Tag Archives: Salary

Commentary

Are women underpaid for doing the same work as a man?

3 Comments

Here is a neat article from TotallyHer.com on this issue.

Excerpt:

Over the years there’s been much debate surrounding the concern for women receiving inequitable pay, relative to the same work men do. This continues to be an issue even in 2010! As a matter of fact, did you know that there’s an Equity Pay Day this year?

But it’s not just special interest groups who express the concern for women’s apparent lack of parity in their paychecks. President Obama signed legislation early in his presidency to ensure equal pay for women.

So is the President himself admitting that a woman can do the exact same work, for the exact same amount of time, with the exact same qualifications and experience as her male counterpart and get a smaller paycheck? Is that happening in the United States right now?

Click through to read the article and see what the research shows.

Thomas Sowell’s take on the pay gap

I actually have a book on my shelf by Thomas Sowell that tackles this very issue, among others, called “Economic Facts and Fallacies”. Here’s a short 3 minute video about the book.

There’s also a nice 4-clip discussion of the book between Dennis Prager and Thomas Sowell, (from Prager’s radio show). I’m listening to it now, and Sowell also preferred Fred Thompson in the 2008 Republican primary, just like me! This is a really, really good interview.

My thoughts

When I survey the best of my Christian male friends, we all agree that work really gets in the way of the things we would like to be doing. Some of us would like to be working more on our marriages and relationships, or playing with children, or writing, or teaching classes in the church, or organizing debate and lecture events, or lifting weights and playing sports… but one thing we agree on is that there is too much emphasis for men on the workplace as the theater of for our achievements. It’s just stupid.

I myself would love to work fewer hours if I could have more time for other things. Why work so hard just to pay more in taxes? I think men get trapped into marriage and children and then they are stuck working too hard to pay 40% in taxes for government bureacrats to marriage. High taxes are a real disincentive for men contemplating marriage. If women were smart, they would vote to shrink government, welfare and social programs. Then men would really be interested in marriage, because they could work less and still have time for other interesting things.

News

Republicans want bonuses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs canceled

3 Comments
Rep. Michele Bachmann

Story here from CNS News.

Excerpt:

Seventy Republican members of Congress want Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to cancel up to $6 million in bonuses and deferred compensation — approved before  Christmas 2009 — for the chief executive officers of the failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“(T)here’s a letter that’s going to Sec. Geithner from a number of us calling for a rescission of those bonuses,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told CNSNews.com Wednesday.

On Christmas Eve, at the same time the Obama administration announced that it was removing any cap on the amount of taxpayer aid to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failed mortgage giants announced that they had received approval from their financial regulator to pay $42 million in compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009.

The compensation packages included up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac chief executives. For the CEOs, annual compensation consists of a base salary of $900,000, $3.1 million in deferred compensation and incentive pay of as much as $2 million. Public disclosure that the retention bonuses were being copnsidered first surfaced in the Spring.

And naturally my favorite member of Congress was involved:

“(We are pushing) for an ending — an unwinding, if you will — of the U.S. owning Fannie and Freddie. We want out of this sinking business as quickly as we possibly can, and we want to pull the plug on an unlimited taxpayer bailout of Freddie and Fannie,” Bachmann said.

[…]“When Sec. Geithner said that there’d be unlimited taxpayer funding continuing to go into this sinking ship, and then bonuses they’re given?,” she said. “On what basis?  What did they do?  What was the criteria that they could possibly be given a bonus?  The fact that they got unlimited taxpayer money?”

Bachman was referring to Treasury’s announcement that it would send unlimited tax money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thereby eliminating the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid that Treasury can give without having to come back to Congress for authorization.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are closely tied to Democrats.

Consider this Fox News story.

Excerpt:

Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.

A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he’s only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn’t afford them.

Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration’s White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

More here about how the Democrats caused the recession.

News

Are public sector union employees paid too much?

4 Comments

From the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The most recent BLS release on employee compensation (issued December 9, 2009) states that, during September 2009, “[p]rivate industry employer compensation costs averaged $27.49 per hour worked,” while, “[s]tate and local government compensation costs averaged $39.83 per hour worked” — a difference of over $12.00 an hour.

Moreover, a greater proportion of public employees get benefits, and they get greater employer contributions.

[,,,]And still that’s not all. As Don Bellante of the University of South Florida, David Denholm of the Public Service Research Foundation, and I note in our Cato Institute study on the topic, another benefit unionized government workers get is job security unlike any found in the private sector.

[…]Even worse, the greatest costs associated with public sector unions often do not become apparent for many years, in the form of pensions.

There’s a lot more here. It’s a nightmare. I try not to sound too upset about it, but it really is bad. Speaking as a private sector employee, I cannot afford ME and adult day care for government-employees who aren’t even accountable to their customers.