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From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Fear and Loathing in ...
Message-ID: <2551@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-May-84 16:21:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: watcgl.2551
Posted: Sat May 12 16:21:50 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 13-May-84 07:42:43 EDT
References: <1851@mit-vax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 36

Regulation, rational or irrational, is likely to result in an increase in
taxes simply to pay for the regulators.  In the particular case of making
salaries fairer, I suspect that were an inequality is found it will be
rectified by increasing the women's salaries, not decreasing the men's.
If the institution is publicly-funded, this may result in an increase
in taxes due to salary adjustments too, or just a decrease in services.

Now, all of this brings up a point that I'm surprised not to have seen
discussed.  Making sure that wages are equitable means, in truth,
increasing the real income of women and decreasing that of men until
they are paid according to the same standard.  It doesn't matter if you
leave the men's wages alone and increase the women's; if the economy
is a somewhat balanced system then in the long run the men lose, probably
via a smaller yearly increase than they would have otherwise have received.

Now, I view all of this as being desirable - if men are being paid more than
is fair just because of their sex, then they have no right to complain when
they lose some of the unfair advantage.  (And besides, I could lose a moderate
fraction of my current income and not be hurt very much, so this is easy
for me to say).

But do most men realize that the process of paying women fairly will
affect their own income?  If they do, fine.  But if they don't, what
are they going to say when they figure that out?

It seems that people in the countries with high standards of living are
all in favour of improving the lot of people in the Third World as long
as it doesn't hurt their own standard of living.  If someone points out
that there just aren't enough resources to go around, then watching out
for onself first suddenly seems more important.

Will men lose interest in fairness toward women if they realize it will
hurt them?  Or will the fact that the women are part of the same society
as the men result in the women being treated as "Us" rather than "Them"?

	Dave Martindale