A hardy perennial among egalitarians is the supposed existence of “pay gaps”
between different population groups. Since academe is heavily populated
with egalitarians, it’s no surprise that pay gaps between groups of faculty
should be a frequently discussed topic. It’s usually assumed that the existence of any gap is a good reason for government intervention.
Here is an article about one professor’s findings. After adjusting for a number of factors that would
explain why men might have higher earnings than women, he concludes that
there is an unexplained gap of ? drumroll ? 6.8 percent. The researcher is
quoted as saying, “It’s still substantial and it’s still unexplained.”
Naturally, the writer of the article smuggles in the notion that the
unexplained difference could be due to “gender bias.” If something is
unexplained, there is no reason to assume that there must be some “bad”
explanation for it, but that is standard operating procedure for
egalitarians. It gives them causes.
I fail to see why anyone should care about this. If each individual faculty
member is employed under mutually acceptable terms, why is there some
problem because, in the aggregate, we don’t have perfect equality of
compensation among all population groups?
