The old canard pops up again and again

Obama called for equal pay for equal work for women in the SOTU. Here's the truth:

In giving the shout-out to the cause of “equal pay,” he checked off one box from what must be a long list of “must mentions” for any Democrat delivering such an address.

Corner readers surely know that work and lifestyle choices — not systematic discrimination — drive differences in the average pay of men and women. Women take more time off from work, gravitate toward more stable, safer, lower-paying jobs, and work fewer hours than men do, so it’s hardly a surprise that they tend to earn less. When women make different choices, you see different outcomes. And in fact, younger women without children living in urban areas are increasingly out-earning their male counterparts. And of course, sex discrimination is already illegal, and those laws provide workers who are truly paid less for equal work with recourse.

Class warfare, not the battle between the sexes, underpinned the president’s address, and for good reason. Women’s unemployment rate has consistently remained below men’s during this economic downturn. Women’s higher rate of academic achievement suggests that the next generation of working women will continue to gain in the economy, while men struggle.

So the real question is, when will Democrats finally be allowed to drop this tired feminist mantra from major political addresses?

Inconvient truth: rising income inequality is a myth

JustOneMinute: "[T]he distribution of income in the U.S. is basically the same as it was a quarter-century ago—and the middle class has gained ground over the last decade."

The ubiquitous references to rising income inequality—with President Obama the offender-in-chief—are erroneous and serve mainly to fan the flames of class warfare in this country. But who benefits from that?

How much equality is enough?

The AP predicts that economic inequality will be the issue in the 2012 campaign. That's means the "struggling middle class," and the "widening gap between rich and poor." Democrats like to portray Republicans as wealthy. But their definition has always seemed highly convenient to me. In all the discussion I've heard or read about economic inequality, no one every answers or even raises the question, How equal is enough?

Economist: Our present economic crisis originated with misguided attempts to use credit to reduce inequality. It's the old law of unintended consequences.

This does not strike me as a story about how income inequality caused the financial crisis. Rather, this is a story about how policies intended to reduce inequality had the unintended consequence of precipitating America's worst economic slump since the Depression. It's very important that we're straight on what the story is, since different stories may have very different implications for policy. If the story is that the level of inequality itself—and not our ideas about or political reactions to it—indirectly caused the crisis, then we may think that narrowing the gap is a matter of urgent necessity. But if the story is that an ill-conceived political attempt to reduce inequality—and not the fact of inequality itself—led to apocalyptic economic devastation, then we may well conclude that it is better to refrain from equalising initiatives unless we are quite certain they will not backfire. At any rate, this is the lesson I would draw from the story Mr Rajan is telling. Now, this call for prudent restraint may not turn out to be very limiting. The upshot may be no more than the recognition that government intervention in credit markets is a particularly stupid way to try reduce inequality. Whatever the upshot turns out to be, the idea that we must be alert to the unintended consequences of policies meant to reduce inequality is rather different, and rather more helpful, than the idea that inequality as such threatens the stability of the economy.