Sure, This Is Cause for Celebration

Gap Between Men's and Women's Pay Shrinks

Well, I'd withhold the champagne. Of course, women's salaries have slowly been creeping up to men's for the past couple of decades, but is that because of greater opportunities for women and stronger laws? I don't think so. What is most likely is that men's pay has dropped, and we have seen for the past thirty years the decline of "family wages" thanks to the decline of unions in this country.

Women are concentrated in the so-called "service" industries, and we all know these jobs pay far, far less than those of manufacturing (excluding "professional" jobs).

Economists in the article say the wage gap is not likely to go away because of discrimination (which the idiot reporter thinks is somehow "hard to prove") and the fact women bear a larger share of the child rearing responsibilities; therefore, they will "choose" to take low-paying jobs. Which is utter horseshit, if you actually work in this labor market.

No hogwash about the narrowing wage gap covers the fact it's a result of the massive degutting of unions in this country. We have "equality" all right, but it isn't the equality feminists dreamed of. It's the "equality" born of an economy that now can destroy family wage jobs and force two people out in the labor force to work for the same pay as one person. Men are now achieving "equality" by making as lousy pay as women have traditionally done. This bodes horribly for any single person or single parent who tries to get by on the crap wages of the vast majority of jobs.

Oh, and telling people they should spend tens of thousands of dollars on getting college degrees is piss-poor advice. There are NEVER enough jobs requiring college degrees for the people who possess them. The vast majority of jobs in this country require NO college degree whatsoever. Therefore, people who can't find professional-paying jobs must take on the lousy paying jobs in the service sector, as Bob Herbert said in a column last week. This forces those with less than a college education to take jobs paying even less, forcing high school graduates out, and they in turn take jobs which force those without a diploma out. Some damned progress.

No college degree in the world is an adequate substitute for a union card.