The "Grievance Industry"

[paft.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, just after the end of Reagan’s first term, I was listening to a local Talk Radio host, Ronn Owens, doing a sort of “summing up” of the Reagan administration so far. He brought up Reagan’s question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and he said, “I gotta tell ya. Yes, I am. And everyone I know is better off too.”

Ronn invited his mostly white, middle-class listeners to weigh in. One after another they lined up to chirp about how well they were doing in Reagan’s America.

Then, he got a black caller, who informed the host, “I’m not better off. I’m not better off at all. In fact, things have gotten worse. And I don’t know one single black American who’s not doing worse.”

“Oh now sir,” Ronn said, with the air of someone calming down a hysteric. “don’t you feel you’re being a little myopic?”

I guess the farsighted, non-myopic approach would have been for the caller and all those other black Americans to think happy thoughts about how well Ronn Owens and the other white folks were doing, rather than focusing on their own petty concerns.



There has long been in the United States mainstream the unspoken assumption that a poor, female, gay, non-Christian or non-white person voting in his or her own interest is a form of whining rather than common sense, even though the stakes for these voters tend to be higher than the concerns of wealthy folks who don’t want to pay those extra taxes that could price them out of that second house in the Hamptons. The rule of thumb is, apparently – if you have a real grievance influencing your vote, like “I could lose my healthcare if the Republicans have their way” or “I could end up unable to afford birth control or unable to get access to an abortion” or “As a black American, I don’t want a guy who’s taking advice from Charles Murray deciding policy that’s going to affect my kids” or “My family could go hungry” or “I could end up in jail for having consensual sex with another adult” or “this guy wants to pass legislation that would endanger my right to vote” you are part of the “Grievance Industry.” And that’s a bad thing.

This attitude has recently been kicked into overdrive by the passing of ACA. The right wing is now in full panic mode over the horrifying discovery that people like being able to afford healthcare and are not going to like having that access taken away. Worse, these same people will actually vote in favor of their own physical and civic well-being. The right seems to think this is awfully unfair, and they believe it’s even more unfair for Democratic politicians to point out to these voters how much is at stake.

Joan Walsh at Salon puts it beautifully:

So let me make sure I understand. Telling your voters, accurately, that Republicans are trying to make it harder for them to vote, and are blocking action on pay equity, the minimum wage and immigration reform is unfair “grievance politics”? Likewise, any effort to deal with the scandal of $1 trillion in student loan debt? Oliphant compares it to the grievance politics practiced by Republicans under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But that form of grievance politics mainly relied on inflaming white voters’ fears of cultural and racial change with false or highly exaggerated claims about Democrats. (emphasis added.)

The difference between accusations that are accurate and accusations that are highly exaggerated or quite simply untrue is apparently unimportant, as far as some in the media are concerned.

I mean really, it’s all about whether or not they make people get all emotional. All that arm-waving and emoting about “I want to cast a ballot” or “I want my heart medication” or “I don’t want to end up homeless after my unemployment benefits run out” is JUST like those Republicans who said that black people were going to take over and John Kerry didn’t deserve his medals and gay people were going to kidnap your little boy and marry him. So vulgar!

Why can’t people directly affected by these policies stop horning into conversations that should really be conducted as abstract conundrums over cocktails at a DC reception?

*

Comments

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

It depends upon what you mean by "wage discrimination." If you mean that women, just like men, are discriminated against for being less productive than some higher wage earner, then yes, hell yes, wage discrimination exists. Employers discriminate in wage payment based upon productivity results and the product of the wage holder's job. Big surprise.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

Even when you normalize for productivity, time spent in the workforce, and other factors cited as causing the wage gap, the gap still exists. If two people have the same performance, same education, same number of years working and are performing the same job at the same company, how do you explain women being paid less than men?

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

You're speaking mythology. If you find such a unicorn, produce it and claim your Nobel Prize. Otherwise, you are merely repeating propaganda that was told to you. What you are proposing, should such a "wage gap" actually exist, is that every last single potential employer all of them, practice such irrational discrimination, even when it is economically disadvantageous to do so. If at some particular point in time, women, as a class, were employable at seventy cents on the dollar, then it would be economically advantageous to offer them employment at eighty cents on the males' dollar and out-compete every other potential employer for equally productive employees. Consequently, it would likewise become economically advantageous for another competitive employer to offer eighty-five cents, and so on, until the "gap" was arbitraged away. Of course, this is only the case where there actually is no productivity difference and the discrimination is on non-economic grounds. It isn't. Thomas Sowell has written more than one book painstakingly debunking this myth. The mythical "wage gap" persists merely as a politically self-serving article of faith.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

It's not mythical. In my work I have access to salary data for a number of large companies. I see that women are consistently hired for less money than men right out of the starting gate (same degree, no experience) and this disparity continues throughout their careers. It persists even when the woman doesn't take off time for family/sickness/children.

You can keep the Nobel Prize, I'd just like people like you to have to feel the reality of the gap in your paycheck. No really, I'd like to take the wage disparity unicorn horn and shove it up the disbelievers' asses. And since you don't believe it exists, I'm sure you won't mind volunteering.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

I see your "B/S Alert" icon. I'm calling B/S as well. Let's start with a question: What makes you have any idea whatsoever that any piece of legislation establishing an office of bureaucrats to address your perceived problem can identify and rectify the "proper" winners and losers in the market, as you see them, and rectify things so that only those who have "profited unfairly," as you see them, and only they, are "penalized" to the extent you believe "fair" and only those who have been "unfairly" discriminated against, as you see them are rewarded in a manner commensurate with their supposed injury, as you see it? It is NOT possible. Here is your first clue: You claim that this "unfair" practice is happening right under your nose where you yourself work. I have a dare for you. If you have all this access to the salary data where you work you almost certainly have access to those who hire and set salaries. If this problem is so egregious and it offends your moral sensibilities so much, then go to these people who hire and negotiate salaries and point out what you have supposedly noticed and ask them about the discrepancy. Ask them the bases for their choices. You can't, can you? You won't. Even if you do second guess these people what makes your personal judgement right and theirs arbitrarily wrong? You don't know. Neither will offices full of bureaucrats, even presuming that they were, each and every one of them, individually and collectively, immune to all sorts of perverse political pressures. They're not. You're chasing a will-o-wisp. Voting to "do something about it" might make people feel good about themselves, for a short time, but it will in no way result in any better justice. In many ways, it will also, perversely, result in multiplications of injustice and waste.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

I have pointed this out to management and surprisingly some changes have been made. Of all the places I've worked my current employer is the best of the bunch. I've worked for companies that always hired women at a rate less than men. I've heard male managers justify giving men larger salary increases because the women don't really need the money. You open your mouth you get fired. I've voted with my feet, when I can, because jobs are not falling out the sky at the moment.

Addessing your claims of wage discrimination being nothing but unicorn horns:

Here's what the EEOC has to say on this:

In fiscal year 2012, EEOC received over 4,100 charges of gender-based wage discrimination, and obtained over $24 million in relief for victims of gender-based wage discrimination through administrative enforcement efforts and litigation. The EEOC and DOJ also continue to serve as key members of the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force, a federal government initiative focused on ending the gender pay gap.

Here's just a few cases you might want to read

Equal pay case : http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/4-2-14.cfm (http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/4-2-14.cfm)

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/2-19-14.cfm (http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/2-19-14.cfm)

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/1-17-14.cfm (http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/1-17-14.cfm)

Do you really think some cashiers jobs take greater skills than others? That men with no experience should be paid more when they walk through the door than women with substantial experience?

See I don't. And I'm pleased that the EEOC doesn't think so either. And since almost 70% of cases filed with the EEOC don't end with a finding of substantive evidence of discrimination, it's not like they are just rubber-stamping every case that's filed.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

As for myself, I am remunerated in a manner that I believe reasonably reflects my productive worth to the company. If I did not feel this way, I would go get a job somewhere else. Every last single woman has the same right to do likewise. That's as good as it gets. That's real equality, Comrade. You are not Santa Claus, to know the secret heart and valuation of every employer and employee in the market and abrogate and modify their individual decisions as you see more fit. You cannot find any objective way to second guess the myriad value judgments made by individuals all over the world every day, no matter how many "experts" you presume will be put on "the problem."

No, instead of going out and starting your own company and hiring women at a rate you believe their individual productivity is worth, at your own risk, and according to your own value judgments, you sit there and fling silly little revenge fantasies at me. So why do you do this? If the so-called discrimination against women is not rationally rooted in economically valid reasoning then economics tells us that you are looking at a sure thing! You should be able to make an absolute fortune in the market, hiring women at a few cents on the dollar more than the "average market discrimination pays them," and getting productivity at least equal to the "overpaid" males. Go for it! If you're right, it's easy money for you. Do you lack the courage of your convictions? This is your idea of solving "the problem," picking on people who are telling you a truth you don't want to hear?

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

I love all your theoretical arguments. Hey, don't like your job, go get another one. Only someone who has had their head in the sand the last few years would fail to realize that employers aren't hiring all that much. And most people would rather have a job, even if there are problems at that job, than be unemployed. To pretend that there aren't impediments to labor mobility (for both men and women) is so pathetically naive that it almost defies imagination.

Also, if you don't have access to wage data, how do you know that you are not being paid fairly? Employers go to great lengths to discourage or outright forbid employees to discuss their wages with each other. Obama just signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from retaliating against employees who talk about their salaries or other compensation information. That's huge, though most people don't realize it yet. So many companies that we don't think of as government contractors fall under this executive order (Walmart for example).

As for rational economic behavior, again I have to ask you to remove your head from wherever it's been stuck. Prejudice isn't rational and yet it exists. At my last company, a vice-president vetoed a promotion for a highly talented Indian employee because 'they make good workers, but lousy managers.' Is that a rational decision? And in this case, the employee did leave. They ended up having to hire two employees to cover his job. Rational? And I can assure you that the VP never spent one moment examining how irrational his biases were.

As for starting my own company - you know, now that the ACA is law, I might just be able to do that. See before, I couldn't due to being uninsurable in the private market. But really why should I have to? Why shouldn't I expect companies to reward equal pay for equal work?

Sure there are subtle differences in performance that are best left to manager. However, if sex based, race based, disability not related to job based wage discrimination doesn't exist, why don't companies just publish their wage data? Because when a company pays all their experienced women managers less than all their newly hired, untrained men, it would pretty obvious that their compensation practices had a gender bias.