The gender pay gap in Biden's White House

[Metaphor]

In fact, when I compare the WH pay by gender looking at several percentiles I see the OPPOSITE of what Perry and Metaphor see. The identity of mean pay, and pay at almost every percentile EXCEPT 50% makes me suspect that some staffing official was running special software or looking at spread-sheets to artificially impose pay equality on the WH roster! (I'm guessing, but I think Metaphor — and presumably Perry — would find this to be silly, at best. I tend to agree with them!)

I think it is possible that the Biden White House did this, but with the mean in mind, and not median or mode. Of course, I would find artificially imposed pay equality problematic for all sorts of reasons.

If the pay grades and hiring were done to deliberately create pay equality, why the bulge at 50%? I don't know whether there's a special reason for that bulge; maybe it's just evidence that the Holy Grain Metaphor envisions, in which statisticians look ONLY at the Blessed Median — praise be unto it — is not as universally worshiped as Mataphor thinks.

It would be the opposite--if they did something like this, they probably tried to adjust for equal means, because the means are far closer to each than the medians are.

I find it amusing that some of us (TomC and I) might agree with Metaphor that working statistics to ensure than an organization like the WH has "pay equality" may be an example of excessive wokeness! I look at the data (same 40% salary, same 45%, same at 55%, same at 60%, etc.) and it leads me to guess that WH staff and salaries were carefully tuned for that equality.

Yet Perry and Metaphor, who presumably would despise such tuning far more than I do, are promoting a statistic that suggests those salaries were NOT tuned: the discrepancy near 50% specifically. A discrepancy they should applaud but, like an action-movie hero jumping from one train to a train moving in the opposite direction, they grab onto that statistical quirk and advance a charge of hypocrisy!

But that isn't the accusation I made about the Biden White House - that they were 'tuning' their statistics. Not that I don't think that the White House isn't capable of it--I've seen a public service hiring and workplace culture in Australia that is sometimes hostile to male workers--just that that level of dishonesty had not occurred to me. But the tuning, if such a thing happened, would appear to be based on creating equal means. If the White House was trying to 'tune' it by attending to each decile, then it was grossly incompetent in neglecting to tune the decile that is so special it has its own name: the median!

The whole thing really is amusing!

As I've said, I don't care about WH pay disparity or lack thereof. For me the thread is a case study in the Right-Wing Bullshit machine. And definitely a black-eye on AEI research ... and on those who use that site for "information."

Professor Perry EITHER was unaware of the remarkable equality of WH salary stats (shown in the table I posted) OR saw that equality and suppressed it in his write-up because it didn't fit his theme. In the first case, Perry is an incompetent statistician; in the latter case he's dishonest. My guess is he's both.

That's a false dichotomy.

I don't know Professor Perry. For all I know if I e-mailed him that table he'd reply "Gosh, you're right! I was so busy that week, getting my family vaccinated etc. that I didn't run all the statistical tests I usually do. I'll do an edit on that webpage. Thanks for pointing this out!"

I really do NOT think I'd get that response from Perry, but I can't rule it out. However Metaphor HAS been presented with the table and has NOT retracted.

I am pleased and proud that I spent an hour or so on the WH salary data (the hardest part of the task was ungarbling the result of copy/paste from the pdf file) and refuted Perry's bulge!

You didn't refute it at all. The $20,000 difference at the median is still there. What you mean is "the pay gap was not evident at every decile (or every percentile)."

Attention Good Googlers: Is Perry's Bulge making the rounds of political talkers? (Did it really get mentioned in the Fucking Guardian for God's Sake as Metaphor seemed to claim,

I did not claim that. I was talking about sources being "fair and balanced". I don't consider The Guardian to be "fair and balanced" but that doesn't stop me from reading articles on it.

or is AEI just a thing with [sarcasm on] Parler and QAnon?) I ask because I'd like to e-mail my result to an appropriate commentator. In fact I think I will: I've exchanged e-mail with Robert Reich in the past and some others. ... Off to Gmail.

Did you pick up the false dichotomy proclamations from laughing dog, or is it something you picked up on your own?

(I made a false dichotomy in the above statement. See if you can spot the places you made yours).

 

[Toni]

That's only part of the story.

Women DO tend to value flexibilty, etc. At least women with children do, or those who are planning to have children. Why is this less a concern for men?

Because a lot of men leave that burden to the women. The best economic answer would probably be for one parent to maximize income and one to give up some income for flexibility.

That has been 'the answer' for generations. It works fine as long as:
1. The bread winner doesn't become disabled or too ill to work
2. The bread winner doesn't die
3. The bread winner doesn't leave
4. The non-bread winner is happy being a stay at home parent for the duration and doesn't mind a large, permanent hit to their career
5. There is no market shift/industry shift that leaves the bread winner unemployed for prolonged periods of time or permanently
6. The bread winner is happy being the bread winner and letting the other parent take the bulk of the burden of child care and taking the hit to their career/income potential
7. The non-bread winner remains healthy and able bodied.
8. None of the parents of the bread winner or non-bread winner become ill/disabled and need significant help from their adult offspring, taking away time from childcare or income producing labor
9. None of the offspring is sufficiently disabled or otherwise challenging to raise that it is too exhausting for the non-breadwinner to essentially be entirely responsible for the care and raising of the child and the bulk of the care during the hours when the breadwinner is home, recuperating from their paid work day
10. The non-bread winner doesn't become too ill or disabled or leave
11.Probably a bunch of scenarios I haven't thought of because it either hasn't happened in my family or to my friends so I haven't seen it up close and real personal.

Traditionally, women were compensated at lower rates than men were because they were women. Likewise, professions that are heavily female staffed tend to be compensated at lower rates, despite requiring as much or more education, skill, etc. WHY?

There is a current nursing shortage--has been for years. WHY? This is a case where the obvious market solutions (higher compensation, more flexibility, etc). has not been instituted to encourage more nurses although the nursing shortage has been ongoing for years. WHY?.

Nurses don't bill. Thus many of the people who employ nurses like the shortage--it lets them get away with providing less service.

Hospital administrators don't bill. They are paid on salary. The last I heard, there is no shortage of hospital administrators. In some clinics/practices, physicians are salaried: they don't bill. It's a pretty stable arrangement for practice and for physician.

Local clinics and hospitals often have difficulty hiring or keeping well qualified nursing staff because of the difficulty and stress of the job and the rigidity of the hours. I know people who left nursing, although that was their lifelong ambition/calling specifically because of that. In my geographic area, compensation for nursing has increased but the nursing staff shortage still remains (prior to COVID. I am guessing it's much worse now but haven't asked).

There is a large shortage of nursing assistants and other care givers and has been for years. Many of these positions are filled by immigrants and most are filled by women. The compensation is pretty low. The skill set is pretty high, although it's not a skill set that is necessarily codified via a formal educational program. But then, neither is a lot of trucking, and other 'low skill' male dominated professions--construction, for example. Both types of employment need more workers. One type pays a lot more than the other. One is more male dominated than the other.

 

[laughing dog]

Swammerdami's bizarre analysis succeeds in illustrating that the distributions of salaries in the White House are not normal or approximately normal, and therefore a comparison of means rather than medians is even less appropriate.

Actually it succeeds in DEMONSTRATING that the median is not representative in this case. And you know it. There is a GPG right at the median, and virtually nowhere else.

It also succeeds in illustrating that there is plenty of ignorance about reliable and reasonable statistical analysis.

 

[Swammerdami]

Assuming a WH staffing clerk was running a spreadsheet to ensure that some "gender disparity" goal was met, the question remains: Why was the median off?

I think I've figured this out: It was staring us in the face from my own postings.

Working at the White House is a very prestigious job. Many of the jobs pay $48k which is about $20/hour when unpaid overtime is considered. This paygrade includes job titles like Deputy Associate Director, Personnel-Vetting Deputy Chief of Staff, and Senior Analyst/Project Manager. My guess is that many of these people are very competent, could earn much higher salaries outside, but are grateful to work in the WH. I already mentioned two top advisors making only $36k. And another 41 persons, mostly male, making zero!

Those who have taken a huge cut in pay to work in the WH for just $48k ARE included when Perry did his arithmetic.

HOWEVER, he ignored the 41 people earning zero. He mentions this in the briefest way, by inserting an adjective: "paid employee." Once. Wouldn't it be just as logical, if not more so, to run the statistic over ALL employees, even those earning zero?

If unpaid employees are included in the stats — and it seems safe to assume Perry tried this both ways — the median for male salary falls to 80k and is equal to the female median.

It appears "Senior Fellow" Perry was ashamed of this cherry-picking, of discarding the 20-plus men he needed to to get his bulge. I say that because except for ONE (1) instance of the qualifier ("paid employee") he documents or mentions this bias nowhere else in the article! Sure, one MIGHT argue that excluding those with zero pay makes sense. But Perry doesn't argue that. He simply removes those employees with only the very scantest mention.

TL;DR: Perry's dishonest cherry-picking is even worse than I first thought.

Perry writes:

Therefore, the typical female staffer in the Biden-Harris White House currently earns only 80 cents for every $1 a male staffer earns, and there is a 20% gender pay gap at the Biden White House.

We've now shown, in great detail, that the correct pay gap is MUCH closer to zero. The '20%' formulation is wrong, absurdly wrong. Perry deserves only

Liar, Liar! Pants on Fire!​

This has been fun!


ETA: Does AEI have a reputation for being one of the "thinkier" parts of the right-wing Lie Machine? If Professor Perry is a fair representative of the AEI ilk, I'm afraid this analysis has disabused me of any respect for that organization. If Perry is a "senior" fellow, I'd hate to imagine what the junior fellows come up with!

 

[Elixir]

If Perry is a "senior" fellow, I'd hate to imagine what the junior fellows come up with!

At least one fellow here fell for it.

 

[Metaphor]

HOWEVER, he ignored the 41 people earning zero. He mentions this in the briefest way, by inserting an adjective: "paid employee." Once. Wouldn't it be just as logical, if not more so, to run the statistic over ALL employees, even those earning zero?

No. It wouldn't be just as logical. Someone doing unpaid work isn't an employee.

If unpaid employees are included in the stats — and it seems safe to assume Perry tried this both ways

Why does it seem safe to assume so?

— the median for male salary falls to 80k and is equal to the female median.

It appears "Senior Fellow" Perry was ashamed of this cherry-picking,

It appears so to you, based on unevidenced assumptions you believe.

of discarding the 20-plus men he needed to to get his bulge. I say that because except for ONE (1) instance of the qualifier ("paid employee") he documents or mentions this bias nowhere else in the article! Sure, one MIGHT argue that excluding those with zero pay makes sense. But Perry doesn't argue that. He simply removes those employees with only the very scantest mention.

Probably he made the correct call that people doing unpaid work are not employees.

TL;DR: Perry's dishonest cherry-picking is even worse than I first thought.

Perry was correct to not include uncompensated workers in his analysis. They're not employees.

We've now shown, in great detail, that the correct pay gap is MUCH closer to zero. The '20%' formulation is wrong, absurdly wrong. Perry deserves only

Liar, Liar! Pants on Fire!
​

You haven't shown any such thing, of course. Perry made a claim that the pay gap, calculated by median differences in salary, was evident in Biden's White House as it was in previous administration White Houses. His claim is true.

Of course, even if he were mistaken--and he is not--it wouldn't make him a liar. It would mean he was mistaken.

EDITED: It also occurs to me that if the White House has more males than females on 'zero wages', in the context of the rest of the paid staff being more than 60% female, it appears to have a preference for exploiting zero-paid workers along gender lines (specifically, it has a preference for underpaying male workers). Nice stuff!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That has been 'the answer' for generations. It works fine as long as:

Note that I said "flexibility", not "stay-at-home".

I'm saying that the optimal work configuration is one person takes the sort of job that pays more but isn't schedule-friendly and the other takes a job that pays less but doesn't have a problem with a "I'm staying home because my child is sick" call. Note, also, that I did not specify genders.

7. The non-bread winner remains healthy and able bodied.
8. None of the parents of the bread winner or non-bread winner become ill/disabled and need significant help from their adult offspring, taking away time from childcare or income producing labor

And beyond my not saying "stay at home" I didn't say it should be set in stone, either--circumstances change, jobs can change.

Nurses don't bill. Thus many of the people who employ nurses like the shortage--it lets them get away with providing less service.

Hospital administrators don't bill. They are paid on salary. The last I heard, there is no shortage of hospital administrators. In some clinics/practices, physicians are salaried: they don't bill. It's a pretty stable arrangement for practice and for physician.

Administrators come in degrees, not a binary (license/no license.) Thus there would not be a shortage, just a matter of finding the best quality you can.

There is a large shortage of nursing assistants and other care givers and has been for years. Many of these positions are filled by immigrants and most are filled by women. The compensation is pretty low. The skill set is pretty high, although it's not a skill set that is necessarily codified via a formal educational program. But then, neither is a lot of trucking, and other 'low skill' male dominated professions--construction, for example. Both types of employment need more workers. One type pays a lot more than the other. One is more male dominated than the other.

Truckers have a licensing requirement also--and note that there's a shortage of truckers. And truckers are a revenue source--while the client pays for the result of the truck getting from point A to point B that in effect means the truckers bill. In most cases you only need enough nurses to comply with the law, adding more doesn't produce revenue.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

ETA: Does AEI have a reputation for being one of the "thinkier" parts of the right-wing Lie Machine? If Professor Perry is a fair representative of the AEI ilk, I'm afraid this analysis has disabused me of any respect for that organization. If Perry is a "senior" fellow, I'd hate to imagine what the junior fellows come up with!

My opinion of them is that they don't fabricate but they seriously cherry-pick. I figure anything I read of theirs is true but very well might not show the real story.

 

[ZiprHead]

ETA: Does AEI have a reputation for being one of the "thinkier" parts of the right-wing Lie Machine? If Professor Perry is a fair representative of the AEI ilk, I'm afraid this analysis has disabused me of any respect for that organization. If Perry is a "senior" fellow, I'd hate to imagine what the junior fellows come up with!

My opinion of them is that they don't fabricate but they seriously cherry-pick. I figure anything I read of theirs is true but very well might not show the real story.

 

[Toni]

Note that I said "flexibility", not "stay-at-home".

I'm saying that the optimal work configuration is one person takes the sort of job that pays more but isn't schedule-friendly and the other takes a job that pays less but doesn't have a problem with a "I'm staying home because my child is sick" call. Note, also, that I did not specify genders.



And beyond my not saying "stay at home" I didn't say it should be set in stone, either--circumstances change, jobs can change.

Nurses don't bill. Thus many of the people who employ nurses like the shortage--it lets them get away with providing less service.

Hospital administrators don't bill. They are paid on salary. The last I heard, there is no shortage of hospital administrators. In some clinics/practices, physicians are salaried: they don't bill. It's a pretty stable arrangement for practice and for physician.

Administrators come in degrees, not a binary (license/no license.) Thus there would not be a shortage, just a matter of finding the best quality you can.

There is a large shortage of nursing assistants and other care givers and has been for years. Many of these positions are filled by immigrants and most are filled by women. The compensation is pretty low. The skill set is pretty high, although it's not a skill set that is necessarily codified via a formal educational program. But then, neither is a lot of trucking, and other 'low skill' male dominated professions--construction, for example. Both types of employment need more workers. One type pays a lot more than the other. One is more male dominated than the other.

Truckers have a licensing requirement also--and note that there's a shortage of truckers. And truckers are a revenue source--while the client pays for the result of the truck getting from point A to point B that in effect means the truckers bill. In most cases you only need enough nurses to comply with the law, adding more doesn't produce revenue.

The argument is exactly the same whether it is 'flexible hours' vs stay at home. Under the current rigid work/pay structure, MOST (but not all) work involves a trade off between flexibility and higher pay. Most work environments which are traditionally male dominated do not allow for any flexibility--except perhaps at the top echelons, during which the flexibility includes being available 24/7, an increasing ill these days.

Even taking a 5-7 year break or taking a reduction in hours during that time for the more stay at home parent dramatically hampers their earning ability and career expectations--permanently.

There IS a shortage of truckers these days, particularly long haul drivers. There are also hiring bonuses and the licensing requirement is to hold a CDL license. So what? Almost anyone who takes the test passes it. It's not nearly the same skill or educational set or licensing needed to be an RN or even an LPN. Even most nurses aides hold drivers' licenses. But most truck drivers earn more than LPNs and some RNS and certainly nursing assistants. Is their work necessary? Yes. Is it physically demanding? Can be but then, so is nursing. In fact, depending on the area of nursing, it can be tremendously physically demanding, as well as emotionally demanding. Same thing with being a nursing assistant/CNA--who must be licensed.

Nurses do not 'produce revenue.' That is not the purpose of health care.

Truckers also do not 'produce revenue.' They move shit around.

 

[Swammerdami]

Yet another post from me! First let's summarize what the debate is about.

We are NOT debating whether the Biden WH should or should not strive for nearly exact "gender pay equality." There Metaphor and myself are in partial agreement. In a perfect world one wouldn't bother with such a constraint. However in our imperfect political world, the WH apparently needed to demonstrate this parity. Proof? Despite achieving this equality, they STILL get falsely accused of not achieving it by Perry and Metaphor.

We are NOT debating whether the Biden WH achieved its goal of nearly exact "gender pay equality." I and others have proved this definitively in this thread. Even the Holy Grail of simple-minded statisticians, the Blessed Median, shows the desired equality when the data are untampered with.

We are NOT debating whether employees with salary zero should be omitted from statistical analysis. There may be arguments either way. (Personally, I find the $36k salaries for two top advisers to also be weird. Are these part-time jobs? We might want to investigate why some employees have zero salary.)

We ARE debating whether Mark Perry's article is the work of a reputable scientist or of a partisan hack. In this post I continue my demonstration that he is a partisan hack of whom scientists should be ashamed.

We are ALSO investigating whether, when the question is posed as one of pure science with no political implications, intelligent TFTers will be able to recognize poor methodology and deliberate bias. The "jury is still out" on this question.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I know nothing about White House Staff except what I copied off the linked pdf. I will PM that to anyone who asks. Meanwhile let me summarize what the list shows.

The list has 560 names; 534 are designated as Employee, 26 as Detailee. In the following summary, all are Employees except as noted. I don't try to show gender here, but the two highest paid detailees are named Molly and Elizabeth. About 2/3 of those paid 36,000 or less appear to be male. As seen, most of the salaries are round numbers and in large clumps. There are 76 "oddball" salaries that are above 48k, less than 180k, and do not fit into a large clump. (Both Perry and myself treated the Detailees as Employees.)

      1 instances of 185,656 Detailee
      1 instances of 183,164 Detailee
     22 instances of 180,000
     35 instances of 155,000
     47 instances of 130,000
     53 instances of 110,000
     57 instances of 100,000
     70 instances of 80,000
     90 instances of 62,500
     64 instances of 48,000
      1 instances of 45,711
      2 instances of 36,000
     41 instances of 0, 1 of them Detailee
     76 instances of "oddball", 23 of them Detailee

As I've mentioned, the two with 36,000 salary are famous male advisors. The only other non-zero salary less than 48k was for Rebekah E. Denz, Records Management Analyst.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

of discarding the 20-plus men he needed to to get his bulge. I say that because except for ONE (1) instance of the qualifier ("paid employee") he documents or mentions this bias nowhere else in the article! Sure, one MIGHT argue that excluding those with zero pay makes sense. But Perry doesn't argue that. He simply removes those employees with only the very scantest mention.

Probably he made the correct call that people doing unpaid work are not employees.

TL;DR: Perry's dishonest cherry-picking is even worse than I first thought.

Perry was correct to not include uncompensated workers in his analysis. They're not employees.

Forty out of forty-one of these "non-employees" have the notation "EMPLOYEE" in the White House document, but let's move on.

When a competent scientist publishes a competent scientific paper, he or she is careful to describe the experimental or statistical procedure.

Professor Perry's study was extremely simple: Take a simple list, split it by gender, show the median of each sublist. Period.

Only One (1) special step occurred during Perry's procedure: He removed all employees (and 1 detailee) whose salary was shown as Zero. Let me repeat this: The novelty of his analysis consisted of this one (1) special step.

I have read a variety of scientific papers. I have seen ENTIRE papers devoted to 1 simple change. It may be just to get another bullet on their list of publications, but it's not unusual to see an entire paper devoted to something like "Look what happened to the stats when I deleted all items with parameter zero!"

So: Does Perry brag about deleting unpaid employees? Does he present an argument for it? Does he even mention it?

No, not really. In his entire article there is One (1) instance of the two-word phrase "paid employee." Not even a complete sentence is devoted to this exclusion. Zero. Again, the question is NOT whether this exclusion is good or bad; the question is "Would a reputable scientist bury this — his only modification to an obvious procedure — in a single unemphasized adjective?" If anyone thinks this is the writing of a reputable scientist, I can only laugh. I personally think that failing to devote even a single sentence to this novelty demonstrates that he may have been ashamed of the cherry-picking and certainly did not want to draw attention to it.


Your Honor, I ask that the charges against the Biden WH be dismissed; and that Senior Fellow Mark Perry be held in contempt.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yet another post from me! First let's summarize what the debate is about.

We are NOT debating whether the Biden WH should or should not strive for nearly exact "gender pay equality." There Metaphor and myself are in partial agreement. In a perfect world one wouldn't bother with such a constraint. However in our imperfect political world, the WH apparently needed to demonstrate this parity. Proof? Despite achieving this equality, they STILL get falsely accused of not achieving it by Perry and Metaphor.

We are NOT debating whether the Biden WH achieved its goal of nearly exact "gender pay equality." I and others have proved this definitively in this thread. Even the Holy Grail of simple-minded statisticians, the Blessed Median, shows the desired equality when the data are untampered with.

We are NOT debating whether employees with salary zero should be omitted from statistical analysis. There may be arguments either way. (Personally, I find the $36k salaries for two top advisers to also be weird. Are these part-time jobs? We might want to investigate why some employees have zero salary.)

We ARE debating whether Mark Perry's article is the work of a reputable scientist or of a partisan hack. In this post I continue my demonstration that he is a partisan hack of whom scientists should be ashamed.

We are ALSO investigating whether, when the question is posed as one of pure science with no political implications, intelligent TFTers will be able to recognize poor methodology and deliberate bias. The "jury is still out" on this question.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I know nothing about White House Staff except what I copied off the linked pdf. I will PM that to anyone who asks. Meanwhile let me summarize what the list shows.

The list has 560 names; 534 are designated as Employee, 26 as Detailee. In the following summary, all are Employees except as noted. I don't try to show gender here, but the two highest paid detailees are named Molly and Elizabeth. About 2/3 of those paid 36,000 or less appear to be male. As seen, most of the salaries are round numbers and in large clumps. There are 76 "oddball" salaries that are above 48k, less than 180k, and do not fit into a large clump. (Both Perry and myself treated the Detailees as Employees.)

      1 instances of 185,656 Detailee
      1 instances of 183,164 Detailee
     22 instances of 180,000
     35 instances of 155,000
     47 instances of 130,000
     53 instances of 110,000
     57 instances of 100,000
     70 instances of 80,000
     90 instances of 62,500
     64 instances of 48,000
      1 instances of 45,711
      2 instances of 36,000
     41 instances of 0, 1 of them Detailee
     76 instances of "oddball", 23 of them Detailee

As I've mentioned, the two with 36,000 salary are famous male advisors. The only other non-zero salary less than 48k was for Rebekah E. Denz, Records Management Analyst.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Probably he made the correct call that people doing unpaid work are not employees.



Perry was correct to not include uncompensated workers in his analysis. They're not employees.

Forty out of forty-one of these "non-employees" have the notation "EMPLOYEE" in the White House document, but let's move on.

When a competent scientist publishes a competent scientific paper, he or she is careful to describe the experimental or statistical procedure.

Professor Perry's study was extremely simple: Take a simple list, split it by gender, show the median of each sublist. Period.

Only One (1) special step occurred during Perry's procedure: He removed all employees (and 1 detailee) whose salary was shown as Zero. Let me repeat this: The novelty of his analysis consisted of this one (1) special step.

I have read a variety of scientific papers. I have seen ENTIRE papers devoted to 1 simple change. It may be just to get another bullet on their list of publications, but it's not unusual to see an entire paper devoted to something like "Look what happened to the stats when I deleted all items with parameter zero!"

So: Does Perry brag about deleting unpaid employees? Does he present an argument for it? Does he even mention it?

No, not really. In his entire article there is One (1) instance of the two-word phrase "paid employee." Not even a complete sentence is devoted to this exclusion. Zero. Again, the question is NOT whether this exclusion is good or bad; the question is "Would a reputable scientist" bury this — his only modification to an obvious procedure — in a single unemphasized adjective?" If anyone thinks this is the writing of a reputable scientist, I can only laugh. I personally think that in failing to devote even a single sentence to this novelty demonstrates that he may have been ashamed of the cherry-picking and certainly did not want to draw attention to it.


Your Honor, I ask that the charges against the Biden WH be dismissed; and that Senior Fellow Mark Perry be held in contempt.

I second the motion, and move to rate the thread "terrible", as a thread anything other than "terrible" would have had an OP devoted to this analysis right at the get-go, and a tone rightfully derisive of such charlatans and chicanery would have been set.

 

[Metaphor]

We are NOT debating whether the Biden WH should or should not strive for nearly exact "gender pay equality." There Metaphor and myself are in partial agreement. In a perfect world one wouldn't bother with such a constraint. However in our imperfect political world, the WH apparently needed to demonstrate this parity. Proof? Despite achieving this equality, they STILL get falsely accused of not achieving it by Perry and Metaphor.

Oy gevalt. No, you have not proved it, but apparently we're not debating it any more.

We are NOT debating whether the Biden WH achieved its goal of nearly exact "gender pay equality." I and others have proved this definitively in this thread. Even the Holy Grail of simple-minded statisticians, the Blessed Median, shows the desired equality when the data are untampered with.

Untampered with, oy gevalt. No. It makes no sense to include people who are not paid in a list of earnings disparities. When you do unpaid work for an organisation, you are volunteering for them. You are not an employee.

We are NOT debating whether employees with salary zero should be omitted from statistical analysis. There may be arguments either way. (Personally, I find the $36k salaries for two top advisers to also be weird. Are these part-time jobs? We might want to investigate why some employees have zero salary.)

Right--you're not debating it, I get it.

We ARE debating whether Mark Perry's article is the work of a reputable scientist or of a partisan hack. In this post I continue my demonstration that he is a partisan hack of whom scientists should be ashamed.

Can we debate what a false dichotomy is?

We are ALSO investigating whether, when the question is posed as one of pure science with no political implications, intelligent TFTers will be able to recognize poor methodology and deliberate bias. The "jury is still out" on this question.

Oh, okay. Well, when 'we' finish investigating that, I'll accept the pronouncement.

Forty out of forty-one of these "non-employees" have the notation "EMPLOYEE" in the White House document, but let's move on.

They may well, but since you don't take things on faith and like to examine them for yourself, do you think the ordinary meaning of the word 'employee' includes people doing only unpaid work for an organisation?

When a competent scientist publishes a competent scientific paper, he or she is careful to describe the experimental or statistical procedure.

Professor Perry's study was extremely simple: Take a simple list, split it by gender, show the median of each sublist. Period.

That's what the gender pay gap statistics do.

Only One (1) special step occurred during Perry's procedure: He removed all employees (and 1 detailee) whose salary was shown as Zero. Let me repeat this: The novelty of his analysis consisted of this one (1) special step.

You don't imagine that headline gender pay gap figures include people who are not getting paid, do you?

I have read a variety of scientific papers. I have seen ENTIRE papers devoted to 1 simple change. It may be just to get another bullet on their list of publications, but it's not unusual to see an entire paper devoted to something like "Look what happened to the stats when I deleted all items with parameter zero!"

Gender pay gap figures do not include people who are not paid. It isn't a special step.

So: Does Perry brag about deleting unpaid employees? Does he present an argument for it? Does he even mention it?

An "unpaid employee" is a volunteer, not an employee. One does not need an argument to exclude people not participating in paid work from an analysis of the pay gap.

No, not really. In his entire article there is One (1) instance of the two-word phrase "paid employee." Not even a complete sentence is devoted to this exclusion. Zero. Again, the question is NOT whether this exclusion is good or bad; the question is "Would a reputable scientist bury this — his only modification to an obvious procedure — in a single unemphasized adjective?"

Gender pay gap analyses do not include "unpaid employees". It would require justification to include them, not exclude them.

If anyone thinks this is the writing of a reputable scientist, I can only laugh. I personally think that failing to devote even a single sentence to this novelty demonstrates that he may have been ashamed of the cherry-picking and certainly did not want to draw attention to it.

I don't recall calling Perry a 'reputable scientist'. Is there some memo I've missed?

 

[Swammerdami]

... Your Honor, I ask that the charges against the Biden WH be dismissed; and that Senior Fellow Mark Perry be held in contempt.

I second the motion, and move to rate the thread "terrible", as a thread anything other than "terrible" would have had an OP devoted to this analysis right at the get-go, and a tone rightfully derisive of such charlatans and chicanery would have been set.

I don't consider the thread terrible: I am proud of my contributions. This is the first time I've studied an AEI analysis in detail and am impressed with how easy it was to demolish both Perry's point and Perry's scientific integrity.

I might support changing the thread title, e.g. prefixing a "REFUTED:" (However I am still treading very lightly with my newly acquired super-powers and will certainly not do this myself!)

 

[Metaphor]

... Your Honor, I ask that the charges against the Biden WH be dismissed; and that Senior Fellow Mark Perry be held in contempt.

I second the motion, and move to rate the thread "terrible", as a thread anything other than "terrible" would have had an OP devoted to this analysis right at the get-go, and a tone rightfully derisive of such charlatans and chicanery would have been set.

I don't consider the thread terrible: I am proud of my contributions. This is the first time I've studied an AEI analysis in detail and am impressed with how easy it was to demolish both Perry's point and Perry's scientific integrity.

I might support changing the thread title, e.g. prefixing a "REFUTED:" (However I am still treading very lightly with my newly acquired super-powers and will certainly not do this myself!)

If this thread title is changed, by Swammerdami or any other mod, I'll stop posting on this message board. Just a statement of fact.

 

[Swammerdami]

If this thread title is changed, by Swammerdami or any other mod, I'll stop posting on this message board. Just a statement of fact.

Sorry, Metaphor. As I've demonstrated by editing the relevant part of my quote here, there appears to be no easy way to enlarge or even underline the smiley emoticon for the humor-impaired.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If this thread title is changed, by Swammerdami or any other mod, I'll stop posting on this message board. Just a statement of fact.

Damn it! I just broke my mouse button slamming so hard on the Report button.

 

[Metaphor]

If this thread title is changed, by Swammerdami or any other mod, I'll stop posting on this message board. Just a statement of fact.

Sorry, Metaphor. As I've demonstrated by editing the relevant part of my quote here, there appears to be no easy way to enlarge or even underline the smiley emoticon for the humor-impaired.

Evidently you being drunk on your newfound power, as well as your imagined statistical victory, has put you in a state of levity.

 

[Toni]

Sorry, Metaphor. As I've demonstrated by editing the relevant part of my quote here, there appears to be no easy way to enlarge or even underline the smiley emoticon for the humor-impaired.

Evidently you being drunk on your newfound power, as well as your imagined statistical victory, has put you in a state of levity.

Maybe you could join him? In the levity, I mean.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The argument is exactly the same whether it is 'flexible hours' vs stay at home. Under the current rigid work/pay structure, MOST (but not all) work involves a trade off between flexibility and higher pay. Most work environments which are traditionally male dominated do not allow for any flexibility--except perhaps at the top echelons, during which the flexibility includes being available 24/7, an increasing ill these days.

You're the one assuming it's the woman that should take the flexible job.

Even taking a 5-7 year break or taking a reduction in hours during that time for the more stay at home parent dramatically hampers their earning ability and career expectations--permanently.

Of course it does. Years you're not in the labor force are years of experience you do not get.

There IS a shortage of truckers these days, particularly long haul drivers. There are also hiring bonuses and the licensing requirement is to hold a CDL license. So what? Almost anyone who takes the test passes it.

Because the people teaching them don't tell them to take the test before they think they're ready. That doesn't mean teaching isn't required. You walk in and try the CDL license and you're going to fail it. (Other than the fact you won't even be able to take it--the road test is done in a truck that you provide. That means you need a big rig and someone to drive it to the testing location.)

Nurses do not 'produce revenue.' That is not the purpose of health care.

Truckers also do not 'produce revenue.' They move shit around.

The point is whether their actions can be billed for.

Trucker: Cargo gets from A to B, company collects money for that.

Nurse: In most cases there is no billable transaction involved.