CDZ Thinking about equality among Americans

[usmbguest5318]

A group of my son's friends who are on a "road trip to nowhere in particular" visited briefly this afternoon to say "hi" -- and perhaps also knowing that by doing so they'd get a good meal and libations without having to "pony up" for a posh brunch LOL -- seeing as their travels were taking them past D.C. Part of our conversation involved the matter of the equality of opportunity among the citizenry of the U.S. That part of the conversation included the following soliloquy [summarized, of course, for I didn't record the conversation so I could quote it accurately]:

The phenomenon is and isn't a matter of race. It isn't a matter of race to the extent that one observes in certain isolated communities that economic success -- reaching middle or upper middle wealth levels -- continues to escape people who have centuries long family histories of being poor, poorly educated and inaptly motivated re: innovativeness. It is a matter of race in that the U.S. has been a nation whereby because of their race, an entire segment of society was forced to be poor, poorly educated and, no matter their motivation and innovative will, denied the ability to act on it, instead having to consign themselves to innovating ways to merely not get killed, lynched or something similar. To the extent that women are disadvantaged, it's a matter of sex, which is something one can see from the quantity of women, which is something around 25 or so, who head Fortune 500 companies and in the lower pay given to women, yet women comprise about half of the population.

If one wants to live what folks like you and I would call "a hard life," that's on them. If one doesn't want to live "a hard life" and one is forced -- by law and by the custom of the dominant segment of society -- to do so, that's not on them.

Take you for example. Your ancestors came to this country with resources and parlayed them into thriving business. They used the income from that to educate their kids who in turn pursued successful business or professional careers. That cycle has continued unabated -- even after being on the losing side of the Civil War -- for over two hundred years. No, you're not living on a trust established some 200 or more years ago and even today provides for a very luxurious existence. You've still had to do something with yourself to be where you are, but you faced no limits on your doing something with yourself. But without the "leg up" you got from your ancestors, you'd have had a much harder way to go.

Where would be your situation today were you descended from people who, until comparatively recently, were denied the opportunity to even own property, to learn to read let alone go to the best schools or even typical schools, and so on? Maybe you would be among the upper middle class or upper class, but most likely you would not.​

That didn't come from me, but it could have. That was one of my guests addressing another of them.

Now, like the kid the woman address, I happen to have been, in a manner of speaking, "to the manor born." I'm not ashamed of that, and I'm also not in denial about the advantages that provided me. Naturally, not everyone was born with as much a "leg up" as I, but that's not the point.

Everyone who was born with some "leg up" dissembles when they deny their advantages. The fact is that some of those advantages make a material difference and some of them don't. For instance, almost everyone who's achieved economic success (upper middle or higher wealth) did so from contemporary beginnings less well positioned. On the other hand, being born minority or female matters a lot and is essentially unalterable. and to think that was/is not a burden is to deny the reality of America. It's, IMO, reprehensible to decry efforts to correct the nature of the nation so that those two statuses are not, ASAP, no burden, no disadvantage, at all.

The bigger problem is the availability of upward mobility. You can get a job. You can't get a career you can support a family on, accumulate family wealth that can be passed on, eventually retire

You can't get a career

That's because nobody gives careers. A career is something workers creates for themselves. They do so by starting with one of the jobs or other opportunities they are given and building on it.

Careers used to be a reward for good performance and loyalty

They would offer pensions, perks and vacation time in return for staying

Now they fire you at the first break in production

As long as you maintain that a career is something one is given by an employer and I maintain that a career is something one develops for oneself, there really no point to our continuing this line of discussion.

I can assure you that as I'm only the most recent person in a long line of family members, close friends and relatives who've created highly rewarding -- financially and personally -- careers for themselves, and having mentored other people in the development of their careers, I've too often seen the fruits accruing to individuals who build a career rather than wait for someone to give them one. Indeed, I've never seen anyone be given a career.

Accordingly, I'm not going to alter my position. One of my core principles is that each and every one of us must take responsibility for our lives and all we do in them. Even, say, the women of whom I wrote in the OP must do that, and forge on in spite of the inequities they face by dint of being female. Have they a harder way to go? Yes, but go they must. The disadvantage affects how far they can go and what roads they may take, not whether they must set out.

To have a career, one must say to oneself, "This is what I'm going to do with my life because it interests me to do it, and it needs or will soon need to be done. This is the contribution I am going to make to 'whatever' persons or things in the world." While that thing can be something momentous, it doesn't have to be. It does, however, have to be a thing of which the achieving it is something of which one never tires, something one would sooner do even if one weren't being paid to do it.

After determining what it is one will do, one sets about doing it, thereby creating a career, which, done effectively, consists of a series of goals and accomplishments, and, as new opportunities appear, new goals and new accomplishments, all focused around the central thing one initially determined one would do with one's life. In short, to have a career is to have taken ownership of one's life for a career is something that provides not only money in the pocket, but also a host of personal things not the least of which are self-confidence and the satisfaction that comes from achieving that which one set out to achieve. (If all one gets from one's work is money, well, that's just a job.)

You are still not differentiating a career from a job

The exact opposite is the case. The final paragraph of my post makes clear the difference in very simple terms, for those who don't comprehend the key difference of a job being something one receives from others and a career being something one creates for oneself.

 

[rightwinger]

A group of my son's friends who are on a "road trip to nowhere in particular" visited briefly this afternoon to say "hi" -- and perhaps also knowing that by doing so they'd get a good meal and libations without having to "pony up" for a posh brunch LOL -- seeing as their travels were taking them past D.C. Part of our conversation involved the matter of the equality of opportunity among the citizenry of the U.S. That part of the conversation included the following soliloquy [summarized, of course, for I didn't record the conversation so I could quote it accurately]:

The phenomenon is and isn't a matter of race. It isn't a matter of race to the extent that one observes in certain isolated communities that economic success -- reaching middle or upper middle wealth levels -- continues to escape people who have centuries long family histories of being poor, poorly educated and inaptly motivated re: innovativeness. It is a matter of race in that the U.S. has been a nation whereby because of their race, an entire segment of society was forced to be poor, poorly educated and, no matter their motivation and innovative will, denied the ability to act on it, instead having to consign themselves to innovating ways to merely not get killed, lynched or something similar. To the extent that women are disadvantaged, it's a matter of sex, which is something one can see from the quantity of women, which is something around 25 or so, who head Fortune 500 companies and in the lower pay given to women, yet women comprise about half of the population.

If one wants to live what folks like you and I would call "a hard life," that's on them. If one doesn't want to live "a hard life" and one is forced -- by law and by the custom of the dominant segment of society -- to do so, that's not on them.

Take you for example. Your ancestors came to this country with resources and parlayed them into thriving business. They used the income from that to educate their kids who in turn pursued successful business or professional careers. That cycle has continued unabated -- even after being on the losing side of the Civil War -- for over two hundred years. No, you're not living on a trust established some 200 or more years ago and even today provides for a very luxurious existence. You've still had to do something with yourself to be where you are, but you faced no limits on your doing something with yourself. But without the "leg up" you got from your ancestors, you'd have had a much harder way to go.

Where would be your situation today were you descended from people who, until comparatively recently, were denied the opportunity to even own property, to learn to read let alone go to the best schools or even typical schools, and so on? Maybe you would be among the upper middle class or upper class, but most likely you would not.​

That didn't come from me, but it could have. That was one of my guests addressing another of them.

Now, like the kid the woman address, I happen to have been, in a manner of speaking, "to the manor born." I'm not ashamed of that, and I'm also not in denial about the advantages that provided me. Naturally, not everyone was born with as much a "leg up" as I, but that's not the point.

Everyone who was born with some "leg up" dissembles when they deny their advantages. The fact is that some of those advantages make a material difference and some of them don't. For instance, almost everyone who's achieved economic success (upper middle or higher wealth) did so from contemporary beginnings less well positioned. On the other hand, being born minority or female matters a lot and is essentially unalterable. and to think that was/is not a burden is to deny the reality of America. It's, IMO, reprehensible to decry efforts to correct the nature of the nation so that those two statuses are not, ASAP, no burden, no disadvantage, at all.

The bigger problem is the availability of upward mobility. You can get a job. You can't get a career you can support a family on, accumulate family wealth that can be passed on, eventually retire

You can't get a career

That's because nobody gives careers. A career is something workers creates for themselves. They do so by starting with one of the jobs or other opportunities they are given and building on it.

Careers used to be a reward for good performance and loyalty

They would offer pensions, perks and vacation time in return for staying

Now they fire you at the first break in production

As long as you maintain that a career is something one is given by an employer and I maintain that a career is something one develops for oneself, there really no point to our continuing this line of discussion.

I can assure you that as I'm only the most recent person in a long line of family members, close friends and relatives who've created highly rewarding -- financially and personally -- careers for themselves, and having mentored other people in the development of their careers, I've too often seen the fruits accruing to individuals who build a career rather than wait for someone to give them one. Indeed, I've never seen anyone be given a career.

Accordingly, I'm not going to alter my position. One of my core principles is that each and every one of us must take responsibility for our lives and all we do in them. Even, say, the women of whom I wrote in the OP must do that, and forge on in spite of the inequities they face by dint of being female. Have they a harder way to go? Yes, but go they must. The disadvantage affects how far they can go and what roads they may take, not whether they must set out.

To have a career, one must say to oneself, "This is what I'm going to do with my life because it interests me to do it, and it needs or will soon need to be done. This is the contribution I am going to make to 'whatever' persons or things in the world." While that thing can be something momentous, it doesn't have to be. It does, however, have to be a thing of which the achieving it is something of which one never tires, something one would sooner do even if one weren't being paid to do it.

After determining what it is one will do, one sets about doing it, thereby creating a career, which, done effectively, consists of a series of goals and accomplishments, and, as new opportunities appear, new goals and new accomplishments, all focused around the central thing one initially determined one would do with one's life. In short, to have a career is to have taken ownership of one's life for a career is something that provides not only money in the pocket, but also a host of personal things not the least of which are self-confidence and the satisfaction that comes from achieving that which one set out to achieve. (If all one gets from one's work is money, well, that's just a job.)

You are still not differentiating a career from a job

The exact opposite is the case. The final paragraph of my post makes clear the difference in very simple terms, for those who don't comprehend the key difference of a job being something one receives from others and a career being something one creates for oneself.

Narrow interpretation of a career

A career is a position that allows you to support yourself, your family, provide a decent standard of living you can eventually retire on

 

[usmbguest5318]

The bigger problem is the availability of upward mobility. You can get a job. You can't get a career you can support a family on, accumulate family wealth that can be passed on, eventually retire

You can't get a career

That's because nobody gives careers. A career is something workers creates for themselves. They do so by starting with one of the jobs or other opportunities they are given and building on it.

Careers used to be a reward for good performance and loyalty

They would offer pensions, perks and vacation time in return for staying

Now they fire you at the first break in production

As long as you maintain that a career is something one is given by an employer and I maintain that a career is something one develops for oneself, there really no point to our continuing this line of discussion.

I can assure you that as I'm only the most recent person in a long line of family members, close friends and relatives who've created highly rewarding -- financially and personally -- careers for themselves, and having mentored other people in the development of their careers, I've too often seen the fruits accruing to individuals who build a career rather than wait for someone to give them one. Indeed, I've never seen anyone be given a career.

Accordingly, I'm not going to alter my position. One of my core principles is that each and every one of us must take responsibility for our lives and all we do in them. Even, say, the women of whom I wrote in the OP must do that, and forge on in spite of the inequities they face by dint of being female. Have they a harder way to go? Yes, but go they must. The disadvantage affects how far they can go and what roads they may take, not whether they must set out.

To have a career, one must say to oneself, "This is what I'm going to do with my life because it interests me to do it, and it needs or will soon need to be done. This is the contribution I am going to make to 'whatever' persons or things in the world." While that thing can be something momentous, it doesn't have to be. It does, however, have to be a thing of which the achieving it is something of which one never tires, something one would sooner do even if one weren't being paid to do it.

After determining what it is one will do, one sets about doing it, thereby creating a career, which, done effectively, consists of a series of goals and accomplishments, and, as new opportunities appear, new goals and new accomplishments, all focused around the central thing one initially determined one would do with one's life. In short, to have a career is to have taken ownership of one's life for a career is something that provides not only money in the pocket, but also a host of personal things not the least of which are self-confidence and the satisfaction that comes from achieving that which one set out to achieve. (If all one gets from one's work is money, well, that's just a job.)

You are still not differentiating a career from a job

The exact opposite is the case. The final paragraph of my post makes clear the difference in very simple terms, for those who don't comprehend the key difference of a job being something one receives from others and a career being something one creates for oneself.

Narrow interpretation of a career

A career is a position that allows you to support yourself, your family, provide a decent standard of living you can eventually retire on

What you've provided is the narrow definition. It is the definition of a job or (series thereof) that one has and that happen to pay well enough to provide whatever one deems a "decent standard of living."

As for retiring, one can retire from any job. I'm semi-retired insofar as I've chosen to take on no new clients/projects, limiting my scope of work to overseeing the completion of the few I have that still have a few years left on their initial engagement scope and serving as a subject matter expert and/or adjunct as needed, whereafter I will transition fully to a non-client-facing role and upon reaching 62 and barring some calamitous happenstance, fully retire. I'm sure I'll do something after that, but whether it'll be "travel the world," charitable work, or something else is anybody's guess. Whatever it be, it, like the ~30 year career that will then be over, will be something of my choosing and that I control what I do and the nature and extent of how, when and where I do it.

Okay, so that said, I'm now bored with this discussion. As noted before, there is no point continuing. You are not going to rethink your conception of the differences between jobs and careers, and I'm not going to either. We're both adults, and I really don't have any interest in or concern for what you think about the difference between the two, and I should think you are of the same mind with regard to me. I care not whether you concur with me or don't. I don't even care to try swaying your mindset on the matter. Conceive of the two in whatever way you see fit and "run with it." It'll either serve you well (or has already) or it won't; either way is no matter to me. Thus, AFAIC, we're done with this part of the discussion.

 

[SeaGal]

School vouchers are a ticket out for many inner city kids, a great equalizer...agreed?

I do not agree. I don't because my own review of schools that become accessible as a result of vouchers don't appear to be any better than public schools. I've shared my thoughts about vouchers in elsewhere on USMB.

• Senators Like School Choice for Their Own Kids. Why Not for Everyone?
  
• CDZ - Vouchers, how the heck would private schools work?

No, I didn't suppose you would agree. School choice - it's what's not on the menu at the DNC.

PEPG Home
D.C. Voucher Students: Higher Graduation Rates and Other Positive Outcomes
School Choice Deniers


Education is the great equalizer - whether from trade schools and apprenticeships or college degrees - skills and knowledge have value. But our current, outdated system is not doing so well compared to other industrialized nations, despite outspending all but one.

There is of course more to financial success than education alone. It's the indefinable difference between Ben Carson and myself, for example. Both of us lived in Detroit - and I had all the apparent advantages - two parents both employed, white, attending a predominantly white school in a middle/middle class neighborhood, was never sideways of the law...yet look where he sits, while I opine on a message board.

...and women making less than men?...true, and here's why; Don't Buy Into The Gender Pay Gap Myth

I applaud your involvement in your community and no doubt many are grateful and have benefitted from your generosity and time, the sharing of your knowledge - however, your premises of the state of the nation sound an awful like Clinton/Sanders campaign slogans.


Rather than reopen those debates tho' - I'll focus on the following statement in this one...

It's, IMO, reprehensible to decry efforts to correct the nature of the nation so that those two statuses are not, ASAP, no burden, no disadvantage, at all.

Indeed.

 

[Bonzi]

I wasn't born rich, but, decent. I had my entire college education paid for.
I don't utilize it now.
I had opportunity to be whatever I wanted, but I was aimless and without ambition.

I still am but I'm OK with that, it's who I am.

 

[SeaGal]

I wasn't born rich, but, decent. I had my entire college education paid for.
I don't utilize it now.
I had opportunity to be whatever I wanted, but I was aimless and without ambition.

I still am but I'm OK with that, it's who I am.

Soooo...how do the folks who footed the bill feel about it? (j/k)

Maybe you're just a late bloomer.

It seems you did make use of the opportunity to be what you wanted to be, you chose your path and as long as I'm not paying your tolls along the way - celebrate it!

 

[Picaro]

I wasn't born rich, but, decent. I had my entire college education paid for.
I don't utilize it now.
I had opportunity to be whatever I wanted, but I was aimless and without ambition.

I still am but I'm OK with that, it's who I am.

You utilize it every day; you just don't realize it.

 

[Picaro]

School vouchers are a ticket out for many inner city kids, a great equalizer...agreed?

I do not agree. I don't because my own review of schools that become accessible as a result of vouchers don't appear to be any better than public schools. I've shared my thoughts about vouchers in elsewhere on USMB.

• Senators Like School Choice for Their Own Kids. Why Not for Everyone?
  
• CDZ - Vouchers, how the heck would private schools work?

No, I didn't suppose you would agree. School choice - it's what's not on the menu at the DNC.

PEPG Home
D.C. Voucher Students: Higher Graduation Rates and Other Positive Outcomes
School Choice Deniers


Education is the great equalizer - whether from trade schools and apprenticeships or college degrees - skills and knowledge have value. But our current, outdated system is not doing so well compared to other industrialized nations, despite outspending all but one.

There is of course more to financial success than education alone. It's the indefinable difference between Ben Carson and myself, for example. Both of us lived in Detroit - and I had all the apparent advantages - two parents both employed, white, attending a predominantly white school in a middle/middle class neighborhood, was never sideways of the law...yet look where he sits, while I opine on a message board.

...and women making less than men?...true, and here's why; Don't Buy Into The Gender Pay Gap Myth

I applaud your involvement in your community and no doubt many are grateful and have benefitted from your generosity and time, the sharing of your knowledge - however, your premises of the state of the nation sound an awful like Clinton/Sanders campaign slogans.


Rather than reopen those debates tho' - I'll focus on the following statement in this one...

It's, IMO, reprehensible to decry efforts to correct the nature of the nation so that those two statuses are not, ASAP, no burden, no disadvantage, at all.

Indeed.

Few people are educated enough to make the right school choice for anybody, frankly, so that whole fad is just as doomed to failure; as we're finding out many of these schools are faking their results.

The point should be equal opportunity, not equal results, which is an impossibility, racial factors or not; quota systems in fact destroy equal opportunity, and end up dumbing down everybody else without making minorities any more educated or successful. Thanks for your sane post; I didn't expect to find one here. Reverse racism as a 'solution' is ludicrous on its face.

 

[SeaGal]

Few people are educated enough to make the right school choice for anybody, frankly, so that whole fad is just as doomed to failure; as we're finding out many of these schools are faking their results.

There is evidence to the contrary on both counts The voucher program is one of many options for school choice and is narrowly targeted...I consider it a well needed bandaid, Other options include, but not limited to, charter, virtual, trade schools etc. We need a broad spectrum approach that operates outside the box of the traditional school calendar and districting...not to destroy public education, but to enhance it and make it work for the people who matter most - the student, and secondly the folks footing the bill. (the nation)

The point should be equal opportunity, not equal results, which is an impossibility, racial factors or not; quota systems in fact destroy equal opportunity, and end up dumbing down everybody else without making minorities any more educated or successful. Thanks for your sane post; I didn't expect to find one here. Reverse racism as a 'solution' is ludicrous on its face.

Well said.

Thank you - I strive for sanity most of the time, and sometimes fail abysmally.

 

[Bonzi]

I wasn't born rich, but, decent. I had my entire college education paid for.
I don't utilize it now.
I had opportunity to be whatever I wanted, but I was aimless and without ambition.

I still am but I'm OK with that, it's who I am.

Soooo...how do the folks who footed the bill feel about it? (j/k)

Maybe you're just a late bloomer.

It seems you did make use of the opportunity to be what you wanted to be, you chose your path and as long as I'm not paying your tolls along the way - celebrate it!

My mom's fine with it. I think she just likes the bragging rights. Of course, I'm 53 now so it's ancient history. I love to work, I jus don't like pressure

 

[usmbguest5318]

School vouchers are a ticket out for many inner city kids, a great equalizer...agreed?

I do not agree. I don't because my own review of schools that become accessible as a result of vouchers don't appear to be any better than public schools. I've shared my thoughts about vouchers in elsewhere on USMB.

• Senators Like School Choice for Their Own Kids. Why Not for Everyone?
  
• CDZ - Vouchers, how the heck would private schools work?

No, I didn't suppose you would agree. School choice - it's what's not on the menu at the DNC.

PEPG Home
D.C. Voucher Students: Higher Graduation Rates and Other Positive Outcomes
School Choice Deniers


Education is the great equalizer - whether from trade schools and apprenticeships or college degrees - skills and knowledge have value. But our current, outdated system is not doing so well compared to other industrialized nations, despite outspending all but one.

There is of course more to financial success than education alone. It's the indefinable difference between Ben Carson and myself, for example. Both of us lived in Detroit - and I had all the apparent advantages - two parents both employed, white, attending a predominantly white school in a middle/middle class neighborhood, was never sideways of the law...yet look where he sits, while I opine on a message board.

...and women making less than men?...true, and here's why; Don't Buy Into The Gender Pay Gap Myth

I applaud your involvement in your community and no doubt many are grateful and have benefitted from your generosity and time, the sharing of your knowledge - however, your premises of the state of the nation sound an awful like Clinton/Sanders campaign slogans.


Rather than reopen those debates tho' - I'll focus on the following statement in this one...

It's, IMO, reprehensible to decry efforts to correct the nature of the nation so that those two statuses are not, ASAP, no burden, no disadvantage, at all.

Indeed.

No, I didn't suppose you would agree.....Rather than reopen those debates tho' - I'll focus on the following statement in this one...

Really? You asked about my thoughts on school voucher programs and of all that I wrote about it, you have offered not one specific refutation of any of the specific objections I have to school vouchers. No specific references that show my analysis and recounting of the academic performance factors I noted are inaccurate or ingermane. No refutation that the non-academic yet objective factors I noted as part of my objection to voucher programs is not accurate.

Instead you:

• Direct me to a PEPG page that has no specific content or discussion of school vouchers.
• A Heritage Foundation report about the results obtained in evaluating the DC school voucher program (DCOSP) that explicitly states that the DCOSP did not produce more higher performing students -- , "Test Scores: On reading tests, voucher students scored slightly higher (by 0.13 standard deviations) compared to non-voucher students, but the difference is not statistically significant. DCOSP did not produce any gains in mathematics scores. -- but did produce better graduation rates and higher rates of some nebulous quality called "parent satisfaction."
  
  Graduation rates indicate (1) the extent to which an institution accomplishes its bare minimum goal of instructing students so they obtain the minimum amount of learning needed to receive a diploma/degree and (2) the rate at which students manage to do as much before they are "kicked out" of school because they are too old (dropping out of high school). What they don't indicate is the extent to which "School A's" teachers and methods are more or less effective than are those employed at "School B." That is what the average/median test scores earned by students reveal and those test scores are the key thing that distinguishes top schools from "also rans." That being so is why the focus of the analysis I posted and pointed you to focused on the actual performance levels of the students graduating from various schools.
  -- Graduation Rates: Behind the Numbers -- This study's specific data apply to colleges, but the core concepts apply to any school or school system.
  
  As for parent satisfaction, well as the parent of four kids, I sent them to schools in New England and that are among the very best schools in the country. Had they graduated with demonstrated performance, mastery of the offered subject matter, no better than that which is the average of the several D.C. area boarding schools I could have chosen instead (1300-1400 SAT rather than the 2000+ SAT scores each of my kids earned), I would not have been satisfied. What criteria other parents have for determining their degree of satisfaction with a school or school system is not known to me. The mere fact that my kids graduated from high school has nothing to do with my satisfaction with the school.
• I didn't read the WSJ article as I don't any longer maintain a subscription to that paper and I wasn't of a mind to obtain one just to read that article.

Rather than reopen those debates tho' - I'll focus on the following statement in this one...

As I've shown above, that essentially means you don't want to address the matter head-on from the standpoint of demonstrated performance of students in the voucher programs, but rather you'd rather focus on attacking my remarks that don't specifically have to do with voucher programs. I.e., you'd prefer to deflect to a different topic.

I applaud your involvement in your community

Thank you.

...and women making less than men?...true, and here's why; Don't Buy Into The Gender Pay Gap Myth

The factors Lips notes are addressed here -- “Women’s work” and the gender pay gap -- in a far more rigorous and credible way than Lips' speculative "we could be discussing." I don't take exception with Lips in effect asking the question as she did. I take exception with her not bothering to obtain the answer to it.

Another study that analyzed the pay gap, something Lips asserts "have been debunked over and over again" yet makes reference to no study that's done so, is that of Blau and Kahn, "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations." Their study also evaluated factors that Lips asserts have not historically been accounted for. Also, unlike the "Women's work" study referenced above, Blau and Kahn's was performed and published several months prior to Lips' essay.

We conclude that many of the traditional explanations continue to have salience for understanding the gender wage gap and changes in the gap, although some factors have increased and others have decreased in importance. One of our findings is that while convergence between men and women in traditional human capital factors (education and experience) played an important role in the narrowing of the gender wage gap, these factors taken together explain relatively little of the gap wage gap in the aggregate now that, as noted above, women exceed men in educational attainment and have greatly reduced the gender experience gap. For a portion of the labor market, however, recent research suggests a continued and especially important role for work force interruptions and shorter hours in explaining gender wage gaps in high skilled occupations than for the workforce as a whole—this work is particularly relevant in that, as we have seen, the gender wage gap at the top of the wage distribution appears to have decreased more slowly than at the middle and the bottom.​

As with any empirical study, discrediting it is tactically simple. Identify empirically the methodological flaws in the study and then show the flaws produce material outcomes that invalidate the study results obtained and conclusions drawn/inferred and the study is discredited. (Minor flaws that result in immaterial variances or that led to ancillary inferences do not discredit a study's key findings/conclusions.) Lips neither referred to the Blau and Kahn study, presented her own explication of flaws in it, nor pointed to any researcher's work that shows the error(s) of their study/results/conclusions.

I wasn't born rich, but, decent. I had my entire college education paid for. I don't utilize it now. I had opportunity to be whatever I wanted, but I was aimless and without ambition.

I still am but I'm OK with that, it's who I am.

Well, what is there to say about that? From where I sit, nothing. You've "owned" the fact of your desultory course and aren't blaming others for your choices in that regard. So long as you're not asking that others accommodate you by offering some sort of recompense to ameliorate the consequences of your arbitrariness, I take no issue with whatever choices you've made or similar choices you may make again.

 

[SeaGal]

Really? You asked about my thoughts on school voucher programs and of all that I wrote about it, you have offered not one specific refutation of any of the specific objections I have to school vouchers. No specific references that show my analysis and recounting of the academic performance factors I noted are inaccurate or ingermane. No refutation that the non-academic yet objective factors I noted as part of my objection to voucher programs is not accurate.

Actually I didn't ask you to 'share your thoughts'....merely whether or not you agreed. You made it clear that you had already shared your thoughts on the subject - 'elsewhere'.

I do not agree. I don't because my own review of schools that become accessible as a result of vouchers don't appear to be any better than public schools. I've shared my thoughts about vouchers in elsewhere on USMB.?

Now in polite society that generally indicates the speaker has spoken enough on the subject, and doesn't wish to repeat herself - simply respecting your wishes.

As I've shown above, that essentially means you don't want to address the matter head-on from the standpoint of demonstrated performance of students in the voucher programs, but rather you'd rather focus on attacking my remarks that don't specifically have to do with voucher programs. I.e., you'd prefer to deflect to a different topic.

Attack you? Mon Dieu! Never! tsk tsk
Pointing out similarities between your views and the current political platform of the DNC or recent campaign speeches is merely factual - objectively factual, observation. Hardly an attack on your remarks. Victimhood is not a good look for you.

Addressing the following statement, a direct quote from your post, is anything but a deflection - it is the premise of the entire post...and a good one, with which I wholeheartedly concur.

It's, IMO, reprehensible to decry efforts to correct the nature of the nation so that those two statuses are not, ASAP, no burden, no disadvantage, at all..

(tho' less than generous interpretation might go something like this - 'I know what's best and if you disagree you belong in a basket of deplorables.'...or some such nonsense. )...but that wasn't your intent, was it?

Let me rephrase an earlier as yet unanswered question. May I? What precisely are these 'efforts to correct the nature of the nation'?...and who are the reprehensible folks who 'decry' them? 'Cuz from my subjective perspective it could look a lot like you.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Attack you? Mon Dieu! Never! tsk tsk

That is not at all what I wrote. I did not assert that you attacked me.

 

[usmbguest5318]

(tho' less than generous interpretation might go something like this - 'I know what's best and if you disagree you belong in a basket of deplorables.'...or some such nonsense. )

In some instances that is a fair interpretation and in others it is not.

 

[usmbguest5318]

What precisely are these 'efforts to correct the nature of the nation'?...and who are the reprehensible folks who 'decry' them? 'Cuz from my subjective perspective it could look a lot like you.

Quite frankly, I don't oppose any efforts to fix or improve things. I've long been of the mind that the social ills our culture has will only be resolved by trying things, observing whether they are working in accordance with a set of predefined quantifiable and qualitative expectations and then, based on objectively measuring the outcomes, either maintaining those efforts or scrapping them for one of the alternative approaches proposed.

That's my position because I don't, and I don't think anyone else does, know what solution options will work or work best. Social policy is one of those things for which I think trying among the ethically, soundly and plausibly effective options, implementing unadulterated versions of them is the only way to know for sure which of them is errant.

 

[task0778]

What precisely are these 'efforts to correct the nature of the nation'?...and who are the reprehensible folks who 'decry' them? 'Cuz from my subjective perspective it could look a lot like you.

Quite frankly, I don't oppose any efforts to fix or improve things. I've long been of the mind that the social ills our culture has will only be resolved by trying things, observing whether they are working in accordance with a set of predefined quantifiable and qualitative expectations and then, based on objectively measuring the outcomes, either maintaining those efforts or scrapping them for one of the alternative approaches proposed.

That's my position because I don't, and I don't think anyone else does, know what solution options will work or work best. Social policy is one of those things for which I think trying among the ethically, soundly and plausibly effective options, implementing unadulterated versions of them is the only way to know for sure which of them is errant.

Which is I think a plausible argument for less federal intervention and pushing some power and authority down to the state level. What works in New York might not be as successful in Wyoming for example. If a state is lagging behind in some areas like education, well that oughta be on them to fix rather than the rest of us.

 

[SeaGal]

Quite frankly, I don't oppose any efforts to fix or improve things. I've long been of the mind that the social ills our culture has will only be resolved by trying things, observing whether they are working in accordance with a set of predefined quantifiable and qualitative expectations and then, based on objectively measuring the outcomes, either maintaining those efforts or scrapping them for one of the alternative approaches proposed.

That's my position because I don't, and I don't think anyone else does, know what solution options will work or work best. Social policy is one of those things for which I think trying among the ethically, soundly and plausibly effective options, implementing unadulterated versions of them is the only way to know for sure which of them is errant.

Boiled down to basics I can easily find things to agree with re your position. We have a problem, we know what isn't working, we've applied the same solutions with poor results for decades so it's time to innovate/adapt/change our approach. (education/poverty/drug abuse, etc) These problems are of great concern to the well being of our society - and the fact that we can agree on that is a start.

Which is I think a plausible argument for less federal intervention and pushing some power and authority down to the state level. What works in New York might not be as successful in Wyoming for example. If a state is lagging behind in some areas like education, well that oughta be on them to fix rather than the rest of us.

A fair point. Federal funding is a drug...with a high price tag. Perhaps necessary in some cases. The poison's in the dose, imo. I wouldn't reject some form of federal standards tho' - the kids in Appalachia should have access to as good an education as the kids in Beverly Hills. Never has that been more technologically possible than it is today.