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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watcgl!jchapman
From: jchapman@watcgl.UUCP (john chapman)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: egg/chicken chicken/egg chigg/eckin
Message-ID: <2115@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Jun-85 16:41:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: watcgl.2115
Posted: Wed Jun 26 16:41:59 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Jun-85 05:33:16 EDT
References: <893@mnetor.UUCP> <5642@utzoo.UUCP> <896@mnetor.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 66

.
. < Brad and I say many more things>
.
> >
> >
> >  You asked what group had been exploited in the 20th century and I've
> >  given you some examples.  It not such a simple problem you see that
> >  you can give one simple name to those people/groups.  I notice you
> >  have conveniently left out the large groups I did use like women
> >  and blacks (definitely more than half the population) and those
> >  companies which abuse the environment to increase profits or as
> >  we are seeing in the paper sell to countries with long records of
> >  human rights violations.  Why ignore these Brad?
> 
> I do not ignore them, and my apolgies for not responding to each point, but
> I feel these net discussions get far too big and should better be done
> in person if possible.  I can, but don't answer every point.  Sorry.
> >
> >> misuse is not important.  Let's see aggregate figures concerning domestic
> >> production vs. foreign production, and revenues attributable to both.
> >  OK:
> >  Women : aprroximately 50% of the population.  Probably close to that
> >          percentage of the work force.  Average wage: 63% of the average
> >          male wage.  If we assume women are not inherently inferior
> >          to men then we save approx. 25% of the labour cost component
> >          of goods (since we don't give that 50% of the people a 50%
> >          raise) directly by discriminating and suppressing this
> >	  particular group of people.
> Well, the debate was on foreign figures, but I will tackle this domestic
> issue.   First, your assumption that "women are not inherently inferior to
> men"  doesn't quite apply.  A large proportion of the difference between
> total male and female earnings is due to the fact that men are still doing the
> most important jobs in society.  In the old days, men did them all and women
> didn't work, so women earned a penny for every dollar men made.  Does that
> mean people were saving 99% of their costs by suppressing women?  Hardly.
> We may not like the fact that men still rule the economy, but it makes your
> figures meaningless.  In the cases where women are paid less than men for
> the same work, then you truly have unfair treatment of women.  But such
> unfair misuse of women is hardly the major cause of our economic prosperity.
> If anything, misuse of good talent HURTS us rather than helps us.
Sigh....
Well not to get too tiresome but: you asked what group(s) had been
oppressed by the US and/or Canada in the twentieth century.  When
I listed some groups you dismissed the small ones as being irrelevant
and ignored the larger groups.  In reply to your response above:
You are choosing the wrong figures; if 1% of the work force was
female and were paid 1% of what males were paid then I would have
claimed a 1% savings in labour not the 99% you would have me claiming.
A more concrete example: various tasks must be performed for a
company to make and sell widgets. Let's say 100% of the tasks are
performed by men and a widget costs $100 for labour. Now imagine
we have 99% men and 1% women but the women are paid only 1% of
what men are paid (on average) then the labour cost is $99.99.
Your mistake was including the total population of women not just
the female work force and comparing it to the workforce (I still
can't see how you could possibly come up with the answer you did);
there are people (me for instance) that will point out that the
housework and babysitting the women did with little or no
renumeration was what allowed men to be out in the workforce all
day in the first place; if the men had had to pay the women what
their services were actually worth they would have had to make
*much* bigger demands on their employers and thus the cost of
good and services would have risen.
.
.
.