President Obama plans to press Congress today to pass pay-equity legislation that would make it easier for women to sue employers who pay them less than their male counterparts, the White House said Monday.Never mind that, adjusted for experience, absence from the workplace due to child bearing, and other factors, the pay differential largely disappears. Even to Pragmatists, such utilitarian arguments fall on deaf ears. And why not? The faux concern for 'equity' is just one more cover story. The only thing that matters to them is chaining businesses and the individuals who own them.
In their eyes, it's justified. After all, of what importance are minor concerns like Fifth Amendment protections against takings, First Amendment guarantees of free association, Article I, Section 10 protections of contract, and so forth? Social justice trumps all!
Of course, as it always works out in practice, 'social' justice invariably squeezes out the individual variety, such as the rights of property and voluntary trade.
I confess that even my paranoid, right-wing imagination is running out of ways the Feds could move us even further toward totalitarianism without openly sending out Black Shirt goon squads. Oh, wait! Holder has already authorized the New Black Panthers to cover that.
What will it be next? Cap and Trade? A New Fairness Doctrine? Coerced community service? Legislated equal hiring at gyms for obese people (provided they agree to lose weight on a Federal schedule, of course)?
All those trial balloons have been floated (and, in some ways, are already in place.) Your guess is as good as mine.
3 comments:
Pay-equity legislation will make hiring managers (yes, even female ones) be hesitant about hiring females--the possible litigation is now an added cost tagged specifically to that gender. Why mess with the free market? Sheesh.
I am against this type of legislation, however it annoys me that I have to be held back because I might decide to have children. Actually I won't, no way no how, but my employer can't rely on this assertion. The law forces them to provide me with maternity leave and any promise I might make not to have kids would not only be unenforceable under the law, it would probably get them sued.
Like many laws created to fix problems created by other laws, there won't be a real solution until ALL the rights-violating laws are gone.
Katrina,
Thank you for your comment and welcome to Shaving Leviathan.
I agree completely. Whenever the government oversteps its proper role, it ends up punishing the very individuals it allegedly sets out to help, along with its direct victims who are sacrificed on their behalf.
Best regards, and please visit (and comment) often.
Jeff
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