Obama Says Wage Gaps Remain 50 Years After Equal Pay Law Passed

[Purveyor]

President Barack Obama marked the 50th anniversary of Equal Pay Act that was supposed to abolish wage disparity based on sex by saying the gains made by women haven’t completely closed the gap on wages.

As more women become the main earner in households, the disparity in wages compared with men is putting more pressure on middle-income families, Obama said at a White House ceremony marking the occasion.

“And as I said in my inaugural address this year, our journey to equality is not complete until our wives, our mothers, our daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts,” he said.

The law signed by President John F. Kennedy was aimed at assuring women of paychecks equal to those of men doing the same work. In 1963, women earned about 59 cents to every man’s dollar for the same job.

Comparing the median weekly full-time earnings in 2012, women earned 80.9 percent of men, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a Washington-based research group, citing figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-10/obama-says-wage-gaps-remain-50-years-after-equal-pay-law-passed.html

[Recursion]

1. So if an equal pay law won't solve that, what will?

I wish I had an idea

[Igel]

4. Equality of input.

When men on family leave put in as much time in childcare as the women on family leave.

When men stop working overtime so much to stay with their families and women start working more overtime.

When single fathers are the head of household for single-parent families as often as single mothers.

When it's considered as much the father's role to stay at home with the sick kid as it is the mother's.

When men work as teachers, counselors, aides, secretaries, assistants as much as women do.

When women take jobs that require extensive overtime and travel and take as much work home as men do. And men turn down high-powered jobs that require time on the road and lots of weekends in the office in exchange for more pay.

When the number of women applying to individual engineering programs at the bachelor's, master's, and PhD levels equal the number of men applicants. And then graduate at the same rate with equivalent GPAs. And when the number of men in English and foreign language departments, in the social work programs, equal the # of women.

When the average education level for men and women is the same, the distribution of degrees among men and women is the same, the years of experience for each group is the same.

You can mandate that a woman and a man, each with X years' experience in the same position, with the same skills, showing the same commitment to the job (by working unpaid overtime, etc.) get the same salary. But you can't mandate most of the other factors. They're the consequence of either individual choice or individual acquiescence.

When you control for most of the other factors, there's still sex discrimination. But it accounts for less than a quarter of the outstanding wage disparity. The wage gap is closing as women finish college at rates higher than men do, as more single women put off having kids and devote time to their careers, as they move into disciplines that provide higher wages.

[alp227]

2. As Equal Pay Act Turns 50, Conservative Media Continue Crusade Against Gender Wage Gap

http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/06/10/as-equal-pay-act-turns-50-conservative-media-co/194405

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. HOW DARE HE.

How fucking dare he talk about ANY income inequality when he does NOTHING about this:

Nothing, for years and years. Except for saying NOTHING when 7400+ of the people saying CHANGE THIS were attacked and arrested (and none of the people responsible).

Wait, he DID do something, he helped them stay free from prosecution and continued to shovel our tax dollars in their general direction:

Corporate Profits Have Grown By 171 Percent Under Obama -- Highest Rate Since 1900
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/corporate-profits-have-grown-171-percent-under-obama-highest-rate-1900

"Average annual corporate profit growth under Obama is the highest since 1900, whereas profit growth declined during both Bush presidencies. As a share of the economy, corporate profits have never been higher.
Unfortunately, this profit deluge has not been shared by workers, whose wages as a percentage of the economy have fallen to all-time lows. Workers also got dinged by the recent increase in the payroll tax, which was large enough to wipe out a minimum wage increase in some states."


8 Huge Corporate Handouts in the Fiscal Cliff Bill
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/8-huge-corporate-handouts-fiscal-cliff-bill

"Throughout the months of November and December, a steady stream of corporate CEOs flowed in and out of the White House to discuss the impending fiscal cliff. Many of them, such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, would then publicly come out and talk about how modest increases of tax rates on the wealthy were reasonable in order to deal with the deficit problem. What wasn’t mentioned is what these leaders wanted, which is what’s known as “tax extenders”, or roughly $205B of tax breaks for corporations. With such a banal name, and boring and difficult to read line items in the bill, few political operatives have bothered to pay attention to this part of the bill. But it is critical to understanding what is going on.

5) Subsidies for Goldman Sachs Headquarters – Sec. 328 extends 'tax exempt financing for York Liberty Zone,' which was a program to provide post-9/11 recovery funds. Rather than going to small businesses affected, however, this was, according to Bloomberg, 'little more than a subsidy for fancy Manhattan apartments and office towers for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp.' Michael Bloomberg himself actually thought the program was excessive, so that’s saying something. According to David Cay Johnston’s The Fine Print, Goldman got $1.6 billion in tax free financing for its new massive headquarters through Liberty Bonds."


The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street from prosecutions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/untouchables-wall-street-prosecutions-obama

Yes, Virginia, the Rich Continue to Get Richer: the Top 1% Got 121% of Income Gains Since 2009
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/yes-virginia-the-rich-continue-to-get-richer-the-1-got-121-of-income-gains-since-2009.html

U.S. banks in 2012 post highest profits since '06
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/26/us-usa-fdic-earnings-idUSBRE91P0N820130226?utm_source=Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=de8376aab3-DD_2_27_132_27_2013&utm_medium=email#.US5jjkXSlU8.twitter

This Year’s Subsidy to Wall Street = the Amount of This Year’s Sequester Cuts
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/02/this-years-subsidy-to-wall-street-the-amount-of-this-years-sequester-cuts.html#.US_yiFwwnHY.facebook

Don’t Blink, or You’ll Miss Another Bailout
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100466032

America faces more than a dozen deadlines, all caused by billionaires and wealth transfer
http://americablog.com/2013/02/america-faces-more-than-a-dozen-deadlines-all-caused-by-billionaires-and-wealth-transfer.html

Bank Bailout 2: Obama Lets Mortgage Abusers Off the Hook
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/09-5

HYPOCRITE. MOCKERY.