For you who follow my blog or come by and read it from time to time, I want to shed some light on just one principal that has so molded my beliefs when it comes to economic policies and government involvement in our lives. This is one of the most basic principals of economics but so few understand. The idea is based on there always being the kind of cost that so few people think about: OPPORTUNITY COSTS
Opportunity Costs is that which is given up in order to pursue something else. These costs involve the time you could have spent doing something else and that in which you could have spent your money on but can't due to spending it somewhere else. In other words the true cost of watching TV for 2 hours is what you could have spent those two hours on. The cost of spending 10 dollars on anything is not really the 10 dollars. Money is only a median of exchange. The true cost is anything else you could have done with that 10 dollars.
I was watching briefly the Tennessee Girls State basketball championship today. I'm excited about Stone Memorial boys basketball team being in the State next week along with head coach Mike Buck and assistant coach Neil Capps. So I was somewhat in the state tournament mood. But as funny as it is I was finding it hard to keep the tv on because it was showing on PBS. I totally disagree with the idea of PBS. As a libertarian, I am against state ran telivision. Aside from the Constitutional reasons are the Opportunity Costs reasons. Many will talk about the positives of PBS and how it can help educate some children and is good programming in a world with such filth on telivision today. But that is only half of economics.
Economics is about the BENEFITS but also about comparing that with the COSTS. Most will say that it is worth tens of millions of dollars to have that broadcast channel. They base this on the benefits and the fact that in a government with a 2 trillion dollar budget what is a few ten or hundred millions of dollars each year. Well the cost is anything else that money could have been spent on. That money could have been spent on better armor for our troops, better weapons for our police, better training for police and fire fighters. It could have been spent on fixing roads and making them safer for drivers. All things that government is suppose to do according to the constitution but also because there is not true market (supply/demand) for public goods as such.
PBS is fine and has some good things. But the question is not whether its good. The question is whether that is the best place for government to spend tax payers money? And I hope the paragraph above makes you rethink that. Money spent on Aids research is money that could have been spent on Cancer research. It is not that I have no sympathy for Aids victims, but quicker cures and better treatments for cancer would do far more good than the same for the disease of Aids. Often I sound heartless but I feel that since I agree with doing the greater good for the greater number of people, that my ideas have the most compassion.
One last example of opportunity costs. Years ago due to an incident at an airport in which an airplane hit another object on the runway, a small infant child was killed in the incident. To fix the problem, many were calling for the simple fix: Require a child proof seat on an airplane as you do in a car. The famous slogan: "If we buckle our kids at 55 mph, why not at 550 mph?" it makes a lot of sense. If those seats were required that child would be living today most likely. But that is not economics, that is only half of economics. The cost is what? Well with that law, the parent is now required to purchase another seat to put her child in, instead of holding onto his/her child. At this cost, many families might choose to drive to their destination instead of fly. Flying is much safer than driving statistically speaking! Thus this laws true cost: Far more deaths by driving than would have been saved flying!
When I decide my opinion on issues... I always think about OPPORTUNITY COSTS... I hope you start doing the same
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Nothing is more dangerous than good intentions
The title might sound odd considering there is nothing that people like more than someone who has a good heart and intends to do good for others and society as a whole. The dangerous part is that good intentions and a good heart are hard to argue with and thus can be dangerous when the heart is WRONG! Think with your head not your heart Washington D.C.! See that sounds bad because we always love the heart but when it comes to government, use your head! Parents... use your heart!
My students are learning about Price Control laws in school right now. One of my favorite subjects to talk about is when good intentions have bad consequences. No doubt everyone out there knows the most basic principal in economics: We buy more at lower prices and buy less at higher prices. The other half of that principal is not common sense but obvious too: Producers produce more when they can get a higher price and produce less when their goods sell for lower prices. Pretty simply huh?
San Francisco and NYC are known for their gracious Rent Control laws. They love to help out the poor people by not allowing those nasty landlords keep raising their rent! Only problem is that homelessness is a huge problem in NYC and was in San Francisco until most poor people left that city making it now one of the most wealthy cities in America. Why did this happen? Government wanted to help people my not allowing rent prices to rise so high. So prices were kept low! Now people who had the money began renting bigger apartments than they needed, and the landlords stopped building or taking care of existing apartments because they as the basic principal says: produce less at lower prices. Now the poor people have a hard time finding a place to rent and they end up homeless! Such a great law huh? Its true recently a study showed that about 175,000 single adults in NYC rent apartments... that have 4 bedrooms!! Why? because their located in rent controlled areas and are cheaper. This takes up all the room for larger families that need housing!
Now, guess what Minimum Wage laws do: Well they keep the price for workers high (currently $7.25/hr) Well remember what the most basic principal of economics is: People buy less at higher prices. And producers become consumers when it comes to hiring workers. So they hire fewer workers at the higher price and thus what is created? If you said a higher UNEMPLOYMENT RATE go to the front of the class your right! Thus in countries with high worker protection laws and high minimum wage laws, there are also lots of jobless benefits programs to help them when they lose their jobs because its common to have lots of unemployed workers where these laws exist. This hurts teenagers more than anyone. Who often in Germany (where they have more of these laws than nearly any other place) have a normal unemployment rate of around 25%! Terrible! Yet those government officials were well intended! So I sound like a monster arguing against Tenure laws, benefit programs, minimum wages for hard workers, and rent control to help poor people. But in reality I'm just choosing to think with my head not my heart... and in the end that is actually more compassionate whether it sounds like it or not!
My students are learning about Price Control laws in school right now. One of my favorite subjects to talk about is when good intentions have bad consequences. No doubt everyone out there knows the most basic principal in economics: We buy more at lower prices and buy less at higher prices. The other half of that principal is not common sense but obvious too: Producers produce more when they can get a higher price and produce less when their goods sell for lower prices. Pretty simply huh?
San Francisco and NYC are known for their gracious Rent Control laws. They love to help out the poor people by not allowing those nasty landlords keep raising their rent! Only problem is that homelessness is a huge problem in NYC and was in San Francisco until most poor people left that city making it now one of the most wealthy cities in America. Why did this happen? Government wanted to help people my not allowing rent prices to rise so high. So prices were kept low! Now people who had the money began renting bigger apartments than they needed, and the landlords stopped building or taking care of existing apartments because they as the basic principal says: produce less at lower prices. Now the poor people have a hard time finding a place to rent and they end up homeless! Such a great law huh? Its true recently a study showed that about 175,000 single adults in NYC rent apartments... that have 4 bedrooms!! Why? because their located in rent controlled areas and are cheaper. This takes up all the room for larger families that need housing!
Now, guess what Minimum Wage laws do: Well they keep the price for workers high (currently $7.25/hr) Well remember what the most basic principal of economics is: People buy less at higher prices. And producers become consumers when it comes to hiring workers. So they hire fewer workers at the higher price and thus what is created? If you said a higher UNEMPLOYMENT RATE go to the front of the class your right! Thus in countries with high worker protection laws and high minimum wage laws, there are also lots of jobless benefits programs to help them when they lose their jobs because its common to have lots of unemployed workers where these laws exist. This hurts teenagers more than anyone. Who often in Germany (where they have more of these laws than nearly any other place) have a normal unemployment rate of around 25%! Terrible! Yet those government officials were well intended! So I sound like a monster arguing against Tenure laws, benefit programs, minimum wages for hard workers, and rent control to help poor people. But in reality I'm just choosing to think with my head not my heart... and in the end that is actually more compassionate whether it sounds like it or not!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Gender Income Inequalities Part 3
Regular and Irregular Work
Many jobs are 8-4 or 9-5 hours jobs but many require hours whenever and wherever they happen to be required. When a multimillion-dollar lawsuit is in progress or a death penalty case is being appealed, the attorneys cannot quit work in the afternoon after their 8 hour shift. Nights and weekends might also be required.
In general it does not matter if the attorney is male of female but in practice women more often carry the burden of domestic responsibilities for children and the care of the home and thus these kinds of jobs are less attractive to women. Due to this, whole professions might not always be put off-limits but range of work within that profession can be restricted. Thus more often women attorneys are civil service attorneys with regular hours then working for a leading high-pressure law firm where the work week might average 60-70 hours and those hours are to be worked at unpredictable times. These law firms might also have to fly these attorneys to distant places on short notice.
Economist Thomas Sowell says that in principle this is the same problem for men and women. But in practice, a mother is more likely to stay home with children while the father is tied up at the office or flying off to someplace to deal with legal emergencies. Moreover, since men are never pregnant, women are disadvantaged in such work by the physical limitations of pregnancy. A Harvard Business Review surveyed people whose earnings were int he top 6 percent and it showed that 62% worked more than 50 hours a week and 35% worked more than 60 hours a week. Among those with "extreme" jobs-meaning high in hours and stress, lean than 20% were women. Among those people who did hold these jobs, women were only half as likely to say they wanted to still be working like this five years later.
The Economist magazine observed recently: "The main reason why women still get paid less on average then men is not they they are paid less for the same jobs but they they tend to not climb so far up the career ladder, or they choose lower-paid occupations, such as nursing and teaching."
Other studies show that jobs where women with college degrees earn at least as much as men are computer engineers, petroleum engineer, and a variety of other engineering occupations, as well as journalist, portfolio manager and medical technologist. But these jobs have fewer women than men in them. So the main reason that women are paid less than men is not that they are paid less to do the same job, but that "they are distributed differently among jobs and have fewer hours and less continuity in the labor force."
Among college-educated, never married individuals with no children who worked full-time and were from 40-64 years old, that is beyond usual child bearing years, men averaged $40,000 a year in income while women earned $47,000. Even in the top-level universities like Harvard and Yale, women have not worked full-time, or worked at all, to the same extent as male graduates. Among Yale alumni in their forties, 56% of women still worked while 90% of men did according to the New York Times. Women are also more likely to work part-time than men. This restricts the range of industries and occupations available that they can work in. Half of all women who work part-time do so in only ten industries out of 236 industries surveyed.
Domestic Responsibilities
Given the importance of being able to support having children, it should not be surprising that married men with children have usually earned the highest income of all, since higher earning are more imperative for fathers with a family to support. Marriage has the exact opposite affect on women since their domestic responsibilities are different. Women who have never married have higher average incomes than women who have, and women with no children have higher average incomes than women with children. In nations where most women get married, this can have obvious overall affects. Now that marriage rates are declining, one could see why women's incomes are gaining ground on men's income.
Many jobs are 8-4 or 9-5 hours jobs but many require hours whenever and wherever they happen to be required. When a multimillion-dollar lawsuit is in progress or a death penalty case is being appealed, the attorneys cannot quit work in the afternoon after their 8 hour shift. Nights and weekends might also be required.
In general it does not matter if the attorney is male of female but in practice women more often carry the burden of domestic responsibilities for children and the care of the home and thus these kinds of jobs are less attractive to women. Due to this, whole professions might not always be put off-limits but range of work within that profession can be restricted. Thus more often women attorneys are civil service attorneys with regular hours then working for a leading high-pressure law firm where the work week might average 60-70 hours and those hours are to be worked at unpredictable times. These law firms might also have to fly these attorneys to distant places on short notice.
Economist Thomas Sowell says that in principle this is the same problem for men and women. But in practice, a mother is more likely to stay home with children while the father is tied up at the office or flying off to someplace to deal with legal emergencies. Moreover, since men are never pregnant, women are disadvantaged in such work by the physical limitations of pregnancy. A Harvard Business Review surveyed people whose earnings were int he top 6 percent and it showed that 62% worked more than 50 hours a week and 35% worked more than 60 hours a week. Among those with "extreme" jobs-meaning high in hours and stress, lean than 20% were women. Among those people who did hold these jobs, women were only half as likely to say they wanted to still be working like this five years later.
The Economist magazine observed recently: "The main reason why women still get paid less on average then men is not they they are paid less for the same jobs but they they tend to not climb so far up the career ladder, or they choose lower-paid occupations, such as nursing and teaching."
Other studies show that jobs where women with college degrees earn at least as much as men are computer engineers, petroleum engineer, and a variety of other engineering occupations, as well as journalist, portfolio manager and medical technologist. But these jobs have fewer women than men in them. So the main reason that women are paid less than men is not that they are paid less to do the same job, but that "they are distributed differently among jobs and have fewer hours and less continuity in the labor force."
Among college-educated, never married individuals with no children who worked full-time and were from 40-64 years old, that is beyond usual child bearing years, men averaged $40,000 a year in income while women earned $47,000. Even in the top-level universities like Harvard and Yale, women have not worked full-time, or worked at all, to the same extent as male graduates. Among Yale alumni in their forties, 56% of women still worked while 90% of men did according to the New York Times. Women are also more likely to work part-time than men. This restricts the range of industries and occupations available that they can work in. Half of all women who work part-time do so in only ten industries out of 236 industries surveyed.
Domestic Responsibilities
Given the importance of being able to support having children, it should not be surprising that married men with children have usually earned the highest income of all, since higher earning are more imperative for fathers with a family to support. Marriage has the exact opposite affect on women since their domestic responsibilities are different. Women who have never married have higher average incomes than women who have, and women with no children have higher average incomes than women with children. In nations where most women get married, this can have obvious overall affects. Now that marriage rates are declining, one could see why women's incomes are gaining ground on men's income.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Gender Income Inequalities Part 2
Part 1 of this blog entry covered some of the historical aspects of gender income. Now lets look at the economic implications of gender income differences. To truly see if employer discrimination takes place you would have to compare men and women who had truly comparable educations, skills, experience, continuity of employment, full-time or part-time work, what occupations they choose, whether they are more or less likely to want promotions, whether they want to travel or work in different environments, among other variables. This is hard to do. Besides there are very few men and women who all have these same variables. Let us examine a few of these variables now.
Occupational Differences
Although physical strength is no longer the most important quality to have for most jobs as it use to be when most people worked in agriculture, heavy industry, or mining, there are still particular industries today where considerable physical strength remains a requirement. Some of these fields requiring more strength are fields with higher pay than the national average. This would thus lead men to have higher average incomes then women. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women have been 74 percent of what the Bureau classifies as "clerical and kindred workers". But they have been less than 5 percent of "transport equipment operatives." In other words, women are are more likely to sit behind a desk than to steer an eighteen-wheel truck. Women are less than 4 percent of workers in "construction, extraction, and maintenance." They are less than 2 percent of roofers or masons and less than one percent of mechanics and technicians who service heavy vehicles and mobile equipment. These have obvious economic implications, since miners earn nearly double the income of office clerks when both work full-time and year-round. There is still a premium paid for workers doing heavy physical work as well as hazardous work. While men are 54 percent of the labor force, they are 92 percent of job-related deaths. This is due to working the more dangerous jobs which of course pay more.
Continuity of Employment
Women have also made career choices based on the likelihood they would at some point or other become mothers. This usually means a time of withdrawal from the full-time work outside the home, the cost of this factors in occupational choices. Where a occupation is unionized and withdraw means a loss of seniority, this hurts their prospects of being promoted and being retained during times of lay-offs.
This also hurts women's work experience especially when they do not re-enter the workforce until the child reaches a certain age. These interruptions are less common among men of course. The effect of this loss time depends on the occupation. Due to this, promotions are rare but not just those who have lost work time but to those who are likely to lose work time in the future. A promotion to a high level senior position that requires lots of time will be less likely to be given to a woman since there is a good chance for a future interruption of work.
Occupation skills change over time today as well. Rapidly changing computer technology means that computer engineers and programmers are constantly upgrading their skills to keep up with advances in their field. Tax accountants also have to keep up with changes in tax laws, and attorneys must keep up with changes in laws in general. To drop out of these fields and then return in a few years after children have grown up may mean they are behind in the developments in these occupations. Thus women consider these issues when choosing a career. It has been estimated that physicist loses half the value of their knowledge in four years while a professor of English would take more than a quarter of a century to lose half the value of the knowledge in that field. Thus it is not surprising that women work in fields with lower rates of these losses such as teachers and librarians rather than computer engineers or tax accountants. Even when the proportion of women receiving Ph.D.s rose dramatically from the 1970s on, male-female differences in the fields of specialization remained large. As of 2005, women received more than 60 percent of the doctorates in education but less than 20 percent of doctorates in engineering, a field that pays far more.
More in part 3
Occupational Differences
Although physical strength is no longer the most important quality to have for most jobs as it use to be when most people worked in agriculture, heavy industry, or mining, there are still particular industries today where considerable physical strength remains a requirement. Some of these fields requiring more strength are fields with higher pay than the national average. This would thus lead men to have higher average incomes then women. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women have been 74 percent of what the Bureau classifies as "clerical and kindred workers". But they have been less than 5 percent of "transport equipment operatives." In other words, women are are more likely to sit behind a desk than to steer an eighteen-wheel truck. Women are less than 4 percent of workers in "construction, extraction, and maintenance." They are less than 2 percent of roofers or masons and less than one percent of mechanics and technicians who service heavy vehicles and mobile equipment. These have obvious economic implications, since miners earn nearly double the income of office clerks when both work full-time and year-round. There is still a premium paid for workers doing heavy physical work as well as hazardous work. While men are 54 percent of the labor force, they are 92 percent of job-related deaths. This is due to working the more dangerous jobs which of course pay more.
Continuity of Employment
Women have also made career choices based on the likelihood they would at some point or other become mothers. This usually means a time of withdrawal from the full-time work outside the home, the cost of this factors in occupational choices. Where a occupation is unionized and withdraw means a loss of seniority, this hurts their prospects of being promoted and being retained during times of lay-offs.
This also hurts women's work experience especially when they do not re-enter the workforce until the child reaches a certain age. These interruptions are less common among men of course. The effect of this loss time depends on the occupation. Due to this, promotions are rare but not just those who have lost work time but to those who are likely to lose work time in the future. A promotion to a high level senior position that requires lots of time will be less likely to be given to a woman since there is a good chance for a future interruption of work.
Occupation skills change over time today as well. Rapidly changing computer technology means that computer engineers and programmers are constantly upgrading their skills to keep up with advances in their field. Tax accountants also have to keep up with changes in tax laws, and attorneys must keep up with changes in laws in general. To drop out of these fields and then return in a few years after children have grown up may mean they are behind in the developments in these occupations. Thus women consider these issues when choosing a career. It has been estimated that physicist loses half the value of their knowledge in four years while a professor of English would take more than a quarter of a century to lose half the value of the knowledge in that field. Thus it is not surprising that women work in fields with lower rates of these losses such as teachers and librarians rather than computer engineers or tax accountants. Even when the proportion of women receiving Ph.D.s rose dramatically from the 1970s on, male-female differences in the fields of specialization remained large. As of 2005, women received more than 60 percent of the doctorates in education but less than 20 percent of doctorates in engineering, a field that pays far more.
More in part 3
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Gender Income Inequalities Part 1
I recently had a short text conversation about gender studies/income differences with a new good fun friend of mine. For the record I rarely have those conversations through text messaging. The discussion went away from gender studies and specifically about the discrimination of women in our society primarily through income differences and occupations and promotions. And the discrimination is apparent and obvious due to the differences in income between men and women. Well this is the thought of most Americans but in reality and I will attempt to show you in the following two posts, discrimination plays a small if any true significant affect on income differences amongst men and women. This will not be a typical blog entry. It will be longer than usual even for my blog posts. In Part 1: I will look at the history of these differences and the correlations that are apparent.
There is not doubt and no argument against the fact that in most societies throughout history, women have earned lower incomes than men. But this has caused many fallacies to form. For most people, the prevailing opinion is that discrimination is the main factor in these differences. This is mostly due to the media, political arena, the intelligentsia(colleges and teachers/professors), and finally the courts of law even. But Thomas Sowell says that this "explanation cannot withstand the scrutiny of history and of economics."
There is no question that in almost all societies, women and men have been treated differently from birth on. In some societies, girls have not been educated as often as boys or to the extent of boys. This undoubtedly has led to women being less qualified to hold jobs requiring education. Societies that do this throw away much of the economic and other potentials of half their populations. But this is not to say that employers discriminate when hiring workers given this fact. Under this scenario, women and men would end up with different levels of knowledge, skills, and work experience. These times have changed though and fewer societies have these same restrictions against women. But this is not going to change employment and income differences over night. Even in the twenty-first century, "two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults are women" according to The Economist magazine.
Years ago when most work was done on the farm, mines, or in regards to shipping, physical strength was a necessity to be a truly productive worker. We can blame God that he made men stronger then women in general but discrimination is definitely not the reason that more men had jobs in this era. Over time human muscle has been replaced by machine power and skill development and education has become more important than pure physical power. This has lessened the gap between the productivity levels of men compared to women. At the time when physical strength was a priority, many desperately poor people in China, who were living on the edge of starvation, would kill their infant girls due to the fact that their physical development would not be enough to produce enough food to sustain themselves and thus without a surplus of food these families often killed their newborns who were girls. This was not always an attempt to control population growth but an economic concern in China.
With this change in productivity characteristics, the age of which people reached their peak earnings began to rise as skill development and experience were now a prime for productivity. This lowed the differences in male-female comparisons. But today the top factor affecting the still sizable gap between men and women incomes is real simple: Child bearing. Again we can blame God for this. Mothers as a group fall behind men in income as domestic responsibilities reduce the ability of women with babies and small children to work continuously at full-time in the workforce. This means they lose two things: skill development and experience. Those are the two most important factors in productivity of an individual. Many of these changes have ran in correlation to the 1960's feminist movement amongst other movements. Many contribute the lessening income gap to the more "enlightened" views of women by society. Thus they want more government policies and laws passed to continue this trend. But history contradicts this theory.
History shows us that employer discrimination and the career paths of women bore very little resemblance. The fact is that the proportion of women in the professions and other high level positions was greater during the first decades of the twentieth century than in the middle of the twentieth century- and all of this was before either anti-discrimination laws or the rise of the feminist movement. The proportion of women among the people listed in Who's Who In America in 1902 was more than double the proportion in 1958. The trend of women as a percentage of academic was up from 1910 to 1930 and down after that, with a possible upward trend in recent years, according to the same 1964 study. Other facts back this up like more women received doctoral degrees in 1921 and 1932 but this was back down again in the late 1950's and early 1960's. These same trends existed in biological sciences, economic degrees, humanities, chemistry, and law. Even employment in colleges amongst women was down in 1961 as compared to the 1930's. This was even seen in women's colleges, run by women such as Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, and Bryn Mawr. There is no way this was due to discrimination.
Why did these changes take place? Really simple in fact. Women's marriage and child-bearing patterns changed during those same times. During the early decades, the median age that women were first married was higher than at the mid-century. Most women who staffed women's colleges during the early era were not married at all. As the median age of marriage began to decline, the representation of women in high-level occupations and recipients of postgraduate degrees also declined. This decline in the median age of marriage ended in 1956 and began to rise again. This is why more recent data shows the gaps again closing between men and women. The birth rate also began to decline from 1957 on, and by 1966, it was as low as it have been back in 1933. The 1970's saw women's share of doctoral degrees again rise. Remember also the role that the "baby-boom" would have played shortly after WWII.
Women's rise in higher-level occupations in the second half of the twentieth century continued to follow the rise in their age of marriage which rose sharply and finished the century much higher than it was at the beginning. The birth rate also fell sharply and was much lower at the end of the century than even the beginning. Women rose to record high levels in higher education and higher occupations. Women's percentage of postgraduate degrees in general, master's degrees in business and law degrees, medical degrees, and Ph.D.s all skyrocketed from the 1970's on according to Economist Thomas Sowell.
There was also a narrowing of the labor force participation gap as well. In 1950, 94% of men but only 33% of women were in the workforce. The gap of of 61% points narrowed to 45 by 1970. At the end of the century the gap was only 12 points as 86 percent of men and 74 percent of women were in the labor forces. Almost as important, women also entered occupations where men were previously predominant, especially those fields requiring a college degree. The continuity of women's employment also increased after 1970, although the gap between the continuity of men's and women's employment did not disappear and women continued to work part-time more so than men.
These positive changes in the second half of the twentieth century all follow in line with the changes of women's age of marriage and child-bearing. Male-female differences in income did not disappear completely. These differences have more to do with career choices than they do discrimination. That is more economics and less history... which I will cover in part 2 coming soon.
Book most of this came from: Economic Facts and Fallacies by economist Thomas Sowell
Sowell cites:
The Economist magazine
A New York Times article by Tama Lewin
Charles Murrays IThe Inequality Taboo"
Quarterly Review of Economics & Business, Feb 1961
Jesse Bernards: Academic Women
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States Colonial Times to 1970
There is not doubt and no argument against the fact that in most societies throughout history, women have earned lower incomes than men. But this has caused many fallacies to form. For most people, the prevailing opinion is that discrimination is the main factor in these differences. This is mostly due to the media, political arena, the intelligentsia(colleges and teachers/professors), and finally the courts of law even. But Thomas Sowell says that this "explanation cannot withstand the scrutiny of history and of economics."
There is no question that in almost all societies, women and men have been treated differently from birth on. In some societies, girls have not been educated as often as boys or to the extent of boys. This undoubtedly has led to women being less qualified to hold jobs requiring education. Societies that do this throw away much of the economic and other potentials of half their populations. But this is not to say that employers discriminate when hiring workers given this fact. Under this scenario, women and men would end up with different levels of knowledge, skills, and work experience. These times have changed though and fewer societies have these same restrictions against women. But this is not going to change employment and income differences over night. Even in the twenty-first century, "two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults are women" according to The Economist magazine.
Years ago when most work was done on the farm, mines, or in regards to shipping, physical strength was a necessity to be a truly productive worker. We can blame God that he made men stronger then women in general but discrimination is definitely not the reason that more men had jobs in this era. Over time human muscle has been replaced by machine power and skill development and education has become more important than pure physical power. This has lessened the gap between the productivity levels of men compared to women. At the time when physical strength was a priority, many desperately poor people in China, who were living on the edge of starvation, would kill their infant girls due to the fact that their physical development would not be enough to produce enough food to sustain themselves and thus without a surplus of food these families often killed their newborns who were girls. This was not always an attempt to control population growth but an economic concern in China.
With this change in productivity characteristics, the age of which people reached their peak earnings began to rise as skill development and experience were now a prime for productivity. This lowed the differences in male-female comparisons. But today the top factor affecting the still sizable gap between men and women incomes is real simple: Child bearing. Again we can blame God for this. Mothers as a group fall behind men in income as domestic responsibilities reduce the ability of women with babies and small children to work continuously at full-time in the workforce. This means they lose two things: skill development and experience. Those are the two most important factors in productivity of an individual. Many of these changes have ran in correlation to the 1960's feminist movement amongst other movements. Many contribute the lessening income gap to the more "enlightened" views of women by society. Thus they want more government policies and laws passed to continue this trend. But history contradicts this theory.
History shows us that employer discrimination and the career paths of women bore very little resemblance. The fact is that the proportion of women in the professions and other high level positions was greater during the first decades of the twentieth century than in the middle of the twentieth century- and all of this was before either anti-discrimination laws or the rise of the feminist movement. The proportion of women among the people listed in Who's Who In America in 1902 was more than double the proportion in 1958. The trend of women as a percentage of academic was up from 1910 to 1930 and down after that, with a possible upward trend in recent years, according to the same 1964 study. Other facts back this up like more women received doctoral degrees in 1921 and 1932 but this was back down again in the late 1950's and early 1960's. These same trends existed in biological sciences, economic degrees, humanities, chemistry, and law. Even employment in colleges amongst women was down in 1961 as compared to the 1930's. This was even seen in women's colleges, run by women such as Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, and Bryn Mawr. There is no way this was due to discrimination.
Why did these changes take place? Really simple in fact. Women's marriage and child-bearing patterns changed during those same times. During the early decades, the median age that women were first married was higher than at the mid-century. Most women who staffed women's colleges during the early era were not married at all. As the median age of marriage began to decline, the representation of women in high-level occupations and recipients of postgraduate degrees also declined. This decline in the median age of marriage ended in 1956 and began to rise again. This is why more recent data shows the gaps again closing between men and women. The birth rate also began to decline from 1957 on, and by 1966, it was as low as it have been back in 1933. The 1970's saw women's share of doctoral degrees again rise. Remember also the role that the "baby-boom" would have played shortly after WWII.
Women's rise in higher-level occupations in the second half of the twentieth century continued to follow the rise in their age of marriage which rose sharply and finished the century much higher than it was at the beginning. The birth rate also fell sharply and was much lower at the end of the century than even the beginning. Women rose to record high levels in higher education and higher occupations. Women's percentage of postgraduate degrees in general, master's degrees in business and law degrees, medical degrees, and Ph.D.s all skyrocketed from the 1970's on according to Economist Thomas Sowell.
There was also a narrowing of the labor force participation gap as well. In 1950, 94% of men but only 33% of women were in the workforce. The gap of of 61% points narrowed to 45 by 1970. At the end of the century the gap was only 12 points as 86 percent of men and 74 percent of women were in the labor forces. Almost as important, women also entered occupations where men were previously predominant, especially those fields requiring a college degree. The continuity of women's employment also increased after 1970, although the gap between the continuity of men's and women's employment did not disappear and women continued to work part-time more so than men.
These positive changes in the second half of the twentieth century all follow in line with the changes of women's age of marriage and child-bearing. Male-female differences in income did not disappear completely. These differences have more to do with career choices than they do discrimination. That is more economics and less history... which I will cover in part 2 coming soon.
Book most of this came from: Economic Facts and Fallacies by economist Thomas Sowell
Sowell cites:
The Economist magazine
A New York Times article by Tama Lewin
Charles Murrays IThe Inequality Taboo"
Quarterly Review of Economics & Business, Feb 1961
Jesse Bernards: Academic Women
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States Colonial Times to 1970
Thursday, December 30, 2010
AP Ignorance
I go to ESPN.com to see if there is an article about Tennessee football at the Music City Bowl. Instead I found an interesting article on the spending at colleges on football teams. Ohio State and Alabama each spent over 30 million on their football teams this year. That is a large sum! They spent the article comparing teams spending and I thought the article was quite interesting. Boise State spends less than 10 million/yr on its football program. This is money on weight rooms, hotels, traveling, and other obvious expenses. But that was not what the conclusion of the article was. They built it up as if they were writing an interesting article comparing large SEC/BIG TEN schools to the smaller schools that spend far less. But instead more political crap.
They end the article arguing that priorities are wrong at these colleges that will spend on average $150,000/student-athlete for sports while the tuition of normal students is around $10,000 and that barely pays for their education. The article was talking about the priorities of the programs. What they failed to mention is that the football programs at universities like Tennessee take zero dollars from the education budget. Instead they donate big money to the university (such as the library at Tennessee got over a million this year). Former athletes like Peyton Manning come back and donate money to the school while no tuition money was spent on his football at all.
These football programs bring money into the universities. It is not about priorities. Or if it were I would vote for more of these football programs because it actually helps the education process if the football program makes a surplus and donates money to the education of their students. I'm tired of these political articles that are motivated by controversy even when there is not controversy. It reminds me of the past columns I've written on CEO salaries that people complain about. But if a CEO making a $30,000,000 bonus saves a company $1,000,000,000 over the year. Is that CEO costing the company $30,000,000 or saving the company $970,000,000? Read the past column for more info.
They end the article arguing that priorities are wrong at these colleges that will spend on average $150,000/student-athlete for sports while the tuition of normal students is around $10,000 and that barely pays for their education. The article was talking about the priorities of the programs. What they failed to mention is that the football programs at universities like Tennessee take zero dollars from the education budget. Instead they donate big money to the university (such as the library at Tennessee got over a million this year). Former athletes like Peyton Manning come back and donate money to the school while no tuition money was spent on his football at all.
These football programs bring money into the universities. It is not about priorities. Or if it were I would vote for more of these football programs because it actually helps the education process if the football program makes a surplus and donates money to the education of their students. I'm tired of these political articles that are motivated by controversy even when there is not controversy. It reminds me of the past columns I've written on CEO salaries that people complain about. But if a CEO making a $30,000,000 bonus saves a company $1,000,000,000 over the year. Is that CEO costing the company $30,000,000 or saving the company $970,000,000? Read the past column for more info.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
"Sending a messgage??"
Some of the analogies in this post might not strike you as obvious and of the same principle but I do see this throughout our society.
I regard lying as one of the worst things you can do in society. While God looks at all sin as equal because its sin against him, us on earth do no such thing and should not do such. If businesses could break contracts (in essence lie to its customers) there would be no trust in our economy and thus a huge drop in investment will take place, less transactions in the marketplace and the economy will be hurt tremendously with our standard of living falling amidst it all.
However, this idea of using people at "examples" is getting on my nerves about as much as lying does. Bruce Pearl lied to the NCAA. Let me begin by saying that I can not read Pearl's heart and I'd say that he is more upset that he got CAUGHT than he is that he lied. But who am I to truly believe that and make that accusation. But I feel that the NCAA is about to make an "example" out of him and I hope they refrain from doing so.
There is no doubt that discrimination has taken place in our society. By the way there is proof that a true free market eliminates most discrimination in society. There is no doubt that violence is done to people due to them having serious "hatred" in hearts to these people. But should there be separate "hate crime" punishment because some court decided that in your heart you hated that person and we are now going to make "an example of you and punish you harder for being sexist or racist"? I think not. Crime is crime and violence is violence. Punish based on that not based on trying to rid someone of their hatred! This brings subjectivity into the law and that is wrong.
Today we always hear about trying to make an example out of someone to "send a message" to others about making the same mistakes. I can understand that to an extent. That is why they had public stoning and public crucifixions years ago. But this was done based on the writing law and consequences not some opinion of a court or body that decided to make this a "special" situation to send a "message". Bruce Pearl will probably be used as this "example". And don't get me wrong-he violated NCAA rules and then he lied about it. He also corrected that lie shortly after. But if the NCAA punishes Bruce Pearl more harshly than he has already been punished in an effort to "send a message"... then they are just as bad in my view.
I'm tired of our Congress wanting to punish those on Wall Street to "send a message" to other investors or future investors. Let the law be law and the rules be rules. Pearl lied. His integrity is now questioned. He cheated and should be punished. But the rules he broke were minor rules that if he had told the truth would have resulted in little punishment. He lied now should he be punished more? Sure, that is another rule. But lets not get caught up with this "sending a message" idea NCAA. Punish based on the wrong he has done. Take the subjectivity out of the question. I want our laws to be tougher and punishments to be harsher. That is after all what law is suppose to do. But I want it to be objective and each person punished equally for the laws they commit. Why? Because this is not a classroom where you treat everyone differently based on their past. This is law that we are talking about when it comes to our nation and her laws and rules and consequences. And all subjectivity should be taken out.
The NCAA can do as they want their a private enterprise and as a Libertarian I would never want them to be held to the same standard that government should be held to. But I hope they realize that Pearl should be punished based on his wrongdoings... not in a fashion to "send a message" to future rule breakers. The law and the rules and the punishments for such rules should already be written to do this objectively. No subjectivity is or needed nor should it be used.
I regard lying as one of the worst things you can do in society. While God looks at all sin as equal because its sin against him, us on earth do no such thing and should not do such. If businesses could break contracts (in essence lie to its customers) there would be no trust in our economy and thus a huge drop in investment will take place, less transactions in the marketplace and the economy will be hurt tremendously with our standard of living falling amidst it all.
However, this idea of using people at "examples" is getting on my nerves about as much as lying does. Bruce Pearl lied to the NCAA. Let me begin by saying that I can not read Pearl's heart and I'd say that he is more upset that he got CAUGHT than he is that he lied. But who am I to truly believe that and make that accusation. But I feel that the NCAA is about to make an "example" out of him and I hope they refrain from doing so.
There is no doubt that discrimination has taken place in our society. By the way there is proof that a true free market eliminates most discrimination in society. There is no doubt that violence is done to people due to them having serious "hatred" in hearts to these people. But should there be separate "hate crime" punishment because some court decided that in your heart you hated that person and we are now going to make "an example of you and punish you harder for being sexist or racist"? I think not. Crime is crime and violence is violence. Punish based on that not based on trying to rid someone of their hatred! This brings subjectivity into the law and that is wrong.
Today we always hear about trying to make an example out of someone to "send a message" to others about making the same mistakes. I can understand that to an extent. That is why they had public stoning and public crucifixions years ago. But this was done based on the writing law and consequences not some opinion of a court or body that decided to make this a "special" situation to send a "message". Bruce Pearl will probably be used as this "example". And don't get me wrong-he violated NCAA rules and then he lied about it. He also corrected that lie shortly after. But if the NCAA punishes Bruce Pearl more harshly than he has already been punished in an effort to "send a message"... then they are just as bad in my view.
I'm tired of our Congress wanting to punish those on Wall Street to "send a message" to other investors or future investors. Let the law be law and the rules be rules. Pearl lied. His integrity is now questioned. He cheated and should be punished. But the rules he broke were minor rules that if he had told the truth would have resulted in little punishment. He lied now should he be punished more? Sure, that is another rule. But lets not get caught up with this "sending a message" idea NCAA. Punish based on the wrong he has done. Take the subjectivity out of the question. I want our laws to be tougher and punishments to be harsher. That is after all what law is suppose to do. But I want it to be objective and each person punished equally for the laws they commit. Why? Because this is not a classroom where you treat everyone differently based on their past. This is law that we are talking about when it comes to our nation and her laws and rules and consequences. And all subjectivity should be taken out.
The NCAA can do as they want their a private enterprise and as a Libertarian I would never want them to be held to the same standard that government should be held to. But I hope they realize that Pearl should be punished based on his wrongdoings... not in a fashion to "send a message" to future rule breakers. The law and the rules and the punishments for such rules should already be written to do this objectively. No subjectivity is or needed nor should it be used.
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