Wage Gap Rhetoric
Ahlert explains the deceiving statistics.
Arnold Ahlert: “The so-called wage gap is based on calculations done by the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet when the Bureau compiled those calculations, it made no distinction between professions, lumping them all together. Thus, as the Heritage Foundation explains, ‘if high school teachers make less than congressmen…and there are more women who are teachers and more men in the U.S. Congress, then yes, the numbers will show that men make more than women.’ On the other hand, when an apples-to-apple comparison is made, as in controlling for occupation, experience, hours worked per week, education and other choices, a 2009 study commissioned by the Department of Labor reveals that the so-called wage gap narrows to approximately five cents on the dollar. … According to the 2013 Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff, the White House has its very own gender pay gap. Its 228 female employees received a median annual salary of $65,000 that year, while the 231 male staffers earned a median annual salary of nearly $73,729. That amounts to a 12 percent, or 88 cents on the dollar, disparity. If such an inconvenient reality appears very much in alignment with another cherished progressive value – as in ‘do as I say, not as I do’ – that’s because it is.”
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- Arnold Ahlert