Asian Americans have long enjoyed significantly higher incomes than their white counterparts, and Asian Americans continue to earn more than their white counterparts.
Are both, neither, or just one of these wage disparities considered a “problem that needs to be solved”?
If you answered “only one” and you know which it is, then you may be familiar with a fashionable modern form of discrimination that involves treating some groups of people more equally than others.
Nobel Prize Winners
A good example is Claudia Goldin, who will become the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2023. As Scientific American reported last year, Goldin was recognized for “helping to explain why women have been underrepresented in the labor market for at least the past two centuries and why, on average, women still earn less than men today (about 13%).”
Goldin is relatively unique in not assuming, as much of the media has done, that the gender pay gap is unfair discrimination — instead, she acknowledges that men are far more likely to work high-paying jobs that require “long and inflexible hours.”
However, she calls it a “greedy job.”
When you picture that, you probably imagine it as the fruit of ambition, hard work, or family obligations. But you're not a Nobel Prize winner.
The website Inc. wrote the following about the intersex wage gap and why Goldin won the Nobel Prize:
Here's a snapshot of her research: Jobs that require “long and inflexible hours” pay the highest. Goldin calls this phenomenon “greedy work.” In investment banking and law, clients want to work with one person and will pay a premium for long hours and dedication. These jobs are typically held by men, but women do the same work in less “greedy” environments, usually at smaller companies or on different career paths. Goldin thinks the reason is babies.
Women and men earn about the same amount of money until a woman has her first child. Then the gap kicks in. Women take more time off to have a baby (naturally), even though men are also entitled to 12 weeks of FMLA leave if they qualify. Women also work fewer hours after giving birth.
The irony is that this is not just a “self-evident” explanation, but an explanation that has been “advancedly explained.” No one has reported why Goldin received a Nobel Prize for rehashing a truth that others have been proclaiming for decades.
Men and women have different priorities
One potential Nobel Prize candidate, journalist Carrie Lucas, wrote in 2007: “The truth is, the wage gap is my fault, and the fault of hundreds of thousands of women like me.”
“I have a good education and have worked full time for 10 years, but throughout my career I've prioritized things other than money,” she explained, before elaborating, “When my daughter was born, I took some time off and then decided to stay home full time and work from home.”
“Women make similar trade-offs all the time,” Lucas later added, “and research has shown for years that women are more likely to prioritize flexibility and personal fulfillment over men who prioritize salary.”
And now, a generation later, we hear, “According to Goldin's research, women value 'time flexibility' over salary,” reports Inc. In other words, women “value 'time flexibility' over salary.” But unless you use words like “time,” you probably won't win a Nobel Prize.
However you phrase it, that's certainly true. But don't most men want to focus on “flexibility” and “personal fulfillment”? Many men work hard (and endure their first heart attack) to provide for their families. Duty calls.
Is the wage gap really a problem?
Inc.'s proposed “solutions” to the intersex wage gap include allowing “remote work” and “job sharing,” hiring people who are “underserved in the labor force,” and helping “women carve their own paths.”
(The suggestion to “focus on productivity rather than sitting time” is generally a good thing, although there is a correlation between the two.)
But in a response to the Inc. article, a top MSN commentator wrote, “Why should companies find ways to help women succeed?” If this sounds heartless, consider this: Are social engineers idling away trying to find ways to help white people (who also make less than Asians) succeed?
Do they care about the gap that men account for 92 percent of workplace fatalities (note that this gap exists because men take on almost all of the dangerous jobs, some of which are the high-paying ones)?
Success is relative
Again, “success” is relative: economically, Asians are more successful than whites, whites are more successful than blacks and Hispanics, men are more successful than women, 45-year-olds are more successful than 25-year-olds, Norwegians are more successful than Russians, Westerners are more successful than non-Westerners. Whether people can live comfortably is important, but whether one group earns more than another (which is inevitable) is not at all important.
That many think otherwise reflects not only the dogma of equality (“equality says nothing about quality”) but shallowness: we (and “success”) are not defined by wealth alone. Are doctors less valuable because they earn significantly less than hedge fund managers?
It's also damaging to dismiss what are often the fruits of hard work as “greed.” It's ironic that Goldin, a woman who makes $1 million a year, would say so.
But here's another irony: the system designed to close the intersex wage gap doesn't even help “women.” Why? When men are paid less because they have to subsidize the socially engineered overpayment of some of their female colleagues, it makes it harder for them to provide for their wives and children. And this can force women who would otherwise choose to stay home into the workforce, separating them from their children.
So the best we can say is that the wage differential system enriches single women at the expense of married women and their daughters. That's female empowerment at its core.
