Two articles on the gender pay gap. One in the Grauniad and one in the Indy.
What’s fascinating is not that both are rampant bollocks, there being no gender pay gap, rather there is a choice driven pay gap over a lifetime, but that almost without exception they are called out in the comments as bollocks. Yes, the Indy and the Guardian! As commenter after commenter points out, if men are more costly to hire, why are employers not eschewing them in favour of an all female workforce? Well, because the writers of these articles are not comparing like with like. They cannot, however, convince their own fellow travellers. Maybe there is hope after all. That said, most of the debunking comments on the Groan piece have been deleted since I first read the article. So no change there, then. At least the Indy leave contrary comments in place.
Whenever a population of anything is analysed on a binary basis and perhaps achieves ‘equality’ on one property it will be found to differ on another property. That applies to house bricks, wood screws or people. A population of 50 men and 50 women is ‘equal’ by sex but won’t be equal by height, weight or wealth. Try to fix any of those inequalities and something else will be out of kilter.
The stupidity of the ‘gender pay gap’ can be exposed by the simple thought-experiment: Take one rich man and pay him ‘minimum wage’ then take one poor women and pay her whatever it takes to achieve equality of average pay for all men and women. Net result: everyone is in exactly the same state as before except for the pair subject to pay manipulation.
@LR,
Congrats for finding an article on CiF with comments allowed.
Gender pay gap is fake news.
As is race pay gap
Well, sort of. When I first visited it, there were loads of contrary comments. By the middle of the day, the mods had been out vigorously wiping out any dissent.
It rather makes you wonder why they bother with comments at all, if they censor them so heavily. What’s the point if not to engage the readership in discussion? If only one viewpoint is allowed, then there is no discussion.
Having said that, The Grauniad certainly isn’t alone in its moderation policies. I’ve had my comments deleted numerous times on many and varied sites, newspapers included. And it’s not for being rude or using bad language, it’s because my views are contrary to the thrust of the article, or call into question assertions made, and thus aren’t acceptable to the mods. Most online publications seem to have the same approach. A notable exception is Spiked!, which appears not to moderate at all, but publications like Breitbart, which purports to be a Libertarian (but comes across to me as very Right Wing) publication moderates comments quite ruthlessly sometimes.
@nisakiman
+1 on comment censoring & for mentioning Spiked
. It’s enlightening to read what real left, not champagne socialist totalitarians, think & believe. Also that several there also write for Spectator & Telegraph.
Comments: in general I will not register to comment, after all CiF. I may register after some time if I see a benefit eg Bishop-Hill.
I seem to have an image in my head of Jack Nicholson snarling “You can’t handle the truth”. If you are wrong about something you have a choice, either modify your opinion or stay wrong. Deleting posts that point out that you are wrong doesn’t change the fact that you are wrong. It just shows everyone that you would prefer to stay wrong.
Daily Mail is just as bad when it comes to removing comments that point out the glaring bullshit in any given article.