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Apr 11 Micah commented on Which City Has the Biggest Gender Pay Gap in America? Seattle..

@41:

Use

< blockquote>some text < /blockquote>

But remove the spaces.

Thanks! And clever escaping of the blockquote for your demo!

Apr 11 Micah commented on Which City Has the Biggest Gender Pay Gap in America? Seattle..

@39: Thanks for your reasoned response -- lots of good ideas in there. You indeed didn't say the pay gap was meaningless or acceptable. You said it was borderline meaningless, and I should have used that language in @37.

Apr 11 Micah commented on Which City Has the Biggest Gender Pay Gap in America? Seattle..

@36: Maybe I misinterpreted the comment, but I thought @23 was making the argument that the PFA should not be advanced b/c it would not eliminate the pay gap here:

[quote]
With that in mind, we should make mandatory quotas for businesses to hire female gay minority high wage earners first.

Then later when it fails we can talk about more laws.

or we can agree with @6, and remember that its not some tribunal of neck beards that tell women to not get STEM degrees, its the trend of women not being interested in them.
[/quote]

I apologize for my inability to quote things here.

Apr 11 Micah commented on Which City Has the Biggest Gender Pay Gap in America? Seattle..

@35: If you want a more reasoned discussion, don't just bitch about the tired statistic and claim that it is meaningless. It is not meaningless (at least in the opinion of me and many others) that women don't make as much money as men. If you think the pay gap is acceptable, make an argument for that position. If you think we should try to reduce the gap, what should be done? Note that the PFA is a very small step that nevertheless faces strong political opposition.

Apr 11 Micah commented on Which City Has the Biggest Gender Pay Gap in America? Seattle..

@26: I didn't read the article, but I knew what it was about. In my opinion, proponents of PFA could find a better statistic to headline their propaganda. But I don't think the existence of a non-negligible pay gap is irrelevent to the debate. I fully support the PFA (sems like a no-brainer to me). I don't think it will materially reduce the pay gap. But the argument that we shouldn't enact PFA because it won't eliminate the pay gap is not well founded.

Apr 11 Micah commented on Which City Has the Biggest Gender Pay Gap in America? Seattle..

@23: I certainly do not agree with @6 that the gender pay gap is a meaningless statistic even if it is not the result of decrees from tribunals of neck beards -- or any other discriminatory practice (although, as I was trying to point out in @22, the evidence does show that a non-negligible fraction of the pay gap IS a result of gender discrimination). The pay gap has lots of ramifications for society, and reasonable people might want to change the situation in a way that they think makes society 'better'. Maybe even some legislation.

Apr 11 Micah commented on Which City Has the Biggest Gender Pay Gap in America? Seattle..

To all you folks whining that Eli is conflating statistics and saying something false about discrimination: I don't see any mention of discrimination in the post. He simply points out the (accurate) statistic that women make less $$ than men. That may be OK with you, or it might not. That you jump so vociferously to defending against (imagined) accusations suggests to me that maybe you know, deep down inside, that gender discrimination might be a problem in our society.

If you are really interested in statistics relating to gender discrimination you could, you know, try some research. Since economic equality is an important topic, a lot of studies have been done. Here is one: http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/gradua…. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to find other studies the conclusions of which might be more in line with your thinking.

BTW: my favorite statistic from gender discrimination work (which I believe is fairly robust and often reproduced) is that women are about as likely to preferentially hire men for 'traditionally male' jobs as men.

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Mar 7 Micah commented on Scrap the Cap!.

@3: Raising income tax would be more progressive still (and an idea I would support -- I bet Goldy would, too). Of course floating even this (comparatively regressive) suggestion will get you called a pinko-commie-class warrior by the fox news audience.

I don't see how removing the cap makes ss benefits any less linked to an individual's benefits than the current system. It's not like folks get cut off after their lifetime benefits exceed their lifetime contributions now.

Mar 7 Micah commented on Scrap the Cap!.

@ 1-2: It's better for your class (in the long run) to enable the rest of us to eat in our retirement. Even with the payroll tax cap removed (as the nytimes article points out) federal taxes will still be at historic lows. What do you hope to accomplish by starving old folks once they are too feeble to work at walmart?

Feb 25 Micah commented on Gun Nuts and Product Recalls.

@ OP: Can you find any stats about the effectiveness of the government actions regarding cribs (e.g. since the recalls and whatnot only 2 kids per year are being killed)? I think that would really strengthen the argument. Great post, BTW: it's an interesting way to couch the argument.