neo is literally the most important person in the world so he gets to be the star, the subtext being that it's because he's a man. He then whines about how in the Harry Potter books "Hermione is the studious, bright, dedicated, competent one, but despite that (or because of it?), some guy gets to be the title character and savior. And you can see nebbishy guys become empowered badasses in any number of superhero films directed by men. The world is made of entertainment designed for the approval of MRAs."

This is typical oppression narrative from feminists. Harry Potter gets to be the main character because firstly the plot is that his parents were killed by the series' antagonist, and secondly there is a tradition of the smartest or most knowledgeable character (or at least the character whose presence is absolutely essential at least once) not being the lead and it's not exclusive in superhero fiction. Examples include:

Hermione in the Harry Potter series,

Yoda in Star Wars,

Spock in Star Trek,

Whistler in the Blade series,

Egon in Ghostbusters,

Simon in The Chipmunks,

Lex in Jurassic Park,

Donatello in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Panthro in Thundercats

Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings,

Ramirez in Highlander,

Tao in The Mysterious Cities Of Gold,

etc.

The author also seems to forget that the Harry Potter author, JK Rowling, is actually a woman. I don't think she, or anyone else for that matter, thinks when they are about to create some work of fiction `I had better make this pleasing to Mens Rights Activists 'cos they've got the big bucks`. You might call this the argument from incredulity, but I call it the author not providing any evidence to back up their assertions.

In answer to the articles headline question(Will Matrix film-makers coming out as women turn off men's rights activists?) I would have to say no, probably not.

It's worth noting at the bottom of the article is a note about the article being edited on 10 March 2016, partly to correct the spelling of Laurence Fishburne, and partly because the author was so knowledgeable of the source material that they thought the antagonists name was Agent Johnson and not Agent Smith.