The Legal Intelligencer reports on a survey of law firm partner compensation among men and women, and I was struck by this line:
Some good news out of the survey was that the gap in compensation between male and female partners shrunk in 2009. But the report also pointed out that the smaller gap is likely an overall effect of reduced compensation at the equity level generally. Between 2008 and 2009, the median pay fell for all positions regardless of gender and was sharpest for equity partners. Pay for the equity partner category in 2009 fell below 87 percent of the median compensation in 2008.
I suppose it would be even better news if everyone were fired, thus entirely eliminating the gap in compensation between male and female lawyers.
Kent Scheidegger says:
Once upon a time, an American liberal was walking down the beach and saw an old oil lamp almost buried in the sand. It wasn’t an Aladdin’s brand lamp, though, only a generic, so the genie only offered one wish.
The liberal knew immediately what to wish for. “I wish that all income inequality in the world would disappear.” “Is that all?” asked the surprised genie. Poof! The entire world was as poor as Darfur. The genie took all the world’s wealth and took off for another planet.
The liberal smiled with satisfaction at the wonderful thing he had done.
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October 27, 2009, 12:11 pmShelbyC says:
Many folks think income equality is an end in itself. I’ve never understood that.
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October 27, 2009, 12:11 pmTamerlane says:
“Shrank” or even the English-is-going-to-the-dogs, strong verb form “shrinked”. But please not the mistaken use of the participle “shrunk” for the past tense. The copy writer should be fired.
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October 27, 2009, 12:14 pmArthurKirkland says:
The introductory “but” suggests that the author was not celebrating the decline in income.
But if the mistaken inference creates an opening for silly anti-liberal parables, let’s look at the bright side!
(Have you guys hear the one about the closeted gay evangelical preacher, the Central America death squad, and the bigot?)
For the record, I dislike unexplained income inequality and a troubled economy.
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October 27, 2009, 12:21 pmRedman says:
Women used to complain because they paid higher health insurance premiums during their child bearing years than did men. So, the problem was solved when the companies went to unisex rates, which really meant that men’s premiums were raised to match women’s. And, verily, everyone was happy.
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October 27, 2009, 12:33 pmAnthony says:
In any case, there are certainly plenty of ways where a contraction can increase income disparities, so it’s reasonable to argue that it’s a positive sign that this contraction has not done so.
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October 27, 2009, 12:33 pmShelbyC says:
But the “Some good news...” part suggests that the author was celebrating the decline in income inequality part, which was due to the decline in income. So it seems that it was a correct inference that created an opening for anti-liberal parables.
And why does income inequality have to have an explaination? Some folks have it better than others, for a wide variety of reasons. Some folks are smarter, better looking, and healthier, too.
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October 27, 2009, 12:43 pmHoratius says:
That’s one small step for gender equality, one giant leap back for mankind.
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October 27, 2009, 12:47 pmSueSimp says:
ShelbyC–
Sure, some inequality is caused by that. But it is indisputable that inequality is also sometimes the result of bias or systematic discrimination. Do you really mean to suggest that it is not worthwhile to simply investigate what the cause in any particular situation is?
As for the article, I think/hope it was just really clumsy phrasing. That is, the author meant, “it looks like there’s good news, but wait, the real explanation is that everything sucks right now.”
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October 27, 2009, 12:51 pmDavid Welker says:
There is growing the pie and then there is slicing the pie. It is the position of liberals that both are important. It is the position of conservatives that all that matters is growing the pie, even if most peoples’ slices become much smaller and all of the increases go to a select few.
Given this position by liberals, it is “some good news” when slices of pie are much more equitably sliced. To say that is obviously not to say that it is good news when the pie shrinks. Hence the word “but” after the sentence discussing “some” good news. (Of course, and this is an entirely separate issue, we can talk about whether it is in fact good news when the pie shrinks for big firm lawyers, whose contributions to society are in fact much less socially valuable than their compensation.)
Orin, you are normally thoughtful enough to be able to distinguish between “some good news” and “good news.” I am hopeful that you will see that your ridiculous and dismissive concluding sentence, which is a total straw man, is completely unwarranted.
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October 27, 2009, 1:09 pmBrian K says:
wait what? this would drastically increase the profitability of insurance companies since they pay so much less on men. but we’re told in the healthcare debates by conservatives that private insurance is extremely competitive and efficient and they’re just barely squeaking by on razor thin profit margins.
welcome to conservativeland where two completely contradictory claims can be true simultaneously!
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October 27, 2009, 1:12 pmAk Mike says:
SueSimp — Inequality is caused by all kinds of things. African Americans predominate in the National Basketball Association — investigate? Jews and Catholics make more money than the average American — investigate? Asian Americans are admitted to top universities out of proportion to their percentage of the general population — investigate?
Inequality is the rule rather than the exception. “Unexplained” inequality means that sitting here in my chair I can’t think of any reason for it. It is indisputable that people having a lot of money is sometimes the result of crime. Do you really mean to suggest that it is not worthwhile to simply investigate what the cause of anyone having a lot of money is?
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October 27, 2009, 1:12 pmBruce Hayden says:
I love how you start with your conclusions, and then work backwards. “There are inequalities that are the result of bias and discrimination, so let’s go out and find them”.
I think that the best explanation for the results here are that the inequalities are a historical result of a time when males were much more likely to go into law than women. I think that in most larger firms, you will see more males the higher up you go in the attorneys in the firm, just because they have been there longer. And, yes, maybe to some extent even today, more women give up partnership track to have families.
Combine that with the fact that the equity partners were the ones making the obscene amounts of money when the going was good, so it is unsurprising that they see their remuneration drop the greatest, both in absolute and even in relative terms. They still make a lot more than most of us, just not as much more.
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October 27, 2009, 1:13 pmDavid Welker says:
Hardly anyone actually believes that.
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October 27, 2009, 1:14 pmDavid Welker says:
Bruce Hayden,
Women should be able to have children and also resume their careers without penalty. And when children are born, men should contribute their fair share and should also be able to resume their careers without penalty after they have done so.
Your point about women “choosing” to have families is interesting. Men choose to have families too. I don’t see how choosing to have a family makes one less intelligent and thus less capable in the practice of law. Perhaps you can elaborate.
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October 27, 2009, 1:20 pmRyan says:
BrianK, thank you for your irrelevant and ignorant remark. Please read this AP article and re-think posting comments which you know nothing about.
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October 27, 2009, 1:22 pmRyan says:
BrianK, thank you for your irrelevant and ignorant remark. Please read this AP article and re-think posting comments which you know nothing about.
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October 27, 2009, 1:22 pmBrian K says:
thanks for admitting you utterly lack any reading comprehension skills! you and redman must have gone to the same school.
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October 27, 2009, 1:31 pmBlake says:
David, I’m not sure that’s true.
Granted, the number of people who would admit to it were one to ask them directly is probably smaller than the number whose immediate sense of justice would be offended when presented with an example of income inequality.
Anecdote — I remember discussing Rawls vs. Nozick in a seminar in college. We were asked which is better:
Everyone could see that 1) maximized wealth, but plenty of folks argued that 2) might be better, since “$50k/year was ‘enough’ for basic needs and the $40k inequality was inherently unjust.”
No one in the classroom thought it was a good argument, those kids included. But some could just not let go of the fairness principle that insists on more equal outcomes. This from a top school. I don’t think ShelbyC is implying these people are stupid. But I would not be so quick to dismiss the extent to which young people especially consider income equality an end in itself.
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October 27, 2009, 1:33 pmOrin Kerr says:
David Welker writes:
I recognize that you are often hostile and dismissive of conservative-leaning posts and comments. I specifically recall deleting a series of your comments, about 3 or 4 months ago, in which you said that it was “typical” of conservatives to lie and mislead in public debates. Given that, I suppose I should conclude that your describing my last comment as “ridiculous” and a “straw man” is relatively mild.
Still, on the merits, I believe your reading of the excerpt is incorrect. If you read the full article from which the excerpt is taken, the author was not saying that it was “some good news” in the sense that the news of declining gender inequality being part good and part bad. Rather, it was “some” good news that it was an example of good news: It was amidst a long list of bad news — bad in the sense of showing continuing gender inequality — and it was then provided as an example of good news. Some good news amidst the sea of bad news.
That’s my sense from reading the article, at least. If you have a different reading, please say why, but I would ask you to do so without describing other commenters or me as “ridiculous,” a “straw man,” etc. Thanks.
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October 27, 2009, 1:37 pmOrin Kerr says:
Ryan, Brian K — be civil or I will ban both of you.
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October 27, 2009, 1:39 pmWhy? says:
Maybe my Rawls is rusty, but why wouldn’t #1 be acceptable under his theory of social justice? It guarantees any member of society at least $60k, which is $10k more than the $50k they’d have in #2. That should satisfy the veil of ignorance requirement. Inequity in wealth ($100k vs $60k) is also justified, since an increase in wealth inequity also benefits the least advantaged (who now earn $60k instead of $50k).
What would be the justification for picking #2? ‘No one should have more money than anyone else’? (Didn’t Churchill say something about the virtue of socialism being sharing misery equally?)
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October 27, 2009, 1:50 pmAnthony says:
I’m puzzled by how your interpretation is any different from his. Basically, we have two facts:
1) Gender inequality reduced
2) Income overall is reduced.
It is perfectly sensible for (1) to be considered independently good even if (2) means that people of both genders are making less than before. To look at a prior example: if men were making 100k and women were making 60k, and they dropped to 50k/50k, that’s clearly bad news overall — but it’s better news than men dropping to 70k and women dropping to 30k (assuming equal percentages in the workforce, which is of course not true).
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October 27, 2009, 1:57 pmFantasiaWHT says:
Why should anybody be able to leave a job for X number of years, come back, and expect to be in the same position (generally speaking, not meaning job title) as when they left? Related, why can’t an employer pay an employee less money because that employee has a higher chance of leaving, and is therefore less valuable prospectively?
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October 27, 2009, 2:01 pmMike McDougal says:
What’s unexplained about income inequality? My understanding is that once you control for inputs (e.g., hours and years worked) the inequality within job tracks virtually disappears.
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October 27, 2009, 2:05 pmShelbyC says:
But aren’t both men and women (maybe women especially, I don’t know) in a position where they lose focus on their careers, and miss time at work, and become less productive due to having children? How could that not possibly carry a penalty?
Surely you’re not suggesting that a farmer who missing planting time because of pregnancy should be able to harvest the same amout of crops as if she had not missed planting?
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October 27, 2009, 2:05 pmShelbyC says:
According to this article Obama does. I think many people do.
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October 27, 2009, 2:09 pmDavid Welker says:
Orin,
True. But irrelevant.
I do not believe this is true of ordinary conservatives. I do believe it is true of certain conservative elites such as certain politicians and “news” outlets like Fox News who twist and “spin” the truth in their highly selective reporting in a way that is extremely deceptive and obviously driven by propaganda purposes and sensationalism. If you are not cognizant of this reality, that is your mistake.
I didn’t read the entire article. I assumed that your excerpt was adequate for an understanding of your position. In fact, nothing in your post indicated that the full article was relevant. You wrote: “I was struck by this line.”
Based on that, a reasonable person would think that it was this line that you were struck by that is the object of discussion, not the entire article.
If the article and not the line is the object of your sarcastic comment, then your post could be infinitely improved by either (1) indicating that your position cannot be understood without reading the whole article or (2) excerpting the relevant portions of the article that support your position.
I am going to read the article now. I am fairly confident that my conclusion that you are creating a straw man will be confirmed after doing so. I highly doubt that the article adopts the absurd position or an unnuanced principle that would lead to the position where everyone being fired would be considered “good news.” Your response is highly hyperbolic and therefore naturally suspect.
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October 27, 2009, 2:09 pmHouston Lawyer says:
The primary reason that men make more money than women in the legal field is that men have devoted more of their time and attention to it. Women have found, by and large, that putting that level of devotion into law is not desirable because it interferes with their family life.
I look forward to the time when people stop bitching because those who work harder earn more. I’m not holding my breath.
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October 27, 2009, 2:11 pmPintler says:
To be devil’s advocate, what do you think of the studies that purport that a nation’s average happiness is higher with a flat wealth distribution, even if the median wealth is lower?
The marginal utility of additional wealth does, I think, depend strongly on how much you already have. When your children are hungry, a little more wealth makes you a lot happier, while doubling Bill Gates’ net worth is going to have only a small effect on his happiness. People sitting in their house in the Hamptons, consumed with jealousy that the neighbor’s Lambo outclasses their Porsche, might indeed be happier in a poorer community with a flatter distribution.
You can argue about whether the tipping point is $50K or $500K or whatever, but at some point I think a flatter distribution may actually result in a happier society over all.
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October 27, 2009, 2:13 pmEx parte McCardle says:
Blake’s hypothetical is is an instance of straight-up stacking the deck. Of course in that scenario everyone sensible would choose #1. As Why? points out, that would include John Rawls. But it’s easy to jiggle the figures so that one’s preferred response seems mandatory. Consider this counter-example:
Which is better?
1. 2% of the population make $100,000,000 per year; 98% make <$1000, and their children all suffer from excruciating debilitating illnesses, etc.
2. 100% make $50,000 per year.
As long as you just get to make up the numbers, anyone’s preferred answer can appear necessary.
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October 27, 2009, 2:13 pmLarryA says:
I suppose it would be even better news if everyone were fired, thus entirely eliminating lawyers.
Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
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October 27, 2009, 2:24 pmOrin Kerr says:
David Welker,
I think you will find that the better course in such circumstances is to confess error and apologize rather than continue to make a fool of yourself.
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October 27, 2009, 2:24 pmCalderon says:
So David Welker says:
But then earlier he said:
Presumably slicing the pie here means income equality, and if income equality is important then that sure looks like liberals believe income equality is an end in itself (not the only end, but an end)
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October 27, 2009, 2:30 pmLarryA says:
The problem with that isn’t the end, but the means. Flat income distribution doesn’t occur naturally. Mandating a flatter distribution kills the incentive to produce, thus killing the economy.
$50K/year/person may be enough to live on, but is it enough to invest in a new factory to produce the goods everyone wants to purchase with their $50K?
No new factory, no new goods. No new goods, nothing to sell to make the $50K. The average salary drops to $10K, but that’s adequate to purchase everything that’s now being manufactured. For the stuff that’s not being manufactured, you have to make do for yourself. Have fun hunting and gathering, and I’ll see you around the cooking fire.
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October 27, 2009, 2:38 pmDavid Welker says:
Orin,
After reading the article, I think the position that your concluding thought is both hyperbolic and constructing a strawman is confirmed.
Most of the article is actually mostly a discussion of statistics and their implications. While I certainly do detect a preference in the article in terms of a desire for more equality in the compensation and positions held by men and women, I think it is fairly balanced or at least not crazy in terms of perspective. Consider this line:
I am not sure I would use the term “fault” myself. But the article even leaves open the possibility that any disparities could be the “fault of women lawyers themselves.” Now, clearly the use the term “fault” indicate a certain perspective (i.e. disparities are, all things being equal, not good) but given that the author leaves open the possibility of “blaming” women themselves for this result, isn’t your position that this author would endorse a principle such that everyone being fired would be “good news” especially absurd?
Hardly anyone would seriously endorse a principle leading to the absurd position that we should all be “equal” in our total lack of material well-being. But especially not someone who is leaving the door open to “blaming” women for the inequality that exists in law firms.
Are you really going to defend your hyperbole? Why don’t you just admit it was hyperbole. There is nothing wrong with hyperbole, in all cases. But it is a form of argument that people who do not already agree with you are going to find persuasive. Further, in this case, your hyperbole does create a straw man. It is quite a leap from the text of the article to the conclusion that the author of the article would favor equality even if it means firing everyone or leaving everyone much worse off.
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October 27, 2009, 2:41 pmShelbyC says:
And is the goal a “happy” society or a “wealthy” society, or is the goal a free society?
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October 27, 2009, 2:43 pmDad says:
Prof. Kerr -
Perhaps you should try, “Don’t make me have to pull this thread over!”
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October 27, 2009, 2:52 pmShelbyC says:
Nice goalpost shifting, David. We all get that the last sentence is hyperbole. But you haven’t shown that it is “ridiculous and dismissive” or “a total straw man”
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October 27, 2009, 2:53 pmHappily Married to a KG Teacher says:
Mr Welker,
Women who want to make as much as men (in law or other occupations) should consider marrying a man who wants to stay home with the kids and do the housework. See, e.g., Becker’s work on human capital and sexual division of labor.
But ... Women who want to make as much as men often don’t wan’t to marry men who want to stay home with the kids and do the housework. See, e.g., Buss’s work on female CEOs who are wealthy but still want to marry up (i.e., marry somebody who is even wealthier than they are).
Moreover ... Men who marry women who make more than they do are asking for trouble. See, e.g., this Forbes’s article: http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html
Good luck changing the sexual division of labor: In the aggregate, women are more interested than men in having and raising children, which reduces their on-the-job experience, promotional opportunities, and lifetime earnings.
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October 27, 2009, 2:57 pmtvk says:
Orin, I think the snark is unfair. The sentence says “Some good news [was the pay gap shrunk]. But . . . the smaller gap is likely an overall effect of reduced compensation.” All else being equal, a diminished pay gap is in fact a good thing. It is not as if the author was portraying this as an unqualified good. Rather, it is more of a silver lining.
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October 27, 2009, 3:01 pmDavid Welker says:
The pie, despite our best efforts to maximize it, is limited in size. Most liberals are concerned that all people, regardless of the fact the people are obviously and everywhere imperfect as individuals, have access to high quality education, quality health care, and a decent standard of living. That all of the increases of pie are going to a select few while the slices of pie to everyone else are decreasing over time or increasing much less than should be the case is an obstacle to that goal.
Most liberals are also convinced that greater equality is more fair and that institutional arrangements and unequal starting positions lead to distributions of rewards being controlled by those in key positions rather than any conception of just reward. So, in that case, the aim is increased fairness (a concept that liberals take seriously) not strict equality. Hardly anyone thinks that people should not enjoy differential rewards within reasonable limits and when such differences are justified.
So, liberals use equality as an imperfect yardstick for (1) fairness and (2) ensuring that all people have access to important basics. That equality is an imperfect yardstick is obvious. But we have to make use of a lot of imperfect yardsticks in life. For example GDP, which can increases not only due to desirable economic exchanges, but also because of social dysfunctions like divorce (which leads to families living in two houses instead of one) or crime (which may lead to greater expenditures on security and replacing property). We use GDP not because it is perfect and not because GDP is an end in itself, but because it is a rough measure of what we really want to achieve (i.e. a bigger pie for society to divide so we can reduce poverty and improve peoples’ well-being). Now, of course, I welcome any improved measures. I hope that Joseph E. Stiglitz and Amartya Sen are able to devise a better measure of growth. But in the meantime, we use GDP.
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October 27, 2009, 3:07 pmmischief says:
On what evidence? On the whole, what I have seen of liberals inclines me to believe that they are delighted to shrink the pie if only they can slice it the way they like.
Rhetorical statements are not evidence. What concrete actions do they do — or at least advocate for — to grow the pie?
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October 27, 2009, 3:16 pmDavid Welker says:
Great. Well this particular hyperbole was both “ridiculous and dismissive” and created a “total straw man.”
Orin Kerr is makes a straw man by stripping the argument of critical distinctions (“some good news” becomes “good news”). Hence “total straw man.” This makes a mockery of the article, enabling it to be easily dismissed. Hence “dismissive.” Yet this is an obvious and blatantly mistaken reading of the article. Hence “ridiculous.”
Of course, I should say when I use the term “ridiculous” instead of say “blatantly mistaken” or “obviously mistaken” and use the phrase “total straw man” instead of “straw man” I am likewise engaging in hyperbole.
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October 27, 2009, 3:17 pmDilan Esper says:
OK, hypothetical time.
Suppose that the cost of eliminating slavery in the United States would have been to throw the country into a 40 year long depression that decreased GDP and national wealth by 2/3.
Now, would that mean that we shouldn’t have eliminated slavery? And if we should have anyway, what, exactly, is wrong with noting a close in the gender gap during otherwise bad times?
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October 27, 2009, 3:31 pmgeokstr says:
That’s what us “ordinary conservatives” have been saying for decades about “...certain politicians and “news” outlets like...” ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, NYT, LAT, WaPo, Time, Newsweek, and pretty much all the rest of the media except Fox and talk radio.
Not only have we been saying it, we’ve been studying and proving this leftist phenomenon for many decades as well:
Media Bias Basics
In surveys where journalists, anchors, editors, journalism professors and their students, etc, et al, ad nauseum are asked to self-identify their political beliefs, philosophical leanings, preferred parties and candidates, who they donated to and voted for, every study done shows them to be far to the left of the rest of the country. They vote and donate to Democrats between 80% and 95% of the time in every election going back to the 1970s.
Of course, you on the left would have us believe that these are total professionals who put aside their own prejudices and play it all straight down the middle. If you really believe that, I’m still offering to sell that full-size airport in Murtha’s district with three passengers a week — cheap.
So now you’ve finally gotten some pushback after two generations of leftist sycophancy from the media, and we’re all liars and spinners, right? Even if that were true, I can tell that you don’t like it very much, do you?
Now you know how we’ve felt for the last 40 years.
And of course, you’re trying to silence us, like the liberal defender of freedom of speech that you are. And you’ve still got 95% of the media on your side it’s still not enough for you. You can’t take it that opposing voices actually exist and are allowed to speak.
Well, that’s just too damned bad.
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October 27, 2009, 3:40 pmAk Mike says:
tvk — let’s say men’s salaries averaged 100k and women’s salaries averaged 80k. Now, men’s salaries average 85k and women’s average 75k. Yes, the gap has shrunk, but both men and women are worse off. Why is this good news in any way, shape, or form? Where’s the silver lining?
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October 27, 2009, 3:41 pmAnthony says:
Because with the same economic contraction, it could be men’s salaries averaged 100k and women’s salaries averaged 60k. While it’s certainly possible to disagree with the author’s point, it’s not incoherent or blatantly stupid.
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October 27, 2009, 3:47 pmOrin Kerr says:
David Welker,
Obviously I was making a joke: No one would genuinely think that it is good news for everyone to be fired. The idea was to poke fun at the idea, reflected in the excerpt quoted, that it could even possibly be good news for everyone to be hurt because it might lessen the disparity in income, by pointing out a more extreme version that everyone realizes is bad. If you want to interpret that joke as “hyperbole,” I suppose you are free to do so. But then of course it was hyperbole: That’s what jokes such as that are.
Perhaps it’s time you took a break from commenting here to cool off a bit, and then come back if and when you would like to comment in good faith? I think it would be a good idea.
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October 27, 2009, 3:58 pmShelbyC says:
I’m not sure I follow. Slavery is inheriently evil, but the gender gap isn’t necessarily so.
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October 27, 2009, 4:01 pmDave N says:
As a government attorney who will likely never make what a non-equity partner makes ($250k, on average, for females, $275k for males), let alone what an equity partner of either sex makes, I shed few, if any, tears.
On the other hand, the tradeoff of NOT having to bill 2000+ hours year is well worth it to me. It’s called, “Having a life.”
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October 27, 2009, 4:42 pmDilan Esper says:
I’m not sure I follow. Slavery is inheriently evil, but the gender gap isn’t necessarily so.
1. At least to the extent that the gender gap reflects gender discrimination, it is, in fact, evil.
BUT
2. You also missed my point. The point was that slavery obviously made a lot of blacks worse off. If the price of making those blacks better off was to make the entire country much worse off, I don’t think too many people would nonetheless argue that it was illegitimate to point to the fact that blacks were relatively better off as a result of slavery ending.
This is just the same thing on a smaller scale. Women were getting screwed over more before, and they are getting screwed over less now. That’s good news, even though it comes during a recession, which is bad news. There’s no contradiction in noting both trends.
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October 27, 2009, 4:43 pmShelbyC says:
Maybe, maybe not. Is it evil when car insurers do it?
And your point only holds to the extent that the gender gap has “unfair” causes, and there’s hardly a consensus on this. For example, if more women started committing crimes, and getting arrested, it’d sound kinda funny to say, “But the good news is, the gender gap in arrest rates is down”
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October 27, 2009, 4:57 pmLeo Marvin says:
But as I read the excerpt in the OP, this isn’t “just the same thing on a smaller scale.” The gender gap reduction seems to be an unintended artifact of shrinking an entire compensation category, i.e., equity partner pay, which has a larger gender disparity than law firm compensation generally. It’s not as if there’s a positive analog to ending slavery which would justify a drop in overall prosperity. A better analogy would be to say depressed cotton markets furthered racial equality because they disproportionately punished slave owners. You could make that argument, but it’s more complicated and less obvious.
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October 27, 2009, 5:13 pmIke says:
Does anyone else think it is a bit funny to be chuckling about an income inequality comment on a blog exclusively run by men. Out of curiosity, have any women commented on this particular post? Judging by the comments, it is great to hear that sexism in the legal profession is a myth.
Why not just say you are better because you are a man, and cut out the rationalizing?
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October 27, 2009, 5:31 pmDavid Welker says:
That I do not understand that you are joking does not imply that I am not commenting in good faith.
It is interesting that you are joking. Perhaps ideally I should have perceived this due to your normal tendency towards moderation. BUT, there are plenty of people who characterize liberals precisely as this joke did, only they aren’t joking. Or at least their sense of humor is not apparent to me. That you are not one of those people who are serious with respect to that characterization is good to know.
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October 27, 2009, 5:42 pmyankee says:
That is correct. If the pie is an extra large but it is cut in such a way that virtually all of it goes to the top 1% and only a tiny sliver goes to the poor, that is not a good result. If the pie is just a medium but a larger absolute amount goes to the poor, that is a better result.
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October 27, 2009, 5:50 pmricky says:
“Is it evil when car insurers do it?”
Obviously not. They discriminate against men.
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October 27, 2009, 5:53 pmricky says:
“Why not just say you are better because you are a man, and cut out the rationalizing?”
Why not just admit that you’re an idiot and aren’t capable of comprehending anything beyond “OMG WE R ALL EQUAL GUYZ!”
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October 27, 2009, 5:56 pmShelbyC says:
They’re all busy doing work.
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October 27, 2009, 5:57 pmtvk says:
Ak Mike. The economic contraction is surely bad news. But a reduction in income inequality is good news within the bad news. Lets make this really easy. Your boss comes to you and says “You’re fired.” That is surely bad news. But it would be “some good news” (given an overall bad situation) that your boss says you get a generous six months severance package.
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October 27, 2009, 5:59 pmShelbyC says:
HL’s comment doesn’t imply that one set of trade-off’s is “better”, just different.
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October 27, 2009, 6:01 pmBob Gladstone says:
It seems clear to me that the most natural reading of the quoted text is:
1. It is good news that the compensation gap decreased,
but
2. It is bad news that the driver of this decrease is a decrease in equity compensation for both men and women.
These are, after all, distinct facts, as someone else noted above. In theory, 2 could be true without 1, and that would be even worse. I’m not sure what you find objectionable. And your title does seem misleading. The quote in fact asserts that it is bad news, not good, that people are making less money. I know, the last sentence was a joke, but it was also a joke to make a point, and in doing, it did seem like hyperbole, at least to me. I believe David Welker is making essentially this point and I am baffled at your response. He starting off making a serious point–while, I might add, complimenting your usual posting style. You then went on the offensive, citing the unrelated matter of comments of his you had had to delete months ago. Possibly he rubbed you the wrong way with comments to other posts and that’s the explanation of what’s going on here.
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October 27, 2009, 6:04 pmDavid Welker says:
You are clearly economically illiterate if you do not understand the difference between price discrimination, which is often a good thing because it reduces unnecessary deadweight costs, and gender discrimination, which is hardly ever a good thing.
What is your next argument? That race discrimination may or not be evil because cereal manufacturers issue coupons which enables them to engage in price discrimination?
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October 27, 2009, 6:10 pmricky says:
What is the difference between price discrimination based on gender, and pay discrimination based on gender, if they are both based on the expected value of the transaction?
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October 27, 2009, 6:12 pmDilan Esper says:
Maybe, maybe not. Is it evil when car insurers do it?
It’s not good. (Indeed, there’s quite a lot of actuarily sound activities that insurance companies engage in that are nonetheless not socially beneficial.)
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October 27, 2009, 6:33 pm11-B/20.B4 says:
It doesn’t make one less intelligent, but nice straw man. Dropping out of work to have and raise children DOES make one less experienced relative to colleagues who did not follow that path, and in that sense, less capable. Paying more for more experienced workers is fair no? And if you want to blame women’s role in the reproductive cycle on something, might I suggest some god or another, because it sure as hell isn’t men’s fault. Is it unfortunate for women (within the confines of career goals) that they have to choose between family and work in a way that men don’t? Yes. Is it “systemic discrimination”? Not in the least. It is the end product of evolution, and the sequestering of gender roles it produced. If you don’t like it, don’t have kids, and thus remove yourself from the only real point of existence.
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October 27, 2009, 6:40 pmShelbyC says:
Well, from your comment it doesn’t sound like you understand either one.
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October 27, 2009, 6:44 pmIke says:
You sound a touch bitter. It is clear that you are without equal. You have a better handle on this situation than most. Is it through personal experience?
May all you job interviews be with women. Make sure to share your rhetorical brilliance with them.
LOL
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October 27, 2009, 6:50 pmShelbyC says:
Geez David, you might want to read up a little bit on price discrimination, it’s got to be pretty embarassing to accuse me of being economically illiterate in the same comment where you show that you blatantly misunderstand an economic concept.
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October 27, 2009, 6:57 pmIke says:
You seem to blame any income disparity on the fact that women can make babies? Does that mean that women without families do not suffer from income disparity? Or, is it ok to pay them all less because they all have the possibility of making babies?
Related to this, do any of you know firms that hire women because they start and maintain families, and have the tendency to go in and out of the profession? It seems like a good way to keep employee costs low.
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October 27, 2009, 7:01 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
tvk,
The economic contraction is surely bad news. But a reduction in income inequality is good news within the bad news. Let’s make this really easy. Your boss comes to you and says “You’re fired.” That is surely bad news. But it would be “some good news” (given an overall bad situation) that your boss says you get a generous six months severance package.
Except that a severance package is unambiguously better than no severance package for the worker who gets it. Is it similarly better for me if, when I get a $5K pay cut, at least Ted in the next office gets a $10K pay cut at the same time? “Well, we’re all getting slammed, but at least the men are getting slammed harder than the women” really doesn’t strike me as good news for anyone.
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October 27, 2009, 7:03 pmDavid Welker says:
ricky,
If you did not allow price discrimination based on gender, some lower risk drivers would see their premiums rise. Some of these lower risk drivers would be unable to afford insurance at all, and would either drive illegally and uninsured or would stop driving at all. This would be a deadweight loss to society, because these drivers would in fact value insurance at a price more than it would cost for insurance companies to provide it to them, but insurance companies would be unable to lower their prices to capture this business.
The point, of course, is not to discriminate against anyone based on gender. The point is to accurately estimate risk. That gender is used is entirely incidental. Furthermore, this is based on objective data in a very narrow area of endeavor. If trends changed and the objective risk profiles of individuals changed, then insurance rates would change as well.
Of course, there must be limits to this sort of logic. It is inappropriate, in my view, to base credit ratings on zip codes and thus exclude individuals from credit not based on their individual characteristics, but rather where they happen to live. I also do not think it is appropriate to intrusively gather detailed data on consumer habits and then discriminate based on what people buy where what people buy is correlated with race or ethnicity. I also think there are privacy values being violated by such intrusive consumer surveillance. I also think it would be wrong to set interest rates based on gender, instead of individual characteristics.
Is there a decent fairness argument for setting car insurance rates only on objective behavior variables over which individuals have control, such as number of tickets or accidents? I think so. Surely there are some young 17 year old drivers who are more safe than experienced middle-aged drivers. But I think it is also unfair when people are priced out of the insurance market, even though they value insurance more than it would cost to provide it to them if all the data that were available were used. I guess I could go either way on this.
In contrast, the case of traditional gender discrimination is easy to classify. It is wrong. The desire to express social dominance through gender discrimination against women in the workplace is an entirely different thing than employing imperfect estimators of risk in pricing insurance. Obviously, the desire to pigeon hole women or men into specific gender roles despite their individual inclinations to shape their identities in a different manner is an entirely different thing as well. The desire for social dominance based on gender or to exert control over someone’s identity based on gender is obviously reprehensible.
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October 27, 2009, 7:06 pmShelbyC says:
Well, wasn’t traditional gender discrimination often based on the risk of women leaving to have children? What’s the difference between that and gender discrimination in car insurance?
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October 27, 2009, 7:14 pmNickM says:
Ladies and gentlemen, the Broken Window Fallacy is alive and well.
Nick
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October 27, 2009, 7:29 pmricky says:
Shelby, don’t be obtuse. It’s true that there are many different factors which have predictive value. But if you consider factors that David Welker doesn’t approve of, you’re an evil bigot.
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October 27, 2009, 7:31 pmArthurKirkland says:
Just as I look forward to the day when conservatives stop whining and moaning about perceived biased in academic circles. Any disparity is treatment of conservatives is readily explained by a number of factors — liberals are smarter, liberals are less likely to fall for dogmatic gibberish, conservatives are money-grubbers who disdain altruism (and in some cases consider it a moral failing), students prefer instructors who make sense, there are relatively few people who can swallow conservative dogma in this country, liberals do not reject science — and, besides, conservatives have plenty of conservative-dominated enclaves endowed by dim-witted heirs and selfishness-prizing tycoons. Why force our finest institutions to lower their standards by seeking out conservative faculty members — especially when everyone knows the smart, hard-working conservatives go to Wall Street for big bucks? Do we want to turn Harvard and Berkeley and Yale and Amherst into Texas Tech and Oral Roberts and Wyoming and Grove City?
My point exactly. I’ve already tired of explaining why conservatives should consider themselves lucky to possess their current representation in academia.
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October 27, 2009, 7:35 pmAnthony says:
No. It is common to have a pay gap which can be explained by noting that some women leave the work pool for a number of years and wind up behind on the pay ladder (there are reasons it might be desirable to compensate for this event, but it’s not an irrational bias). However, that effect is generally inadequate to explain the actual pay differential, and the possibility of having children at some later point is hardly cause to significantly alter pay scale ahead of time.
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October 27, 2009, 7:35 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
David Welker,
I don’t quite understand the judgments of your sensitive ethical antennae, I guess. If purchasing habits or Zip code correlate well enough with driving behavior that it is worth an insurer’s trouble to ascertain them and apply them in assessing risk, doesn’t failing to do so affect the lower-risk driver in much the same way that you acknowledge that failing to use the age and gender correlations would? It would seem to me that, if anything, the ethical difficulty ought to be with using those correlates that an individual driver has no power over. I can move, and I can change my purchasing habits, but there’s not much I can do about my age or sex.
And why ought it to matter whether something that correlates with risk also “correlates with race or ethnicity”? I confess that I don’t see how it can be OK to use a suspect classification (gender) openly in pricing car insurance, but not OK to use a classification that merely correlates with a different suspect classification. What am I missing here?
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October 27, 2009, 7:39 pmShelbyC says:
Well, about forty years ago that possibility was significantlly higher, and the pay gap was significantly bigger. There are many possibile reasons for the pay gap, and the theory that employers are voluntarily paying men more to do the same work, for no benefit and at great legal risk, seems to me to be the least plausible. A more likely reason is that men are perceived to be better performers, and you can argue over whether or not that perception is correct, but I’d imagine that this answer is unknowable.
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October 27, 2009, 7:43 pmIke says:
“Traditional” gender discrimination was based on many things, including the idea that women were frail, prone to hysteria, poor in competitive situations, unable to command in leadership situations, cycles of the moon, etc. However, you are correct. It is unfair that I pay more for car insurance because I am a man. The insurance company is taking a generalization (women are safer drivers than men) and applying it to me. I would rather be treated as an individual. It should also be noted that the insurance company is gambling at this point—just because they choose to charge some women less does not mean they will not actually cause an accident.
All statistics do is compound individual examples for easier reading. The mistake is to then take those statistics and apply them to individuals, and use them as a justification for a decision. If I am in a job interview, I would rather you look at me, and my accomplishments, rather than my genitalia. Unless it was Ricky.
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October 27, 2009, 7:46 pmShelbyC says:
But don’t all predictive exercises involve doing that. We generalize that people who went to law school will be better lawyers that people who didn’t, etc. What I was responding to was Dilan’s comment that gender discrimination is inheirently evil. Now paying women less because you don’t like women is wrong, but there are clearly forms of gender discrimination that aren’t evil. I don’t think Curves not allowing men is evil, for example, nor do I think insurance companies using gender to assess risk is evil. I was wondering where you draw the line.
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October 27, 2009, 8:03 pmSplunge says:
Ha ha, why am I reminded of the “good news” about socialized health care? Sure, the outcomes might on average be worse, but gosh darn it we’ll finally all have equal access to the new, lower quality health care. Yippee!
I guess I’m also reminded of the quote from the true narcissist: it is not enough that I succeed: others must fail! Apparently plenty of people actually think that way.
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October 27, 2009, 8:18 pmricky says:
“I was wondering where you draw the line.”
Most leftists draw the line at discriminating against their special “protected” groups in favor of heterosexuals, Christians, whites, or men. Discrimination is completely OK as long as you only discriminate against those groups.
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October 27, 2009, 8:20 pmAnthony says:
Yes, but it doesn’t really matter that much; for many forms of employment the risk of you not being in your current job in a year’s time has little relevance to how useful you are as an employee (in fact, employers may prefer people who don’t stick around and develop seniority), and unlike many reasons someone might leave a job, at least a woman who leaves because of pregnancy is likely to give her employer well over 30 days notice.
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October 27, 2009, 8:27 pmDavid Welker says:
Michelle,
Your point makes perfect sense. But if you look closely at what I wrote, you will see that I was talking about credit decisions, not insurance rates for driving, with respect to zip code. Of course it should be permissable to set insurance rates for driving based on zip code! It would be ridiculous to have identical insurance rates in New York City and Omaha, Nebraska when presumably drivers in the latter location have much less risk of getting into an accident.
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October 27, 2009, 8:31 pmIke says:
Fair question. The usual place to draw the line is when the discrimination becomes institutionalized. For example, if the insurance company only looked at my gender to set my rate, that would be unfair, and they do not do that—companies, I believe, will look at driver record before gender. When a company does go looking at one particular stat and acts on that stat alone—say, redlining neighborhoods—then you cross into discrimination. Evil is probably too strong a term, but it is clearly unfair.
It is also important to note what stat we are going to choose to discriminate around. For example, there are many communication studies which note that women tend to be better at conciliation and compromise than men (again, this is just a generality.) Why does that not become the key quality we will discriminate around?
Back to the law, and employment. People in the comments have been using statistical argument to justify “discrimination,” and that is the heart of the problem. To apply a statistical generalization to an individual and assume that it typifies that individual is a hasty generalization—you are rushing to judgement on that particular person. (It should be noted that the article Kerr is discussing also just assumes that the stat tells the whole picture.) We do these things when other factors are not available for us to assess. In the SAT example, we use it as a predictive, along with high school record. But we leave it behind later—did anyone’s employer ask about their SAT in their first post-college interview? For that matter, did anyone ask about your college grades 5 years out from college. That is why we interview—so we can make a judgement about the person, not the person’s stats. If you are a boss, and you are going to be “discriminating” in your choices, choose (and pay) based on who the employee is, not what they are. Because you do not have to rely on actuarial tables to tell you who that person is.
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October 27, 2009, 8:35 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
David Welker,
Yes, of course. But suppose there are correlations involving Zip code that aren’t explicable purely via differences in the number of vehicles on the road.
Or just return to your credit example. What is the difference between an observed correlation between living in a certain Zip code and risk of default and an observed correlation between gender and risk of an accident that makes it OK to take account of one but not the other?
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October 27, 2009, 8:46 pmIke says:
That’s right. History is just a long tale of white hetero christian males getting the short end of the stick.
Speaking as a white, heterosexual, christian male, please stop talking. You are giving us all a bad name.
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October 27, 2009, 8:53 pmtherut says:
Being a female physicin, I have never undersood the ranting of liberals about women being paid less than men. All female physicians could make as much as men in fact I do. But, you will not make as much if you work half-time (as many females do). If the male physicians worked half-time they too would make less. As far as I know no insurance company, government enitity or patient pays a man different than a woman for the same service. Same job ==== same pay.
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October 27, 2009, 8:55 pmMartha says:
ShelbyC:
Obama doesn’t say that in the article you link to. From the article:
It’s certainly plausible for someone to believe that trickle-down growth is better than bottom-up growth, but both are predicated on growth. “Economic growth” ≠ “income equality is an end in itself.” Perhaps elsewhere Obama has said what you claim.
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October 27, 2009, 9:03 pmricky says:
“History is just a long tale of white hetero christian males getting the short end of the stick.”
I get it dude, irony!!!
And what you’re saying is that because white hetero christian males have been successful previously, it’s completely OK to discriminate against them now. Word! “Sins” of the father and all that!! I remember when I used to live in Germany, we used the same justification to establish that all those greedy Jews deserved anything they got!!! And we sure took them down a peg, LOL!!!!!!!!!1
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October 27, 2009, 9:07 pmricky says:
“What is the difference between an observed correlation between living in a certain Zip code and risk of default and an observed correlation between gender and risk of an accident that makes it OK to take account of one but not the other?”
The difference is that pricing insurance based on zip codes is BIGOTED and RACIST and STUPID, and charging men more for insurance is just common sense. What, are you a stupid bigoted racist?
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October 27, 2009, 9:09 pmIke says:
The irony you don’t seem to get is your identification with a group that has historically been persecuted by white Christian males.
I was wrong, however. Keep talking. You complete me.
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October 27, 2009, 9:27 pmricky says:
Good point. The reason why Jews in Germany were wealthier than other groups is because heterosexual white Christian males persecuted them. Therefore, we should persecute white Christian males today because they are inherently evil.
Clearly, Jews in Germany were persecuted because of their religion rather than because they were more successful. But heterosexual white Christian males in America are successful, and it can only because of their own biases. Therefore it is okay to persecute successful people if they are heterosexual white Christian males. Because it’s absolutely inconceivable that heterosexual white Christian males succeeded based on their own merits, the way Jews just happened to succeed in Germany.
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October 27, 2009, 9:46 pmDavid Welker says:
therut,
I don’t think very many people are concerned that someone who voluntarily chooses to work part-time makes less than someone with identical skills and experience who works full-time. Do you REALLY think this is what many people are concerned about?
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October 27, 2009, 10:21 pmricky says:
“I don’t think very many people are concerned that someone who voluntarily chooses to work part-time makes less than someone with identical skills and experience who works full-time”
But if one group tends to choose part-time work over full-time work, and that leads to group pay disparities, there will be tons of idiots (probably yourself included) who act as if the pay differential is a second Holocaust.
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October 27, 2009, 10:30 pmq says:
I think you mischaracterize both liberals and conservatives to some extent. If either group were truly forced to look at their beliefs, they’d realize there isn’t that much dichotomy. Outside of political tribalism and bloviating, most everyone would agree both a larger pie and a more equitable distribution are ideal. Many conservatives donate their money and time to the needy, which is a private form of redistribution. And I don’t think anyone would agree that society would not be worse off if the pie stayed the same but the bottom 90% were forced to give their wealth to the top 10%.
The disagreement comes from how best to balance pie growing and pie slicing when they are at odds, which they often are. Conservatives tend to take a more supply-side view: focus on increasing the pie and the rest will follow. They say that even if low and middle-class inflation-adjusted incomes have remined stagnant for the last decade, wealth has still increased for them because of upper-class investments and production of, for example, technological goods. Liberals aren’t so nearly convinced and believe a strong social safety net is necessary and desirable even if the pie does not grow as quickly. Private attempts to provide such a safety net have shown to be inadequate.
Of course this is all completely irrelevant, as politics is not about policy. Pretty much any discussion on income equality (actually any political discussion) I have come across devolves into both sides making arguments not from their sincere beliefs on what is good policy, but rather from tribalistic urges to signal one’s allegiance to the faction they’ve so emotionally committed to. Hence we have liberals attempting to find a silver-lining in a world where everyone is worse off (how can less income inequality be considered even “some” good news if it’s because everyone is poorer? Where is the “good” in that?) and conservatives attempting to argue inequality doesn’t matter at all (it does, and a very strong economic argument backs it up).
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October 27, 2009, 10:59 pmOren says:
Why don’t we exclude the part-timers from the calculation, then. In fact, we could read Figure 2 Ratio of Female to Male Earnings (Medians) for Full-Time, Year-Round Workers.
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October 27, 2009, 11:06 pmShelbyC says:
I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons for the disparity. But I sure don’t see any evidence that people are voluntarily overpaying people of a certain gender is a significant factor.
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October 27, 2009, 11:12 pmDavid Welker says:
Michelle,
Really good question. To answer it, I think we need to return to basic principles. In our society, wish some exceptions, we generally believe that people should be judged based on their individual characteristics. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I think one general principle here is that people should be judged based upon their individual characteristics, and not assumptions based on generalizations.
Now, we could not run our entire society based on this principle, however. For example, it would be nonsense for someone to get life insurance based entirely on their individual characteristics. No one knows precisely how long any individual will live. We can only make estimates based on statistics concerning how long other individuals have lived. That is, we make judgments about an individual using data from others. Without doing that, we could not really have insurance markets (and the immense benefits that insurance provides in terms of spreading risk). Even so, with insurance we can still make quasi-individual judgments. Your age is an individual characteristics. However, some 20-year olds will live less than ten years. Some 80-year olds will live longer than ten years. But, based on data about other individuals in society, insurance will be provided at a lower rate to the 20-year old than the 80-year old, because this is usually a good bet, even though it isn’t in this particular instance. Really, even though insurance companies are “sort of” evaluating you on your individual characteristics, they are doing it based on crude generalizations that are only accurate in the aggregate.
But note. This judging people in such a crude and generalized way is not generally acceptable. We do not generally approve of age discrimination or gender discrimination. But insurance markets are more efficient the more data we allow them to use. In fact, I doubt the life insurance could function very well at all without allowing price discrimination based on age.
It is true, of course, that individuals do not choose their age or their gender. But if we do not allow insurance companies to use such data, they will face the problem of adverse selection–most people would wait until they were really old to buy life insurance, if they had to pay the same rates as the oldest among us, even if they bought it when they were much younger. The end result would be inefficient insurance markets. There would be a deadweight loss in which people who would like to pay more than enough in premiums for insurance given their risk, but who are prevented from doing so because no insurance company could consider their positive risk characteristics. Just as people cannot choose their age or gender, these people would not be able to choose whether or not to buy insurance. So, what we are left with is a genuinely hard choice. Either some people have to pay more because of characteristics they cannot control, or some other people who do not have those risk characteristics will not be able to pay for insurance at all because they will be priced out of the market. Ultimately, we choose to allow some generalizations to influence the prices paid by individuals because if we didn’t do so we would (1) not have an insurance market at all or (2) much less efficient insurance markets where many people would be priced out, especially due to the problem of adverse selection.
That said, efficient insurance markets are not everything. For example, we do not want people denied health insurance due to preexisting conditions. Instead, we want to provide healthcare to those who need it. Even if it would be more profitable for insurance companies to monitor our credit card purchases and our bank accounts when selling us life insurance, we would probably not let them on privacy grounds. Other examples where we would not want to allow maximally efficient insurance markets because that conflicts with our other values abound. Most of us would not want insurance companies doing genetic profiles on us or prying into our personal financial information and considering precisely how many alcoholic beverages we have purchased in the past year in making insurance pricing decisions. Even if it were profitable for insurance companies to use race in setting insurance rates, we are going to draw the line and say no.
But, every line we draw makes insurance markets somewhat less efficient, so expressing our values in this way is not a free lunch. We need to decide on a case-by-case basis when it is acceptable to do so. Which evil shall we embrace? A less efficient insurance market or people being judged upon characteristics they cannot control? Which is the lesser evil? The lesser evil varies based upon the individual context. We neither want insurance markets to malfunction nor do we want our individual and social values to be compromised.
Let us consider the use of gender in car insurance. Young males are charged more for insurance than young females. Why? Because young males are riskier drivers. They are more likely to speed, race other people, and drive recklessly. Many young males are driven, probably by testosterone, to drive in a more risky manner than many young females.
What to do... There is somewhere a young male driver who is very safe behind the wheel and a young female who is a reckless mad woman. To some extent, hopefully we capture this difference because the young female will have traffic tickets and accidents and the young male will not. However, not all the difference in risk will be captured by these individual factors. Especially since being given tickets or getting in accidents are partially random events. So, what you have are some safe male drivers who are in effect penalized by higher premiums by the risky behavior of their male peers. And you have some reckless females who are wrong rewarded by the generally safe behavior of their female peers. That isn’t good, but what is the alternative?
The alternative is to prevent insurance companies from engaging in price discrimination based on gender. But this will be a really bad outcome for good drivers who are female. Some of them will even be priced out of the market and will not be able to have insurance at all. And anyway, just because we don’t allow gender price discrimination doesn’t mean that people are judged on their individual characteristics. Some safe young female drivers are now in effect being penalized by higher premiums or being driven out of the market entirely because of the testerone-driven recklessness of some young male drivers. Is this really MORE fair? I don’t think so.
Credit ratings work along the same lines. No one knows ahead of time precisely which individuals will default and which will pay their bills. So it is necessary to make individual judgments based on data from groups. The same issues apply. There is a tension between judging people based on the content of their individual character and classifying them based on the groups they fall into.
So, why would I allow price discrimination based on zip code in car insurance markets but not in credit markets?
First of all, I think credit is typically a much more important determinant of future opportunity than car insurance rates. It is a much bigger deal when a prospective entrepreneur gets a loan to start a new business or does not get such a loan compared to whether an individual pays somewhat more or somewhat less for car insurance. Since it is a much more important decision, the social value of judging an individual based on their individual character and less on crude generalizations rises. Furthermore, if lenders use zip codes to rate credit, it is likely to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of poverty in certain zip codes. You could live in the “nice” area of a zip code, but it would become economically depressed because of the “bad” area that also exists in that zip code. Do you really want the decision of the Post Office in drawing a new boundaries for a zip code to have such a heavy influence on the economic fate of a particular community and on property values? Do we really want to create self-fulfilling prophecies where previous poverty in a community prevents innovative entrepreneurs from arising to transform that community?
In contrast, it would be really ridiculous if drivers in Omaha, Nebraska had to pay higher insurance rates because voters in New York City refused to make the hard decisions to improve their own infrastructure and make driving more safe. Driving in New York City is more risky than driving in Omaha, Nebraska. It is also more of a luxury, whereas in Omaha, Nebraska, it is closer to a necessity. Finally, we would not expect major negative effects by allowing insurance companies to engage in price discrimination between New York City and Omaha, Nebraska.
Anyway, to conclude, you really have to look at the individual context to make decisions here. There is no simplistic top-down analysis that can be brought to bear on the topic of price discrimination. You have to look at the facts on the ground and then make a decision. You cannot simply say that price discrimination on some basis or another is acceptable or unacceptable without thinking carefully about the particular market in question.
In contrast, it is safe to say that gender discrimination in law firms or trying to impose a particular gender identity on an individual against their will is ethically immoral. There is much less need for a case-by-case analysis. Obviously, I am not saying that these subject are totally unrelated, but they are very different.
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October 27, 2009, 11:43 pmDavid Welker says:
You are confusing two different concepts. In the aggregate, an event can be bad, even very bad, but it can have a silver-lining. For example, a recession could be really bad both in the short-term and long-term, but it also might lead to some people getting a college education and becoming more productive as a result.
Just because this small good is so heavily out-weighed by the short-term and long-term negative effects of the recession which caused it to occur does not mean it would be incorrect to single this out as a small silver-lining to an otherwise bad event.
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October 27, 2009, 11:53 pmShelbyC says:
But it’s by no meant obvious that a reducton in income inequality is “good”, unless you believe that a reduction in income inequality is an end in itself.
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October 28, 2009, 12:06 amDavid Welker says:
True. This is one of the problems with using an imperfect measure like income equality or GDP. The good thing about income inequality or GDP is that these things are easy to measure. The bad thing about them is that they are imprecise measures of what we are trying to accomplish. Even worse, we imperfect humans sometimes have a tendency to think of our goals in terms of the things that imperfectly measure them and lose sight of the real goal.
That said, one could hope (perhaps naively) that the reduction in income inequality in terms of gender at law firms that has occurred due to the recession outlives the recession and that it will help influence a restructuring of law firms so that they are more friendly and flexible concerning the aspirations of both men and women who would like to make family a higher priority like it properly should be. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.
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October 28, 2009, 12:22 amOren says:
Why would the firm want to be encouraging workers to consider something other than the firm as their highest priority?
Can you point to any law firm on planet Earth that meets this standard?
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October 28, 2009, 12:37 amDavid Welker says:
Because “the firm” is an abstraction for a group of people, and it is possible for reasonable people to intelligently realize that family rightfully come first and respect others who make family a priority. It is called being grounded in basic values, a concept that is obviously foreign to you, but not foreign to all human beings nor all lawyers.
Really?? I am not going to even respond, except by asserting that there are a whole lot of law firms out there. Why don’t YOU prove that there aren’t any. =)
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October 28, 2009, 12:45 amShelbyC says:
Sure, but not everyone’s the same. Some folks don’t have families, and therefore don’t make family much of a priority. Other folks have just a wife, or older kids, and can make work more of a priority. Some folks have younger kids and have to make family more of a priority. Shouldn’t the firm value the folks who are able to make work more of a priority?
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October 28, 2009, 1:43 pmDavid Welker says:
ShelbyC,
Are you asking in terms of the short-term or the long-term? If someone works half-time due to having young children, of course they should be paid less. Should their long-term prospects at the firm be less? I don’t think so.
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October 28, 2009, 4:44 pmShelbyC says:
Well, I don’t know. If they work half time for 10 years they’ll only have 5 years experience...
But sometimes I get the impression that folks who are unable to work overtime or to do professional development on their own time feel that they shouldn’t be penalized professionally relative to those who do. You’d expect someone who spends time with his family insead of working extra to have less professional success and a more rewarding family life than someone who doesn’t have as much of a family life. That’s how tradeoffs work.
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October 28, 2009, 5:11 pmgeokstr says:
What rubbish; mindless drivel supported by nothing except your own religious hatred of anything to the right of Hugo and Fidel. That has to be one of the most insanely arrogant comments I have seen anywhere to date.
You wouldn’t happen to have any cites for these BS claims you’re making, would you? “Liberals are smarter” — yeah, right. Where are the studies that prove that inane, hubristic remark, and please, not ones conducted by “liberals”?
And “liberals are less likely to fall for dogmatic gibberish”. I assume here you mean, like, religious stuff. But the leftist religion is actually much more dogmatic than the traditional ones, because you have to believe all the Marxist tenets apply to here on earth, right now. The old-style religious are trying to get to a paradise in the next life, while the left believes that we can have paradise now, all you have to do is kill off the several billion who don’t believe. You have your own devils (Bush, Limbaugh, et al), your gods (Obama, Marx, et al), your bible (Das Kapital), and your 12 commandments (the Rules of Alinsky). When is the last time you haven’t excommunicated followers for being pro-life, or anti-jihad, or deniers of the Holy AGW?
“...conservatives are money-grubbers...” well somebody has to have, like, real jobs or something to actually produce things and generate tax revenues to support the leftists gorging at the government teat. And conservatives “...disdain altruism...” except it turns out that isn’t true, either, is it?
John Stossel
Leftists love to give away OPM, but not their own.
And as to what students prefer, you’ll no doubt have a cite for us there too?
And “...liberals do not reject science...”. Ya got me there. They actually embrace science, and then turn around and twist and spin and politicize it to prove that Mr. Marx and his progeny, algore, were right all along.
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October 28, 2009, 5:29 pmFormer Chicagoan says:
What a bunch of ignorant Marxist comments. I hate postings w/o comments but with stupid comments like these I’d rather skip them.
The choice is not between rich with poor or everyone making $50,000 a year the choice is between rich with poor and everyone making $1200 a year. Do the math.
And why is it whenever income inequality is the greatest that the economy is booming? Equality = poverty. Inequality = growth.
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October 28, 2009, 11:16 pm