The asshole you rebut has even less credibility than you give credit for. If companies had even vaguely something like a fixed budget for wages and salaries, then you’d see increases in unemployment every time the minimum wage went up. Instead, the numbers seem to be divided between “no visible effect” and increased employment.

Considering what it costs to hire and train a new employee, it’s pretty clear that the result of laws forbidding wage discrimination (which have only been in place for 50 years or so, this is hardly a new idea) is to increase the wages of the group being discriminated against while having a negligible impact on the wages of those not discriminated against, because cutting wages makes people leave or work to rule, and either one costs a company far more than sucking it up and just obeying the law.

(And yeah, the reasoning in Ledbetter was pretty mindboggling; at many companies disclosure of individual salaries is a firing offense, but somehow if you don’t find out the salaries of all of your male and female colleagues within the first year of employment and file a complaint immediately, you’re forever barred from asking for a fair deal in the future.)

Some jobs that pay really well hourly - carpentry and framing, steel workers, iron workers, etc. - are entirely or almost entirely male. I never see women iron workers or carpenters. And, to be honest, you have to blame Labor and the trade unions, because those jobs could be allocated equally to women, along with the high rate of pay and benefits. We need to pressure the Unions to do their part.

Someday, maybe the little boy me and my partner just had a few months ago will be able to say “one of my mommies is an ironworker.” How cool is that?

No. Because a company has x dollars to spend on wages and benefits. If the federal government comes along and mandates that women should be paid more than they’re worth, then the company will reduce the male employees’ wages accordingly, to return to the equilibrium of x dollars. You’d just be shifting the pay around, not creating any new pay.

Wanna try that again?

Because a company has x dollars to spend on wages and benefits.

Actually, they tend to have more, because we have an economic system called “capitalism,” in which companies try to make something called “profit,” which is excess money that it retains after meeting its operating expenses, and could be used to, for example, pay its employees fairly.

If the federal government comes along and mandates that women should be paid more than they’re worth,

The federal government is not seeking to mandate that women be paid more than they’re worth. It is seeking to mandate that women be paid what they’re worth.

then the company will reduce the male employees’ wages accordingly, to return to the equilibrium of x dollars.

With the result that everyone doing the same work will receive the same pay. Which is, if you’ll notice, the general goal here. Assuming, of course, that this is where they’ll get the excess money from, rather than out of the profits that have been added to with the rest of what they should’ve been paying their female employees.

You’d just be shifting the pay around, not creating any new pay.

Yes. Duh. That’s the idea. What did you think poverty was, if not an unbalanced distribution of material resources? Poverty isn’t caused by a lack of sufficient money to go around; it’s caused by sufficient money not going around.

Considering that a significant percentage of low-income households are headed by women, legislating fair wages for them would, in fact, improve their economic station.

Will this person or team be in charge of handling any issue more important than the selection of napkins at the White House? If so, McCain is hereby disqualified. Bad optics, man.

this kind of legislation…opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems,” McCain told reporters

It’s pretty nice of McCain to make it perfectly clear that he is part of the multi-millionaire/corporations first group. He, and everyone he knows, are the ones doing the discrimination and would face the lawsuits.

Their victims…random people and women (no, women aren’t people) who shouldn’t be bothering their betters anyway. As his pal W says, get 2 or 3 jobs!

And assetmgmt, the company could always reduce the outrageous CEO salaries to equalize pay along gender/racial/etc. lines. CEO’s didn’t always make 25 times or more of their employee’s salary.

No. Because a company has x dollars to spend on wages and benefits. If the federal government comes along and mandates that women should be paid more than they’re worth, then the company will reduce the male employees’ wages accordingly, to return to the equilibrium of x dollars. You’d just be shifting the pay around, not creating any new pay.

Unless, of course, you’re a completely dishonest person like John McCain.