What pay gap?

The pay gap, if you can call it that, is about a penny when all of life choices are considered. Men and women are different and have different goals. If a woman wants to shape eyebrows and not stand in the sun and be a mason wearing high top boots, then we shouldn't expect their pay to be the same. But there are women (and some men) who earn a living in the government and academe manipulating the statistics. I blogged about this in 2004 during the Bush administration, and even then there was no "gap" but there was gaslighting. When my children were young, I wasn't employed for 10 years. Why in the name of fairness should I have demanded the same pay as a man or woman who had been drawing a paycheck all those years? Their time and effort should count for something! And when I did go back to work, it was part time.

5 Myths to Bust About the Gender Pay Gap | Independent Women's Forum (iwf.org)

Choice, n. the opportunity or power to make a decision

Choice to kill the unborn, but no choice in health insurance. Choice for "reproductive freedom," but no choice to send children to charter schools. Choice to marry, but no choice not to participate in the marriage ceremony. Choice to abort, but no choice to abide by your religious beliefs. Choice to make your boss pay for your contraceptives, but no choice for the boss not to be involved in your sexual choices.

That's Obama and the Democrats--the most anti-choice administration in the history of the country.

Synonyms

alternative, discretion, druthers [dialect], election, liberty, option, pick, preference, selection, volition, way

The widening gap between the rich and the poor—10 easy reasons

Nine years ago the  Wall Street Journal published a series—the widening gap between the rich and the poor—and this was before the recession and during very low unemployment and an economic boom.  I didn’t like any of their answers, so I wrote my own reasons for the gap. Keep in mind this was May 2005. Notice the word “easy.”

1. Easy credit cards: We got our first credit card in the late 60s--I think it was a "Shopper’s Charge." We now have one department store credit card and one bank card--we’ve never carried a balance. Since the late 80s and into the 90s, many new households have never known what it was to live on their earned income.
2. Easy divorce: Christians now have the same divorce rate as anyone else in the culture. When we married 45 years ago, regular religious observance offered families some protection. No fault divorce particularly hurt women and children, pushing them economically into competition with two income families.
3. Easy sex: Casual one-night stands were glorified in the movies of the 70s and 80s. Although adultery and fornication had long been a theme in literature, drama and movies, casual sex and living together before marriage became the gold standard of relationships by the 80s, even though it’s been proven that it increases the divorce rate. Then easy sex came into the living rooms via TV so that even young children think who’s spending the night is no more important than what toothpaste mom buys. Women having and raising babies alone is the biggest cause of growing poverty.
4. Easy birth control and abortion: The millions of Americans that might have sprung from the loins of some of our best and brightest have been denied life itself, and thus their slots in the pie chart has been taken by poor, less educated immigrants. Obviously this creates a huge gap between the middle class and the poor, who instead of having a solid footing as those aborted citizens might have had, flood across our borders or arrive as refugees with nothing.
5. Easy technology and gadgets: Time wasted on I-pods and text messaging and vegging out in front of bad movies on DVDs has certainly absorbed billions of hours that could have been invested in networking, education or advancing up the career ladder. Cable and cell phone monthly costs easily equal what we spent on a mortgage in the 1960s and 1970s.
6. Easy bankruptcy: Load up the credit cards with consumer spending, mortgage your future, then make the rest of us pay it off for you. It might have been Plan B 20 years ago, but is now Plan A. Interest only mortgages, leases for larger and more expensive vehicles, second mortgages--for a generation who thinks the future will be paid for by someone else, it’s a recipe for a growing gap.
7. Easy leisure: Thirty five years ago (1970) few middle class families took vacations--if Dad had a week off (and most companies didn’t offer it) he spent it fixing the house. Sure it’s a huge industry and employs a lot of people, but we’re looking at the gap aren’t we? We’d probably been married 10 years before we took a family vacation (my parents never had one), and then it was at my mother’s farm for a week. Our daughter and her husband had been to Key West, Aruba and took a Mexican cruise in the first 5 years of their marriage.
8. Easy entertainment: This is related to leisure and technology, but today’s young families have difficulty being alone or quiet, it would seem. Even 30 years olds seem unable to walk around without head phones. They are spending their children’s future at movies, sporting events and theme parks. A visit to the library is most likely to pick up a movie, not a book.
9. Easy college loans: Instead of attending a state school, working during the summer or attending closer to home, many young people begin their working lives with huge debt, a debt that takes years to pay off, assuming they don’t default. Loans were so easy in the 80s, that parents who could well afford to pay tuition had their children at the public trough.
10. Easy shopping: You can be a couch potato or a computer novice and never leave home to shop. Addiction is easy. Just call in with the credit card.

See? And I haven’t even said a word about how much health care costs, or how the women’s movement changed our culture, public transportation or taxes. And while the government is tangentially involved in these areas, mostly it boils down to perfectly legal choices, choices which when they become ingrained in our way of life lead to poverty or slippage down by a quintile for the next generation.

Obama is a bully about insurance

If I own a sensible van and avoid driving like a jack rabbit, I save money on gasoline. If I do my own food preparation and don't eat every meal in a restaurant, I save money on food. If I shop at Kohl's or Macy's instead of Crucinelli or Savannah, I save money on clothes. If I don't color my hair, I save money at the hair dresser. If I'm careful about water and electricity usage my utility bills are low. But if I don't smoke or drink, keep my BMI and exercise at a healthy level, am monogamous, prefer reading a book to deep sea diving, have a college education and attend church regularly, Obama believes I should not be allowed to pay less for my health insurance than someone who has a life style and behaviors very different from mine. And if I choose to pay for my own health care, select my own doctor, and insure only for crisis or emergency situations, Obama demeans my choice and calls that insurer substandard and bad.

Who's the bigger hypcrite?

Bob Conners on WTVN this morning interviewed a woman named Heather about some awards for really "bad-for-you" restaurant food, where a serving might have enough sugar and cholesterol for 3 days, and enough calories to fuel you for an entire day. I was waiting for one more nanny-state recommendation like eating green or planting a garden, but then she surprised me with her own hypocrisy. She put herself through graduate studies in nutrition by working at the Cheesecake Factory (and she was bold enough to claim you could eat healthy there if you reduced your portions, which of course no one does. You don't go to the Cheesecake Factory for a low-calorie, healthy meal.) She said her customers always looked a bit shame faced when she told them what she was studying, because they knew without being told, that they weren't eating right.

This is a different case, but I can recall NOT applying for the Women's Studies Library position at Ohio State University back in the 80s because I knew, 1) I would be required to buy, disseminate and distribute materials that violated my personal ethics, and that, 2) I wouldn't be able to do a good job for the people who needed that library for their research because of my own beliefs. Sure, I could've slipped in a title or two with a Christian viewpoint, but who would be fooled by that?

Everyone makes choices, Heather. You could've worked in the Human Ecology library and made less, but with a clear conscience.

Rand Paul accuses Democrats of being anti-choice--particularly about toilets

His toilets don't work and he can't find a decent light bulb and Democrats are shipping jobs overseas with their energy regulations. They are anti-choice--putting people out of business or fining them with their efficiency standards. Appalling and hypocritical, he says, you are busy-bodies. Besides these toilets have to be flushed multiple times to even work. Amen, brother!

The widening gap

You can't turn on the radio, TV or open a newspaper without someone talking about a gap*--and I don't mean the store where teen-agers shop. There's a poverty gap, a gender gap, a technology gap, a health care gap, yada, yada. Three and a half years ago I wrote down my reasons for the widening gap between the rich and the poor (this is actually a fabrication because people are retiring and by plan and choice reducing their household income, but let's imagine there is a gap). Let's call it The Easy Gap.

1. Easy credit cards: We got our first credit card in the late 60s--I think it was a "Shopper’s Charge." We now have one department store credit card and one bank card--we’ve never carried a balance. Since the late 80s and into the 90s, many new households have never known what it was to live on their earned income. 2. Easy divorce: Christians now have the same divorce rate as anyone else in the culture. When we married 48 years ago, regular religious observance offered families some protection. No fault divorce particularly hurt women and children, pushing them economically into competition with two income families. 3. Easy sex: Casual one-night stands were glorified in the movies of the 70s and 80s. Although adultery and fornication had long been a theme in literature, drama and movies, casual sex and living together before marriage became the gold standard of relationships by the 80s, even though it’s been proven that it increases the divorce rate. Then easy sex came into the living rooms via TV so that even young children think who’s spending the night is no more important than what toothpaste mom buys. Women having and raising babies alone is the biggest cause of growing poverty and the gap that liberals worry about. 4. Easy birth control and abortion: The millions of Americans that might have sprung from the loins of some of our best and brightest have been denied life itself, and thus their slots in the pie chart has been taken by poor, uneducated immigrants. Obviously this creates a huge gap between the middle class and the poor, who instead of having a solid footing as those aborted citizens might have had, flood across our borders or arrive as refugees with nothing. 5. Easy technology and gadgets: Time wasted on I-pods and text messaging and vegging out in front of bad movies on DVDs has certainly absorbed billions of hours that could have been invested in networking, education or advancing up the career ladder. Cable and cell phone monthly costs easily equal what we spent on a mortgage 30 years ago. 6. Easy bankruptcy: Load up the credit cards with consumer spending, mortgage your future, then make the rest of us pay it off for you. It might have been Plan B 20 years ago, but is now Plan A. Interest only mortgages, leases for larger and more expensive vehicles, second mortgages--for a generation who thinks the future will be paid for by someone else, it’s a recipe for a growing gap. 7. Easy leisure: Thirty eight years ago (1970) few middle class families took vacations--if Dad had a week off (and most companies didn’t offer it) he spent it fixing the house. Sure it’s a huge industry and employs a lot of people, but we’re looking at the gap aren’t we? We’d probably been married 10 years before we took a family vacation (my parents never had one), and then it was at my mother’s farm for a week. Our daughter and her husband had been to Key West, Arruba and took a Mexican cruise in the first 5 years of their marriage. 8. Easy entertainment: This is related to leisure and technology, but today’s young families have difficulty being alone or quiet, it would seem. Even 30 years olds seem unable to walk around without head phones. They are spending their children’s future at movies, sporting events and theme parks. A visit to the library is most likely to pick up a movie, not a book. 9. Easy college loans: Instead of attending a state school, working during the summer or attending closer to home, many young people begin their real working lives with huge debt, a debt that takes years to pay off, assuming they don’t default. Loans were so easy in the 80s, that parents who could well afford to pay tuition had their children at the public trough. 10. Easy shopping: You can be a couch potato or a computer novice and never leave home to shop. Addiction is easy. Just call in with the credit card. See? And I haven’t even said a word about how much health care costs, or how the women’s movement changed our culture, public transportation or taxes. And while the government is tangentially involved in these areas, mostly it boils down to perfectly legal choices, choices which when they become ingrained in our way of life lead to poverty or slippage down by a quintile for the next generation.

According to a google search: health care gap = 15,700; gender gap = 842,000; technology gap = 166,000; obesity gap = 417; poverty gap = 113,000.

Everybody knows

that diets aren't the answer; that it's a lifestyle. Or do they? I was reading through the comments at a blog the other day. Both the blog writer and reader were commenting on their own obesity. The reader said she had successfully lost 60 pounds, kept it off for six years, been a counselor in a commercial weight loss program, and then gradually all the weight returned as she realized that without spending all her day thinking about what she would eat, there was no way she could maintain her weight.

And the thought occurred to me that most people of "normal" weight probably do just that--think about what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat, and how the calories will be expended if overeating does occur. I do. So do others who are not overweight. I just finished breakfast (fruit and walnuts); I'm already thinking about lunch (4 or 5 vegetables). In fact, my husband is the only person I know who seems to have built-in signals that keep him from over eating, but if he does decide he's "packed on" 5 lbs., he stops eating crackers and peanut butter in the evening, and in a few weeks, he's back to normal (ca. 155 lbs.)

My great-grandmother Nancy (1833-1892) had nine children, as did her mother-in-law Elizabeth (1791-1878), who lived with her after her husband's death. You don't think these ladies spent most of their day figuring out how to bake enough bread or slaughter and stew enough chickens to feed a bunch like that? This is nothing new for women--what's new is abundance instead of scarcity, choices instead of physical labor, and we haven't learned the new game plan.

We went out to eat Friday night with friends we've known (but not well) for about 30 years. She's thin and toned. She's probably in her early 70s, but has looked this way to me since her 40s. For dinner she ordered a turkey wrap and a salad. She took half the wrap order home. The next day she was going to be biking 20 miles to have breakfast with friends. The temperatures here were about 30 degrees, and it was windy. She's also a swimmer. We then went to their home where she served a wonderful warm pumpkin tart made with Splenda topped with sugar-free Cool-Whip. You don't think she plans, computes and calculates everything that goes in her mouth and how many calories are burned in biking and swimming?