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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (2328)	11/19/2003 11:56:23 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

"A number of studies show that women make less money than men who work the same job." Show me a link with such a comprehensive study. TIA. OK fine I'll withdraw my comment. If you insist, no studies show that women make less money then men. In that case I guess we don't have an issue... Its kind of strange that you are questioning me and asking for support when I say you are right about some particular point. "The pay rates for jobs are determined by supply and demand , not by how much society values people working a particular job." That's not true. Ballplayers get paid huge salaries because people war willing to pay to watch them play. Thank you for confirming my point. People are willing to pay to watch them play. In other words there is demand. If there was also tons of supply, if every other person could play all-star level baseball, then the price for the players would be low. But because all of this demand meets limited supply, prices are high. Basic Economics 101. Same goes for actors. There are a ton of good actors who want to act. The demand is not just for "good actors". The real money (or real demand) is not just for people who can act. Person A can be a less skilled actor then person B but A might be more attractive or have more of a presence or a better voice or some other quality that causes people to want to watch a movie with A in it. The direct customer for the actors talents are the studios and producers. There demand is for people who can get people to watch movies. There is a limited supply of people with a track record of doing that so those who have such a track record can command a high price. (lots of money/demand chasing a limited supply equals high prices). Supply of teachers is going down. In fact, the number of male teachers is at the lowest level in years but teaching salaries don't go up The number of people teaching has not greatly gone down if it has gone down at all. And teaching salaries have gone up. They probably would have gone up more if teaching was normal private sector activity but teaching is mostly a government job which means that the money has to be allocated through a political process. The president of the US or the governor of CA (even before Arnold said he would not take his salary) gets paid a lot less then CEOs of large companies for much the same reason. The political process has greatly increased the amount of money going to schools but I think in many places more of it has gone to hiring more administrators and support staff (and in some places hiring more teachers) then to increasing the wages of teachers. Supply and demand is just one of several factors that determine the level of salaries. One example....... the level of one's salary can be determined by a person's appearance. Because your appearance effects the level of demand. "Having wages controlled by beaurocrats who determine what value work has would be an unmitigated disaster." A disaster? How? And just for the record, you are a bureaucrat. So I wouldn't be too harsh with your brethren. I am not a bureaucrat but in any case I was not slamming bureaucrats. Having wages determined by any committee or group would be a disaster, its just that bureaucrats would be the people that would most likely make the decisions in the US if a law based on that idea of a Fair Pay Act passed. If it was politicians making the decisions directly (which is possible but seems unlikely) it might be even worse then if the bureaucrats made a decisions. It wouldn't be any better if some sort of "blue ribbon committee" made the decisions. For a detailed understanding of why it would be a disaster I suggest you read some Hayek or von Mises or look at the example of what happened in Nicaragua when they tried to implement a similar scheme. If you don't want to do any research and just want a simple answer its that you would be implementing a socialist/government controlled market for labor rather then allowing the market to operate. If government is controlling prices (and wages are prices for labor) it is conceivable (even if it is not really possible in the real world) that the prices could be the same or almost the same as what the market would set them at. If so there is no real loss from these government price controls (except a certain loss of freedom) but no real gain either. In reality however the government set prices would be different then the market clearing prices. If the prices are artificially inflated you decrease demand. Some employees would make more money but others would be out of work. If you set the price too low then there will not be enough supply to meet the demand. Most likely the wages would be set too high in some areas and too low in others for the market in labor to operate efficiently. Even if somehow the government magically got it right (and it really would take something like magic to set prices and wages correctly in a large complex economy) at the beginning, government policy couldn't change as fast as the market for labor could change. This would be true even if there where no questions of process or politics slowing down the adjustments. Even a committee of wise benevolent super-geniuses would not be able to make accurate decisions quick enough as the economic and market data they would need would lag market changes and in fact the very process of controlling wages would distort the data. Tim