Lefty Survey Alert

The headline in the article should allude you to where this one is going... Women pay dearly for career breaks.

After a headline like that, you just know this is going to be another "poor women, they are so hard done by compared to men" things. And as you read, you find out the spin is exactly that. For instance, here are the first two paragraphs...

PROFESSIONAL women who put careers on hold for family or other reasons, earn 18% less when they return to the workforce, a new US survey shows.

The salary penalty for hopping off the career track was even higher in the business world, where earnings dropped an average of 28%, said the survey by the New York-based Center for Work-Life Policy

Sounds grim, doesn't it? And I bet you're thinking, they are being taken advantage of by their employer, and other things. After all, the survey does imply the women pay for their time off. As if the time off was a bad thing and they are being punished. But we begin to see the underlying truth in the next paragraph...

The drop in pay partly reflects the decision of many women to return to jobs with less responsibility, or to part-time jobs. However, it may also reflect that women are leaving the workforce during the years when many men make the largest leaps up the corporate ladder, the survey's authors conclude. [emphasis added by me]

Partly reflects? I would think, the results completely reflect the decision to choose lower paying jobs and part-time jobs. After all, if you leave a $50k a year job and then take on a part-time job one year later, of course you will have a drop in pay. And that drop in pay is totally and unequivicably the result of taking on a part-time job in a "lower down the ladder" position.

Further on in the piece... the last two paragraphs actually, so you get their spin before you get to see the results... we discover the following...

Nearly 40% said they had intentionally chosen a job with less responsibility and with lower pay. So they could have more time for their family.

Only 40% who went back to work, went back to full-time work. About 25% chose to have a part-time job and about 10% decided to work for themselves. (What happened to the other 25% isn't said. And how far away from the 25% and 10% the figure really is we do not know because they cleverly use the word "about" to describe those figures.)

Side note: Using the above figures, I'll show you how to doctor survey results...

Survey size: 100
Actual Income: $52k per year ($1,000 per 40 hour week at $25 per hour)

Of those 100, 40 go back to full time work, however, they also get $1,200 a week jobs (an increase) which gives them $62,400 a year.

The rest get part time jobs (20 hour per week) also earning more, at $30 per hour - which gives them $600 a week

So my survey people all got jobs with an increase in hourly rate.

Now let's average it out...

40 x $62,400 = $2,496,000
60 x $31,200 = $1,872,000
Total = $4,368,000

The average being $43,680 - a drop of $8,320 a year (16.64%).

So there you go. The people in my survey ALL increased their hourly rate and yet my results show a drop in income of 16.64%. (Those who conducted the real survey claim this choice by women to opt for less demanding jobs with a reduced yearly income, is a penalty. And is something that needs to be addressed in some way.)

Oh. Something you might like to know about the survey, 653 men were also surveyed. So they could draw comparisons. Though what kind of comparison you get comparing a women who chooses to get a part time job with a man who continues to climb the corportate ladder, is not stated. But it certainly can make their claims more slanted, that's for sure. (Maybe if they compared women who choose part time jobs with women who do not leave employment at all, instead of gainfully employed men, we might get a different picture again.)

And why is their researched aimed at women? Why not do a survey to show the results of men who leave the workforce for a year or two and then who opt for part time work. Is THAT kind of research ignored because there are no political points to be scored with it... and because it might show that men are equally "worse off" under the same conditions?

Onward.

Other notable items lifted for the news piece include... "...even relatively short career interruptions entail heavy financial penalties" and "The longer you spend out, the more severe the penalty becomes."

What's with all the talk of penalties? As I said, they are making out as if the lower pay is a punishment, when their own survey clearly shows the lower pay is by CHOICE of the women.

Perhaps a look at WHO conducted the survey might give us a clue...

As already mentioned, the survey was conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy. And a quick Google revealed "The Center for Work-Life Policy is the new name of the National Parenting Association." And a quick look at the CWL website shows a leftist leaning. For instance, one initiative is "to better retain and more fully tap into the productive energies of women and persons of color..." And they want to examine key policy challenges and then develop "policy and practice with enough heft and traction to drive change." In otherwords, they want to meddle in the affairs of private business owners so they will be forced to accommodate the wishes of women and minority colored people.

All of which goes against their claim of being "committed to promoting policies that enable individuals to realize their full potential across the divides of gender, race and class." For if it were true, they would not spend all their time dealing with initiatives that single out women and colored people.

And elsewhere on their site, one of the members (Hewlett), the same one who lead the questionable research revealed in this entry, "urges lawmakers and corporations to establish policies that support working parents." Which, going by the women/color slant, means make rules so that private enterprise has to foot the bill for a woman's choice to have a kid.

A quick click over to the National Parenting Association reveals some of theses property rights infringing gems...

* flexibility in our work lives so that we have time for our kids
* first-rate education with after-school programs that offer students options for an extended, enriched day
* laws that keep guns out of the hands of children

O-oh... they are anti-gunners. And they want it achieved by "laws". And who is to fund all of these "after school programs"? And I suppose they expect the govt to force employers to allow these parents to come and go as they please or force the employer to pay for a woman to have time off for a kid, but call it being flexible.

All in all, from my few minutes of researching those behind this survey, all I see is a do-gooder lobby group trying to create a problem where none exists. And trying to brainwash others into thinking this is a problem which needs addressing... and that addressing is to be done by the govt creating new rules, laws and policy forcing it onto everyone - employers, mainly.

Just a look at their "hot issues" says enough... Paid Parenting Leave and Gun Control as well as Increasing The Minimum Wage. All of which are prime property rights infringing issues - forcing me to pay for someone else's child bearing, forcing me to hand over my means of self-defence and forcing me and my business to pay staff a certain income. And all of which go against helping me realize my full potential, as they claim to want to do (I cannot realize my full potential when being forced to pay for someone else's kid, being forced to pay staff a certain amount and removing my means of protection).

The Spin Doctors Have Been Hard At Work

In my city there is a supposed problem... too much violence in and around the main tourist attraction suburb (which is full of nightclubs) on a Friday and Saturday night. Of course, with all such problems, it is only a problem when the media decides it is a problem and makes a big deal out of it, which then encourages others to jump onto the bandwagon, which then puts pressure on politicians to "do something about it".

The authorities (the city's mayor and his cronies) decided "that something" was to alter the trading hours of the clubs. To force them to close their doors at 3.00am instead of 5.00am. How this was supposed to fix the problem it wasn't said. And that this effectively caused a massive loss of business to the clubs was ignored.

How massive a loss of business? Well, if you conservatively estimate the club takes in $1,000 profit in an hour, they have lost $2,000 profit for the night. Which is $14,000 a week! (If one of the authority members had been a nightclub owner you could bet your bottom dollar the law would not have made it through. Because then they would have had a personal stake in it. But because none of the authorities go to nightclubs or have a financial stake in them, it is okay to punish them financially.)

The first night the new law went into effect there was a MASSIVE police presence. Police had been imported from a nearby city to help deal with the forecast problem. Those problems never happened and so the authorities said the new closing time was a success. Not bothering to admit that maybe it was due to the massive police presence and not the new closing time.

With the media spotlight off the "problem", for the moment, the number of police in the area was reduced to its normal level. A level of 12 police to patrol an area which sees as many as 20,000 people partying on a Friday and Saturday night. That's only one police officer for every 1,667 nightclubers.

With such odds against them, they cannot patrol by themselves or even in pairs. They need to patrol in groups of four or more. And if there is trouble, then even that small group of four is inadequate and so another group will come to assist. Tying up two thirds of the available police for just one scuffle.

Some of the public complain the police aren't "doing enough" while the police claim - and rightly so - that they need more police, that you cannot keep an eye on 20,000 nightclubers with just 12 police. (Note: I have spoken with police - at all levels from constable to 'officer in charge' of the station - at three different stations in the city and ALL of them are undermaned. Even one of the so-called 24 hour stations has to close its doors at 10.00pm due to a LACK of police! Despite the citizens requests and the requests from the police dept to the state politicians, the police numbers remain the same.)

How The Numbers Are Doctored

As you know, no politician will admit to being fallible - ever. As far as they are concerned, ALL their handed-down rules and laws are what is best for us. And the idea to FORCE nightclubs to close their doors at 3.00am instead of 5.00am is no exception.

Violence in the nightclub district is real. It is happening. And the forced closure has not diminished it one jot. So how do the lying bastards make it appear that it did do some good? They make asinine claims like, "You're more likely to have a car crash on the way to the nightclub district than get into a violent confrontation when you are there." And they quote doctored police numbers. Which is easy and goes like this...

On a normal day, police might have to deal with X number of incidents. Let's call it 100. With each incident needing to be written up "for the record". And on a normal day this might even be possible - when spread out over the day.

Now take those 100 incidents and have them occur in a much shortened day. Now the police are being overloaded with work. And the only way to cope is to disregard some of the incidents. Hence, the number of "for the record" reports goes down. And the politicians can claim their hair-brain idea has worked. They saved the taxpayer money by not employing more police (though they cost many businesses a shitload of profits). And have gained more control.

Then with the decrease in reported incidents, the police are shuffled off to do revenue raising...

On the wall of "officer's room" at my local police station is a whiteboard with a large number written on it. That number is the number of random breath tests that station has as a quota, which MUST be fulfilled. And it is fulfilled like so...

Once a week, six officers head off to a dumb-ass location. They take along two 20 gallon trash cans and a shitload of breath-test machine blowing tubes. They sit in that one location for four hours - or until they run out of blowing tubes, or until the two trash cans are full of discarded blowing tubes. Then they go back to the station and mark on the whiteboard how many "random" breath tests were done for the week.

With less police doing anything productive, and the incidents being ignored because the police are too overworked, the number of incidents actually increases. At which point the public starts making enough noise the media picks it up again.

Blame It On The Nightclubs

Now the politicians are faced with a dilemma... who to blame? It isn't the idea of forcing the clubs to close all at the same time, causing thousands of intoxicated people out onto the street at the same time, overwhelming taxi ranks, and resulting in even more incidents. No. Their idea works (despite all evidence to the contrary). And it isn't the lack of police. Nope. What it is, according to the politicians, is the nightclubs. It's all their fault you see. Because they sell discount drinks and two-for-one deals. They even have people on the street handing out vouchers to nightclubers to entice them into the clubs. As a result of all this "supposed" cheap alcohol, people get drunk.

The obvious solutions, therefore, is to BAN two-for-one offers, happy hours, discounts of any kind, and nightclub employees handing out vouchers on the street to entice people into their clubs.

It doesn't matter that what the politician calls a cheap drink is already expensive compared to other drinking establishments (like RSL clubs). It doesn't matter that no-one is forcing people to drink alcohol. And no-one is looking at the fact that many nightclubers drink at home BEFORE going out.

Nope. None of that matters. It's NOT the piss-head's fault for getting drunk. It is all the fault of the nightclub. So let's control them even more, the lying bastards cry. And so begins the most hideous of hideous things...

Beware The Trial

When faced with public outcry over their silly ideas, the good old fallback for the politician is the trial. Because no-one can object to a trial. Of course, the problem is, once a trial has been put in place, it ALWAYS becomes law.

For instance, by making the discount vouchers the boogie man, the politician's will then justify their removal - or - the implementation of a trial. Let's just trial "no discount vouchers" for three months and see how it goes.

What happens now is a merry dance of statistics. If, before the trial, there was a downtrend in incidents. And that downtrend was actually the result of fewer people going to nightclubs because for fear of assault. That fact will be ignored. The lying bastard will quote the recent incident figure at the time of the trial. Then three months later quote the new number. Because the downtrend was steady, the new number will be down. Not because of the new rule, though. Then the lying bastards will hail the success of their new initiative and the trial will remain.

The most classic example of this in action is with unleaded petrol. A few years after it was put into force, the amount of lead in the blood was shown to have decreased from before unleaded petrol was forced onto everyone. What was ignored was...

The amount of lead in the blood had been going down at a steady rate BEFORE unleaded petrol was introduced. And that reduced level the lying bastards were parading around was merely an extension of the trend. Meaning, unleaded petrol did NOT reduce the amount of lead in blood, it was something else.

That something else was simply the removal of the old lead-lined water pipes which fed old houses and suburbs. And the replacement of those lead-lined pipes with PVC pipes and copper.

If we did a study that compared copper levels in the blood with lead levels, we will find a DIRECT correlation with the removal of lead-lined pipes and the introduction of copper pipes.

Of course, this information can NEVER be made public. Because it would show the lying bastards to be fallible. And that their costly idea was a total waste of time, money and effort. And didn't achieve anything at all. In fact, it made things worse by putting more poisonous and deadly gases into the air we breathe.

Another example is with suicide by gun. In Australia, when national gun registration was introduced, one of the reasons was to reduce the number of suicides by gun. And after the registration, gun suicide was down. BUT, it had already been going down with a 15 year trend BEFORE gun registration. And the rate of the downward trend didn't change after gun registration. Questionable data.

This is why trials that are started by lying bastards only ever compare data immediately before the trial with data after the trial, and ignore trends that were occurring before the trial began.

The Solution

Anyway. We now face a situation where, what could have been solved by doing nothing - in which case the whole sorry mess would sort itself out as people stopped going to dangerous places of their own volition; or which could have been solved by employing more police for those areas and times of the night most needed; has been turned into a big control fest. Where the nightclubs are blamed for everything and punished accordingly. Less income will mean less money to pay for staff. Less promotion will result in less income, which will also mean less staff. Cash flow slows. Business profits dwindle. To compensate, prices rise. Which will force some people to go elsewhere, where it is cheaper. The problem, which seems to have been made better due to doctored numbers, remains the same, gets worse, or moves into other areas.

I don't know why the lying bastards can't get it into their thick skulls, that it is police presence that reduces incidents and not restricting private enterprise.

Look at people driving on a highway. When there is a cop car on the highway, even if it is doing slightly below the speed limit, everyone slows down and drives carefully.

When people know a radar trap is up ahead somewhere, they drive slower and with more care.

Look at the soccer matches in England. At the end of the game police line the field. There must be a hundred or two cops at the game. Their presence keeps the fans from getting too unruly. And, for the most part, they behave.

Take away the police presence - and thus the possibility of getting in trouble - and some people infringe upon the property rights of others left, right and center.

When the nightclub curfew was introduced, loads of police were brought into the area and there was nothing of note to happen. Police presence - just their presence - kept people behaving themselves. THAT is a proven - here and overseas. Why the success of such actions are ignored and moron ideas of punishing private enterprise are brought down to bear instead, escapes me.

The problem exists because of the state. By having a police force in the area, people have an expectation of being "protected." The expectations do not match reality, however. As reality reveals a lack of police to enable the expected protection. That lack of police means certain people (and it's usually only a small number) can create trouble without fear of punishment.

Who will pay for the extra police? Not me that's for sure. I see no reason to pay (by way of my tax dollar) to protect people who want to go out on the town. If they want the increased police presence, let them pay. And let them pay by way of a $1 or $2 cover charge at the door of every nightclub. And once you have paid the Police Fee, you don't have to pay again when you go to a different nightclub. (Or have an official Police Fee Collector at the door of each nightclub collecting the protection fee - so the onus is not on the nightclub to become a revenue collector.)

The nightclubs would directly benefit by increased patronage because the area is safer. And the nightclubers would benefit because the area is safer.

Run the numbers: 20,000 people paying $1 - $2 Police Fee comes to $20,000 to $40,000 in revenue. Sure that is enough to pay for an extra 20 or so police for the night.

If the police are paid $150 for the shift, then 20 police will cost only $3,000. Which means, at $20,000 collected, an additional 133 police could be put on for the night. And now you're talking police presence. And all of it provided under the fair "user pays" system.

On the other hand, if there were no police at all. There would not be an expectation of protection. People could thus make an informed decision about what is best for them...

a) Avoid the area all together
b) Only go out in large groups
c) Arm themselves for their own protection
d) Hire protection to accompany them

Nightclubs could likewise make an informed decision...

a) Let thugs bully people and thus lose business
b) Employ an independent security force for the club - AND - the surrounding area
c) Close doors and move to a more peaceful area to do business

Either scenario above will see a reduction in incidents. With a privately hired security force, the bad eggs will go where the pickings are easier. If going out in large groups, the bad eggs will move on - they do not want to confront a large group only to discover the group is too large or other groups join in to force them away. If people are armed, the bad eggs might get hurt so will look for softer targets. If private protection is hired, the bad eggs will then be dealing with a trained person and will look for softer targets. Left up to their own devices, the people will find their own solutions to the problem and the problem will be sorted out.

But that is obviously not an option as long as we have a state that wants to be the sole provider of force - and enforces that no end too. So we are stuck with expectations which are not lived up to. Thus, to solve the problem is a simple matter of bringing in more police so there is a visible police presence. Not only does this keep people behaving, the bad eggs choose to go elsewhere for fear of getting in trouble.

Two solutions. None of which require the state to infringe upon the property rights of the business owner. None of which the state is choosing to take. Choosing, instead, to blame the business owner for the problem - while forgetting the city exists in the first place because of the business owner. And that if it wasn't for the business owner, the city would be dead as tourists would have no reason to come and spend their money - including going to nightclubs.

I don't know. Sometimes I feel I am living on a planet full of morons. And I think the end of hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy - where the morons of one race were rounded up, put on a spaceship which crash landed on earth and became us - has some merit to it.