This may be shitty of me, but I can’t help but introduce politics into this. The current flap in congress over contraceptives just boggles my mind. We have senators… SENATORS - supposedly our top dog representatives of the people, attempting to ban contraceptives for women but supporting Viagra for men. So there you have it. Women are being governed by a collection of limp dicks trying to control the womb. The conservative extremists have jumped off the cliff. Do women lean toward the left? Duh…
liz
Many women go for money from men, where men often go for looks, surely you wouldn’t deny that? All those Beverly hills wives wouldn’t go out with an unemployed man, right? And they indeed seek men with wealth. Ever heard the saying; ‘all women are prostitutes’? seems like two people getting what they want to me. …but I agree its not moral, I wouldn’t do it, nor would I expect it of my daughter.
There is the knowledge that sex begets babies unless you take precautions, otherwise you are engaging in an act where you know the outcome is likely to produce children. Its only casual if you take precautions.
men who practice casual sex are indeed equally responsible for the outcome.
From personal observation I think women ‘usually’ think that if they give men what they want it may lead to more. Evolution would want secure partners for the duration of the upbringing of children, more mature men also recognise this imho.
I agree with them, condoms are utterly horrible and completely spoil the experience. Its not easy to keep it up if you cant feel much ~ depends on how sensitive a man is, but you wouldn’t want an over sensitive one lol.
All of them equally surely?
tentative
Tehe you guys need a revolution, oh wait, you had one then got into the same crap as the rest of us.
Usually liberals do not embrace and celebrate difference in all things. Business is one area liberals hate difference. They might like it in some things, but when it comes to money they believe in all sorts of affirmative action programs.
There was a matter that I intended to address in this thread, although we have all been involved in lengthly discourse concerning those on welfare. It is true that such discourse is not over yet, but there appears to be something of a lull, so I’m going to go ahead and slide this in here.
It is very difficult to take a position that is Anti- Women’s Lib in terms of employment propsects, and I certainly would not do so, but there were certainly unintended consequences with respect to employment. The problem that you run into is basically one of a saturated workforce which creates competition amongst employees, (where supply/demand is tilted more towards supply) thereby decreasing the demand:supply ratio and bringing the prices (read: wages) down. This is obvious when one looks at the relative prices and household incomes between 1960 and 2000…because those happen to be the numbers most readily available to me.
You’ll see that the Median Household Income, Inflation-Indexed, for the year 1960 is about $32,500 where you’re looking at about $42,000 for the year 2000.(1) This translates to (assuming a 52-week workyear and 40 hour week) $15.63/median household income per hour for 1960 and $20.19 for 2000. (Where Income/52/40=x)
However, it is paramount to look at what we are actually doing for that income.
You will notice that, in 1960, 37.7% of women were in the workforce where they made up 33.4% of the workforce. The number of women in the workforce was 23,240,000. Contrastly, in the year 2000, 66,303,000 women were in the workforce, which is 60.2% of women making up 46.6% of the labor force.(2)
You will see that, with the increase of women in the workforce, we found an inflation-adjusted income of 129% (42,000/32,500) for the year 2000 as compared to the year 1960. However, that increase is tied to an increase to 140% (46.6/33.4) of women’s percentage of the labor force, an increase to 160% (60.2/37.7) of women who are actually working in 2000 compared to 1960 and an increase of 43,063,000 actual women in the workforce. (285%)
This clearly points to a trend in which we have added to the labor force, but the actual incomes (expressed as a percentage of Median Household Income) have declined as a result of an over-saturated workforce. This is largely due to employers being able to pay wages for positions where the wages do not have to suffice to take care of a family (as another family member will just have to work) where wages used to be such that they could sustain a family or, quite simply, nobody would ever take that job.
This is a clear example of employers using the saturated workforce to their advantage to command reduced wages, which economically, they should, but morally? Patriotically?
Finally, we will look at the difference in hours worked between 1960 and the year 2000 to gage if there is any significant disparity in that regard.
In any case, if you look at the hours worked per week in April 1960 (Page 5)(3) you’ll see that the average white male (why is it seperated by color?) worked 41.9 hours per week whereas the average white female worked 35.2 hours per week. You will see that in 1960, once again, 37.7% of women were in the workforce and 83.3% of men were in the workforce. (4)
What we are going to do here is we are going to take the average hours worked per week, and subtract out the percentage of people NOT in the workforce from each gender to determine an average hours worked per week, per person, in the year 1960.
(41.9-men -16.7%(not working) = 34.9 35.2-women-62.3% (not working) = 13.3)
You are looking at an average workweek of 48.2 hours for men and women combined (one of each) in 1960.
Contrastly, we see that 60.2% of women were in the labor force in 2000. You will also note that the average workweek (combined) in the year 1999 is 34.5 hours.(5) I have a different source that says 58% of women in the labor force in 2000 and 71% of men in the labor force, that goes against my argument, so we’ll use those numbers which skew in favor of me being wrong. (6)
In that case you have a combined workweek of:
(34.5men -29%(not working)=24.5- 34.5women - 42%(not working) = 20)
It would seem that you have a combined 44.5 hours per week which is 3.7 less combined hours than 1960, however this decrease can largely be attributed to a decline in full-time workers due to the saturation of the labor market because you have a labor force of roughly sixty-point-five percent of the total (83.3% men + 37.7% women/2=60.5%) population working in 1960 and 64.5% labor force participation in the year 2000 (71% men + 58% women/2=64.5%) The numbers are actually skewed against my argument because women slightly outnumber men, but that’s negligible.
In any case, you have 4% more of the population in the overall workforce in the year 2000, but those who are in the workforce have seen a drastic decrease in their hours compared to 1960 because an employer no longer has to pay a wage that will, by itself, sustain a family. The employer also has the ability to cut hours and have less full-time staff which will enable the employer not to provide certain benefits that go hand-in-hand with full-time employment.
In 1960, you have a combined workweek of 48.2 hours at a rate MHI-expressed hourly- of $15.63 which results in a combined workweek being good for $753.36/week, combined, adjusted for inflation. Contrastly, for 2000, you have a combined 44.5 hours per week at $20.19 MHI-expressed hourly- which results in $898.45/week. You will see that this tends to benefit 2000 because a household was worth a median of $145.09 more, even with a lesser combined workweek, but these numbers are deceiving.
For one example, we will look at gas prices. We should also keep in mind that, since both individuals in a household are likely working, there is likely more gas being used in a household pertaining to work travel. In 1960, gasoline was $0.31/gallon, (7) which adjusted for 2000 inflation results in $1.80 (8) You’ll see that gas prices were about $1.95, on average, in the year 2000, which is a $0.15 increase, adjusted for inflation. (9)
Travel time to work data is not readily available for 1960, but you can see that it was 21.7 minutes in 1980 compared to 25.5 minutes in 2000. (10) According to the same source, 18% more people also used a private vehicle to take them to work in the year 2000 compared to the year 1960, and vehicles per household increased in 2000 to 164% of 1960 levels. (1.69/1.03)
You can see that, just with gas prices, in the 2000 scenario, gas prices are higher even after the inflation adjustment. You have 164% of the cars per household in 2000 compared to 1960, and a travel time to work that is 3.8 minutes greater than 1980. Furthermore, you have a greater percentage of the population actually working. The combination of these factors leads one to conclude, by necessity, that the expenditures associated in terms of gas, vehicles, and vehicle upkeep JUST TO GET TO WORK in the year 2000 greatly exceed those of 1960.
We will also see that the average housing expenditures in 1960 were $1,588, (11-last page) which would be an inflation-adjusted $11,557 in 2010. (12) We can see, however, that all forms of housing were more expensive than these inflation-adjusted numbers in 2010:
ALL UNITS (Average): $16,557
Homeowner-Mortgage: $22,278
Homeowner-No Mortgage: $12,294
Renter: $12,843
This gives us a concrete example because we can determine that a household with two working parents made an inflation-adjusted 119% of the income in 2000 that they did in 1960, ($898.45/week / $753.36/week = 1.19) where housing expenses, again injusted for inflation, were 143% in 2010 what they were in 1960. (16,557/11,557)
Ultimately, what you have is more workers who are working for wages that did not keep up with inflation. These workers are also working less hours per week and are less likely to be working full-time than their 1960 counterparts. You only have 4% more of the population actually participating in the labor force in the year 2000, although the Unemployment rate in 1960 never breached 5% (13) where the unemployment rate in the period covering the year 2000 was 5.6% compared to the 4.9% covering 1960.
Thus, you have two things, more people actually working and more people looking for jobs. This is necessarily going to result in a trickle-down effect by which someone that may have once (in 1960) been over-qualified for Job B and would work Job A has to go down to Job B. This eventually works its way down to the extent that someone that was once overqualified for Job W takes Job W because someone that was over-qualified for Job U got Job V. Eventually, what you end up with is a labor market that does not have to keep up with inflation, housing expenditures, or the simple costs of getting to work because there are often healthy amounts of people to replace the people who would often not work under certain wage conditions with people who will.
Keep in mind that the unemployment rate does not include people who have dropped out of the workforce, and given the exponentially higher population in 2000 compared to 1960, it stands to reason that more, physical, people dropped out of the workforce in 2000 which would have a greater effect on true unemployment.
It is unfair that such is the case, but women have also made historically less than men…often for the same job.
****We can also looked at total hours worked.
We have already determined that, in 1960, 60.5% of the 16+ population worked compared with 64.5% of same in 2000. Additionally, the average workweek in 1960 was 48.2 hours (one man + one woman, combined) compared to 44.5 in 2000 (one man + one woman, combined) where more women worked (+20.3% of all women 16+) in 2000 as well as a greater percentage of the population (+4%) in the labor force in 2000 with higher unemployment (people who wanted to be in the labor force and weren’t, +0.7%).
We’re also going to assume the same ratio of females to males, 16+, for the years 1960 and 2000. Females slightly outnumbered males in both years, but that will not make a difference for these purposes. In 1960, there were 23,240,000 women in the workforce and they made up 33.4% of the workforce. This means that the total workforce was 69,580,838 (23,240,000/.334) and therefore, there were 46,340,838 men in the workforce. We determine that the average combined worktime for one man and one woman was 23,240,000 * 2 * 48.2 (combined hours) which results in 2,240,336,000 combined hours worked. This also leaves 23,100,838 men unaccounted for who worked an average of 34.9 hours/week for 806,219,246 more labor hours and 3,046,555,246 labor hours total.
Contrastly, in the year 2000, we have 66,303,000 women in the labor force making up 46.6% of the labor force. This means that the total workforce was 142,281,116 (66,303,000/.466) and that there were 75,978,115 men in the workforce. We determine that the average combined worktime for one man and one woman was 66,303,000 * 2 * 44.5 (combined hours) which results in 5,900,967,000 combined hours work. This also leaves 9,675,115 men unaccounted for who worked for an average of 24.5 hours per week for 237,040,317 hours and a combined 6,138,007,317 hours total.
Ultimately, Americans now work a total of 201% of the physical hours that they did in 1960 (6,138,007,137/3,046,555,246) and for this work, the Median Household Income, adjusted for inflation, compared to 1960, of 129%.
Saturated labor markets suck, don’t they?
Effectively, employers just decided to use divide the work up between the two genders as opposed to having one gender do the majority of the work. The problem is that they wages/benefits are generally lower for each individual person (though higher per household ONLY by merit of having more two-income families…by necessity) and the costs of not only getting to work, but simply living costs, are higher than inflation-adjusted amounts for 1960 while the wages are not as high.
Women’s Liberation was actually the most effective and did the least Economic damage in Professional jobs such as Doctors and Attorneys, because there you have people that are going to make insane amounts of money, anyway. The problem with the movement, as I have mentioned, is that it trickled down into more menial jobs where a male (single-income household) would once work full-time, but be able to command enough of a wage (because of an unsaturated labor-market) that he could make a living for family. That is no longer the case because, with a saturated labor-market, there are lines of people ready to come in and take a job that pays minimum wage in which you only work twenty hours a week if you don’t want it.
The more workers you have, the less each individual worker is needed. The supply of workers exceeds (greatly) the demand and the price (wages) drop.
Simple Economics.
You have more people working less instead of less people working more. This is evident by way of a combined laborforce that is 4% more of the population total than it was in 1960, which also works 3.7 less combined hours with men (as a gender) working 10.4 less hours per individual and women working 6.7 more hours per individual. In terms of excess males working, you had 23,100,838 males who worked an average of 34.9 hours per week in 1960 compared with 9,675,115 who worked 24.5 hours per week in 2000. Therefore, you had 569,178,929 more labor hours ([23,100,838 * 34.9] - [9,675,115 * 24.5]=x) for 13,425,723 more unpaired males in 1960 (23,100,838 - 9,675,115) which results in 42.39 hours (569,178,929/13,425,723 = x) per additional unpaired male in 1960 compared to 2000. Essentially, 14,229,473 MORE full-time jobs…just counting unpaired males, with no female working counter-part!!!
If you get into counting the paired people, then you have 46,480,000 males+females in 1960 who worked an average week of 48.2 (combined hours) which is 2,240,336,000 combined hours worked. In 2000, you have 132,606,000 males + females who worked an average week of 44.5 (combined hours) which is 5,900,967,000 hours worked. Therefore, you have 3,660,631,000 more labor hours (5900967000 -2240336000) for 86,126,000 more paired males and females in 2000 (132,606,000 - 46,480,000) which results in 42.50 hours per additional pair, (3,660,631,000/86126000) or, 22.25 hours per worker in 2000 compared to 1960. Essentially, 0 MORE full-time jobs. In the case of 1960, a lesser proportion of women worked and you still had 48.2 combined hours per pair which resulted in an average of 29.1 hours individually.
In short, with an even lesser overall amount of people in the workforce, the average male/female pair worked 6.86 more individual hours in 1960 (which is due to a lesser percentage of females working, ergo, more full time jobs) than they did in 2000. Furthermore, there were 14,229,473 MORE full-time jobs in 1960 for unpaired male workers than there are today…with less overall workers to whom to distribute those jobs!!!
These numbers include ALL who are not in the workforce pursuant to the calculations above which factored in those who were unemployed
Shit, even if you look at the numbers for the women WHO DID WORK in 1960 compared to 2000, you’ll see that the average working woman (including only those who worked) in 1960 worked 0.7 HOURS MORE per week than did the average working woman in 2000. You’ll also see that the average working man (including only those who worked) in 1960 worked 7.4 HOURS MORE per week than did the average working man in 2000. The average working man in 1960 (41.9 hours per week) also worked full time whereas the average working man in 2000 did not.
Do you see what I mean about the utter sucktitude of saturated labor markets, yet?
This does not even take into account the negative effects that are felt by families that are two-income households by necessity, (financial stress, divorce rates, effects on the kids) the above is just pure Economics.
Obviously, the only reasonable solution to the problem are wages indexed to the current average cost of living (being minimum wage for a full-time job) which are such that an individual can support a family on one full-time job…the way it seemed to be in 1960!
(1) stanford.edu/class/polisci12 … Income.pdf
(2) infoplease.com/ipa/A0104673.html
(3) nber.org/chapters/c1265.pdf
(4) bls.gov/opub/uscs/1960-61.pdf
(5) bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/07/art3full.pdf
(6) census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-20.pdf
(7) historical.whatitcosts.com/facts-gas.htm
(8) westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
(9) wiki.answers.com/Q/Gas_prices_in_2000
(10) fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census … k/jtw1.cfm
(11) bls.gov/opub/uscs/1960-61.pdf
(12) westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
Basically, before Women’s lib you had unpaid subcontracters in the household: the women. So of course salaries went down overall when these women moved from unpaid - but compensated - labor to paid labor. It was another step away from tribal systems of economy.
We’re not just looking at salaries, we’re looking at household standards of living on the whole. Even without that, you still have to get into the Social Effects of two-income households…which I’ve not even started on.
EDIT: It should also be mentioned that the housework you seem to be alluding to still needs to be done, by someone, along with the upbringing of the kids. Therefore, not only are we creating less salary value for ourselves, we’re creating more overall work (including job + household) for ourselves in doing so!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_i … ted_States
Please see the chart of personal income 15 years & older who have non-zero income.
We see that a male, in 1960, had an income of $4,080, which is inflation indexed to 2000 numbers of $23,693 (calculator above) where a female had that of $1,281 which equals $7,336 in the year 2000.
This is compared to amounts of $28,343 for males in 2000 and $16,063 for females.
If we apply zero-incomes from the amounts above, we see that 16.7% of men did not work, so $4,080 -16.7% = $,3398.64, which is $19,771.82 after inflation. Women did $1,281 -62.3% = $473.97 which is $2,757.35 after inflation.
The combined inflation-adjusted amount is $22,529.17.
With the 2000 numbers we have $28,343 - 29% $20,123.53 for males and $16,063 - 42% = $9,316.54 for females. This results in a total of $29,440.07, or 131%, of the inflation adjusted income of 1960.
Again, you have to look at the increase in costs, not just of two people commuting to work, but, in general. (Ex. Housing)
You also have to look in the over-200% increase in physical hours worked it takes to result in a 131% increase in total incomes.
Pav, you may not be conservative, but I’m at least sexually conservative. As for your proof that men demand and get better salaries (for the same work?), women have known this for ages! And yet women, nowadays, are often the sole source of family income for herself and her child.
Women entered the work force en masse during WWII, to take the place of the men who had been conscripted. They got a taste of the power and freedom a paycheck brings. They finally had what men had had for so many centuries. Control over themselves.
A five man panel invited people to speak at a review of the contraceptive ‘issue.’ The people chosen to speak were conservative Christians, who’re against birth control. They’re also against abortion. They seem to want to take women back to the pre-WWII era–before they were able to earn money and declare their independence–and “keep women in their place”–either the kitchen or the nursery–with no other care or concern–or knowledge about the role hormones play in woman’s health–things like cancer and/or osteoporosis.
Yes, I’d like to see research into the diseases of men’s reproductive systems–I think it’s long overdue. But I honestly think a woman’s body is a more finely tuned instrument–because, through her body, she sustains life.
I also think men are reticent about admitting they may also deserve equal medical awareness to things such as prostate disease. Are men willing to pin blue ribbons on their shirts and gather to protest the inequality they apparently feel when it comes to insurance coverage for their overall, hormonal, health. Guys, if you’re ready, I’ll join you.
That was something of an aside, just to point out that I don’t agree with wage disparity, in terms of rate per hour (or salary for same job) in general. The proofs that I provided weren’t really geared towards that conclusion, or anything, as the main point was to assert something entirely unrelated to that.
That’s very true.
I don’t really see how the ability or inability to use birth control or have abortions ties in, by necessity, with a woman’s ability to earn money or declare her independence. It seems that a woman would be able to earn money regardless of whether or not she has sex, unless her chosen career is a prostitute…then it could be difficult to achieve financial independence without having sex.
That’s because it doesn’t. It has to do with a woman’s right to have control over herself. What does a five man panel or five conservative ‘Christian’ men have to do with that right? Isn’t that somehow men trying to wrest back control over women?–to take them back to pre-wwII–and the immediate post-war 1950s–ideologies? Or are they idiocies?
It really has little to do with women being sluts or prostitutes. It has to do with equality. If a man is going to rape, date-rape, screw around with women, women have to take on the responsibility of possible consequences. But that’s not equality, is it, since it puts the onus on women and leaves men, unfettered, to do as they please?
Great article about contraception: m.reason.com/26819/show/c12969bd … bd705d497/
Also, the pill is a grade one carcinogen:
lifesitenews.com/news/surgeo … st-cancer/
She already has control over herself, as do males, they could control themselves to the extent that they either do not have sex or do not have unprotected sex. The cool thing for a woman is that she doesn’t have to have a man actively involved in her birth control, he doesn’t have to participate in that process whatsoever, so I really don’t see where there’s a lack of control. Additionally, a man can say, “With a condom or not at all,” not that they all do…just that they could.
A five-man panel, pursuant to the First Amendment, can talk about whatever a five-man panel wants to talk about. Is a woman who abstains from voting or who is pro-life trying to take control away from herself? Remember, women actually have a population majority…slightly…so if every woman were to vote (if it were put to a vote) in favor of legalized abortion, or against illegalizing it, or what have you, the vote would always go their way.
People simply have opinions one way or another, it’s cool, they’re allowed to. My opinion is I’m Pro-Choice. Economic considerations, mainly.
Women can get pregnant, men can’t. I’m sorry that the responsibility of being able to get pregnant was put exclusively on women. There’s nothing I or anyone else can ever do about it. I wake up every morning and punch myself in the balls…hard…just to make up for the unfairness of it all.
Seriously, though, it’s biology. That’s life. You can’t Legislate biology. I guess women are allowed to become men now, if they want to, so that’s always an option, I guess.
I should have phrased it differently–“It has to do with a woman’s right to control her body.”–or her biology–or her reproductive cycle–whatever. Is a man equal to a woman in that respect? I don’t think so, until a male contraceptive is developed. The problem with that is sperm aren’t as closely tied into the male endocrine system as is a female’s ovulation. Sperm production is ongoing: ovulation only happens once in a lunar month.
People are free, in the US, to talk about anything they please, of course; however, as you know, this was a Congressional panel formed to discuss female contraception and the need for contraceptive medication to be covered by insurance, and yet there were no females among the people called on to speak. What was the panel–and the speakers–intent?–to denounce female contraception or to denounce the President? No matter what, it was biased.
Imm, these biased ideas are also biased against abortion. Given that sexual drive can be equal between both men and women, which is preferable? Which is more ‘moral’–preventing the possibility of life or ending the possibility of life after it may or may not have started?
I maintain that one of the things women learned during WWII was that they didn’t need men to provide for them financially. And face it, the idea of women’s ‘liberation’ was, by then and in western countries, decades old. But women were living in a man’s world; they were chattel–property–much as they are now in the Islamic countries.
Should Western women be forced back into that role?
Polly, extremism–either right or left–has little depth and no scope for comment–So I won’t.
I guess I don’t understand what you are getting at, in this paragraph.
I have no idea, but it scarcely matters. The agreed-upon version of the bill has it such that the Health Insurance companies just have to give it to them, if they are getting it either way, then what is the difference?
Honestly, I agree with the ratification that Catholic Hospitals (and other Religious-Oriented employers) not have to pay for that. Why should they have to pay for something that they expressly do not believe in that is not directly related to taxes?
I’m in favor of both contraception and abortion, the majority of Catholics (and Catholic Employers) are in favor of neither.
Overstatement of the case, at best.
I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you suggesting I’m an extremist? How odd.
Not at all. I found your links to be extemist.
One is a science link and one is a libertarian mag. Last time I checked libertarianism =/= extremism.
But hey, if you just don’t want to read the links then that’s fine.
extremism is code-word for “any belief that’s significantly different from mine.”
Not really, fj. And Polly, I read both of the links. One comes from the oldest Libertarian publication issued, The Freeman and one comes from LifeSiteNews.com–a site that has been characterized as an anti-abortion journal. You can either believe that oral hormones are a “Molotov cocktail” of chemicals that lead to various cancers–or not.
I believe, in order to keep a reasoned view, a person has to seek out and evaluate both the views presented and opposing views. I’ve presented my thoughts on women and leftism and I haven’t been impartial–I realize that. But my ideas are my ideas–they’re not based on what some people could call skewed sources.
I’ve also said that I believe Libertarians have a lot of good ideas; I don’t agree, however, with Libertarian ‘changes’ to the present structure of the US government. I don’t believe Libertarians have offered any changes at all–other than, as I’ve said, either the repeal or modification of the IVX Amendment. (The IVX Amendment has to do with birth right rather than birth control, btw.)
It’s fine to say we should cut down on–even eliminate–a central government; however, to eliminate the central government goes against the basic structure of our representative democracy.
John Locke (1632-1704), whose political philosophy was a major influence on our Constitution, espoused a minimal government in order to protect the rights of private land ownership. His political philosophy was a result of the demands of the aristocracy in England. Libertarianism seems to want to go back to Lockean basics. How can than now be done, after 400 years?