Typically, without the details, "averages" are worth just a bit more than nothing in trying to support a story like this.

The trouble with an average is that you have no idea what reality inside the office.

Obama might just as easily have a single male employee who is very highly paid, yet every other male employee on staff is paid poverty wages, and that would still "average" out as (whatever $$$ amount was cited).

Similarly, all of his female staffers could be doing the same work as their male "poverty-wage" counterparts (in my example above), but could be paid the exact amount as the average cited for that group (leading to an "average" of the same amount of course)...in which case you would have a "women are paid more than men for the same work" situation, which destroys the story's premise.

You cannot use those numbers to support this argument. You need to know specifics about positions, work being performed, responsibilities, etc. Otherwise, this is a non-story (and the supposed news source should have known this...or perhaps did, but wanted to try to create news) based on a faulty mathematical argument.

Is he then going to try and say that some jobs are the 'same' as other jobs?

That was tried once.... in the USSR.

Obama stop pandering.

Actually, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened to a Republican Senator from Arizona running for President.

Blacks went from voting for Republicans to Democrats in 1964 because of AuH2O's opposition to the unconstitutional Civil Rights Act. They all assumed he was a racist.

But they forget a little story from just after Goldwater's election to the Senate in 1952.

You see, Barry Goldwater had a black attorney on staff who tried to eat in the Senate Dining Room, but who was refused service until Goldwater went in and threatened to get the offending employees fired unless they served his staffer.

So Barry Goldwater not only had a highly-placed black staffer long before it became fashionable, but he also integrated the Senate Dining Room.

Democrats talk about things like equal work for equal pay and fair wages, but when it comes down to it, they don't actually do it -- they just want to impose it on everyone else. Pelosi's grape pickers at her winery aren't unionized, and it took the Republican Revolution in 1994 to impose the same work rules on the Hill that the Democrats had imposed on the rest of the country.

Now obviously, it would have been better if the Republicans had just removed those counterproductive work rules from the whole country instead of imposing them on everyone, but one should be sensing a theme here by now.

Bill:

The fact that Obama is a hypocrite only makes the left love him more. It shows he has talent.

You have to look at the big picture.

Its like the Clintoons all over again without the baggage of the pantsuits and sexual assaults.

No one knows where this guy came from or what he has ever done - the perfect liberal candidate after the debacle of Gore and Kerry.

Dear PSR,

You are right, averages can be tricky things. Note, too, that I said that the second half of the equation -- equal work -- is missing.

But let's take your first claim, that "Obama might just as easily have a single male employee who is very highly paid, yet every other male employee on staff is paid poverty wages, and that would still "average" out as (whatever $$$ amount was cited)."

Let us for fun assume that Mr. Obama is paying one male $250,000. Let us also assume that he has thirty other staffers he's paying, in your words, "poverty wages," or $15,000 each. Now, let us take this $700,000 payroll and divide it by the number of male employees: 700,000/31. What do we get? $22, 580.65, which is a far cry from the average reported. So perhaps we need to cut the number of poverty-wage earners in half. Hence, we end up dividing $475,000 by 16 yielding an average of $29,687.50. Again, a long cry from the reported average. My point in this is to show that you would need to have astronomical values to have the sort of outcome you've cited, particularly when the data show that only one male Obama employee makes over $100,000 and the other 35 make a minimum of $24,000. To have just one employee, in your example, make a high salary and a lot of poverty-wage earners' combined salary averages to reach the reported $55,000 plus, is nearly impossible in any meaningful way.

I could be wrong, but it is a bit like asking the question about a plane traveling across the Atlantic. If it travels the first 1,500 miles at 500 miles an hour in three hours, how fast will it have to travel the next 1,500 miles to average 1,000 miles an hour? I believe that the answer (I may have the question wrong) is that the plane would have to travel an impossible speed: it can't be done.

So I guess what I am saying is that what I see for data in the story cited is actually meaningful data -- in an arithmetical sense. But as I said, it does not explore whether the men and women involved are doing "identical" work; of course, I can't think of any two jobs on the planet that are strictly identical, even if two people are working side-by-side packing cans. And yet I am quite sure that many of the jobs in a senator's office are rather similar. I can't imagine that there is a podiatrist, a farrier, an electrician, a waitress and a concert violinist on Obama's staff.

Peace,

BG

What an employee of any gender is paid by an employer is not a concern for the government. The very fact that people debate this ridiculous premise set by Obama gives it undue credence.
Obama's advocacy for equal wages is a logical fallacy. You're being distracted from seeing the truth that this argument is a logical fallacy if you bother to debate it. Simply do not accept the premise.

Dear Suzanne,

I thank you for your wonderful comment. You and I are probably in complete agreement here. But I wish you had named and outlined what the fallacy is that Mr. Obama has committed. Are you willing to explore this further? I hope so. It would be very helpful.

Thanks.

Bill Gnade

The fallacy is that men and women are equal.

His statement is political hogwash that doesn't pass logical muster.

It sounds fine enough to say that I will be paid exactly the same as you would be paid for performing the same job.

However, if you scratch a bit beneath the surface of the comment, there are a gazillion variables.
It is a flawed sentiment that merely sounds good at first listen.

If you apply a bit of "deductive logic" to the statement, you would have something like this...

Men and women are equal
Men and women perform work equally
Therefore, all men and women are paid equally for their work

It is completely illogical.

And let me clarify that when I say men and women are equal, I mean not just that but no two individuals are equal, regardless of sex.

Dear Suzanne,

If you are indeed a woman, if you are indeed a "Suzanne," I can only say that you are a woman after my own heart. Not that you are after my heart; ahh, you know what I mean.

These days, bringing deductive logic to a political debate is a bit like bringing chastity to the marriage bed: it's an old-fashioned and nearly forgotten art. You have accepted a very traditional and therefore highly defensible position regarding male and female: the sexes are not only different, they are VERY different. Hence, it is unlikely that men and women can do the same sort of things.

I explored this a bit in my post, "Not in Unity," which you can find at this link: http://www.nhinsider.com/bill-gnade/2008/6/28/not-in-unity.html

Blessings to you, and thanks for offering such a fine defense. It's very helpful.

BG

Thanks for the compliments Bill. In this day and age of political correctness, the notion that one may wish to challenge the opinion of another is seen as a personal attack rather than simply being seen as the challenge of their opinion.
People's "widdle feewings" might get hurt if you dare to challenge them, therefore, it is PC to not be "confrontational"

The concept of defending one's opinion is practically unnecessary. One only need arbitrarily make a statement and that statement is taken as fact.

It seems that these days, substance is completely lacking in arguments. It's very tricky indeed. And more often than not, people invariably spend time trying to argue under a false premise which creates the image that the premise has merit when in reality, it does not.

If I had to choose between totalitarianism and the possibility of hurting someone's feelings...Not too difficult a choice.

Dear Suzanne,

You're welcome.

BG