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Comment by toolz | Hacker News Reader

What you're arguing for is equity, not equality. We already have equal opportunity. As for the gender wage gap, if women are so disadvantaged - exactly how do they make up 85% of consumer spending?

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Dude, we are faaaaaaaaar from equal opportunity. One of the largest predictors of one's ability to accumulate wealth is still the wealth of their own parents. The U.S. is one of the countries with the highest link between parents' and a child's wealth.

Citation needed. I hear this often, but no hard evidence that isn't easy to show is false.

I recommend „Capital in the 21st Century“ by Thomas Pikkety, an economist who has deeply studied wealth and income equality using historical data spanning three centuries. This book has all the evidence you need.

https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/0674979850

Spoiler alert: income from wealth is on its way of becoming close to being as concentrated as it was in the 19th century (especially in the US), and the share of income from work in total national income is decreasing almost anywhere. So yes, increasingly you can only accrue significant wealth by already having significant wealth.

> Citation needed.

Here you go: "The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940", Raj Chetty et al. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6336/398

How do we have equal opportunity? Can you point me towards evidence of this? I guess you're not arguing about the gender wage gap, as it's a well documented fact. What is the point you're trying to make?

And yet not everyone can agree on what the cause of said gender wage gap truly is. Is it because women take time off to raise children, thus setting back their wage advancement? Is it because women are less likely to be more vigorous in asking for wage increases than men? Or is just because men are keeping women down?

As an example... for my wife, her salary was depressed because her boss thought that I make good enough money that she doesn't really need it. I think a lot of women still receive extremely slanted peer reviews due to gender biases (she's really catty, while he tends to raise good arguments), relationship drama (I mean, she's a good worker, but she turned down a drink with me... I don't know how good her judgement is), straight up appearance judgements (Oh, don't give the raise to nancy, she'll have a cushy life with looks like that, barbara could use it more), and harassment (I don't know about that raise - hey what are you doing friday?).

I think that everyone feels like we've totally solved gender discrimination forever while it's still really deeply seated in our culture.

What is the point, _you're_ trying to make? If you're trying to show women are financially burdened you can cherry-pick wage gap data to show that, sure, or you can take a more holistic view of society and what do you see? You see women with significantly more purchasing power than men. So are women disadvantaged or is there no incentive to be high earners? For me it's fairly obvious. There will be men and women who become high earners. There will be men and women who are overlooked based on gender. What I see with the wage gap can be fully explained by lack of necessity to earn for women. Think about that for a minute - they earn less than men, but they spend vastly more money than men. Exactly where is the incentive to earn more for women? Should they continue to work and earn more until they make up 90% of consumer spending? 95%?

It's beyond me how anyone can claim a group that represents 85% of consumer spending is somehow financially burdened and suffers from inequality. It's almost unfathomable, but here we are.

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