Pay me!!!!

I must be dumb or something, but I have never quite understood the role of government in setting private sector pay scales, at least not in a supposedly capitalist, free enterprise economy.

The latest is an apparent effort to get the government to guarantee that women get equal pay as men. I assume that is for equal work, but I am not sure these days.

I think it is idiotic not to pay women who do the same job as men the same rate of pay. You are paying for the job, not the person, but I guess a lot of people don’t look at it that way. Still, where – in the American scheme of things – did it become the job of the government to set private sector pay scales. Oh, I know, when it began setting minimum wages and requiring union scale on federally funded projects.

Still, minimum wage is a cruel hoax and is used for partisan political propaganda. For one thing, it should not be designed to be the sole source of income for a family of four. That proposition is economically unsustainable. Second, every time you raise it, you penalize those who have progressed forward through merit and experience by throwing them backwards … but that is another argument.

But gender equity is another thing. It is one thing to say that people should be paid the same for doing the same work. I can buy that, but don’t even start down the path of trying to claim equal  pay for equivalent work. That argument goes no where with me. So, even though the government should not be involved, I think business people should pay the same rate for whatever the same work is. That is logical. But when you start trying figure out if  this person puts in the equivalent time and effort as another at a dissimilar job, you lose me.

Anyway, something to think about