5 ms·

I had this conversion with a feminist. I claimed that a large reason for wage stagnation is that women hit the workforce en masse in the 1970s. That's when the

I had this conversion with a feminist. I claimed that a large reason for wage stagnation is that women hit the workforce en masse in the 1970s. That's when the stagnate wages started. I made no judgement on women working. I just tried to explain why everyone's wages have barely moved: more labor supply. Compounding this is global labor. Sadly, the individual became quiet combative about these two facts.

pmyteh 9y ago
She probably became combative because you were deploying the lump of labour fallacy and in doing so either explicitly or implicitly blaming women working for the failures of economic policy since the 70s. Although this would at least make a refreshing change from the usual gambit of blaming immigrants, unfortunately you seem to have managed to do that as well. Your 'just tried to explain' (wrongly) is a classic example of why the expression 'mansplaining' is a thing. Please stop.
- rhapsodic 9y ago
  >She probably became combative because you were deploying the lump of labour fallacy and in doing so either explicitly or implicitly blaming women working for the failures of economic policy since the 70s. That's not a valid reason to become combative. If she felt the GP was wrong, she could have simply, with facts and logic, explained why she felt that way. In my observation, when people respond to an argument with combativeness, it usually means they realize they cannot refute the argument with facts and logic. So they get all nasty and start name-calling (e.g. "you're a racist!") or they deploy some childish, imbecilic bromide like accusing the other person of "mansplaining".
  - pmyteh 9y ago
    Sure. And people also beecome combative when the person arguing with them is being a dick. Case in point: my previous post has attracted a rapid slew of (not exactly undeserved) down votes, and precisely one person (you) even attempting facts and logic. And even yours pitches 'childish, imbecilic', which isn't uncombative itself, in context.
    - rhapsodic 9y ago
      >And even yours pitches 'childish, imbecilic', which isn't uncombative itself, in context. The term "mansplaining", and the use of it, is in my view extremely childish and imbecelic, in just about every scenario in which I've seen it used. And it's based on a gender-based generalization that is as illogical as if I had said "she became combative because women are driven by emotions rather than reasoning! She should stop fem-plaining!"
    - Clubber 9y ago
      I down voted your post too. You told him he was mansplaining and to please stop. How does that help anything in the discussion? I appreciate the wage gap problem, but throwing terms like "mansplaining," are typically done by garbage websites trying to get clicks by stirring up gender tensions. It actually stands to freeze progress rather than further it, but hey, ad revenue right?
      - slavik81 9y ago
        I'd like to note, though, that it was a good post aside from the personal attack. I would have upvoted if the text dedicated to admonishing the parent were instead dedicated to expanding on how the lump of labour fallacy applied.
        Clubber 9y ago
        Yes, I would also like to know how doubling the work force as a factor in pushing down wages is a fallacy (particularly in the 80s). I understand it's a complex problem. Another factor in stagnant wages is automation and much of what we tout as worker productivity isn't necessarily workers working 10x faster or harder, but automation allowing them to get 10x more done. Think in terms of Excel vs "running the numbers" manually, databases vs. file cabinets, etc. As an aside, part of the reason the VA is so inefficient is that many of their patient records are (were?) in file cabinets. The worker doesn't do 10x the work out of pure skill (though learning to use Excel is part of it) but the investment in licenses and software done by the business. It's fair to say if the business invested in building a software system, they should reap the benefits of the productivity it yields, even though that stagnates wages. I also believe a worker who understands Excel should have higher wages than one that doesn't, though today, it's a requirement for a job in accounting.
- virmundi 9y ago
  I don't think I'm committing that fallacy given history. Look where women went to work: office level work, or service work if you will. Look where men were transitioning during the late 60s: office level work, or service work if you will. Now you've got 2 groups of people competing for the same work. Historically with a constrained pool of labour, you'd expect wages to rise to get the few available candidates to work for you. Since the 1970's, that pool is essentially 33-60% great than what it could have been. Also during the 1970's you saw an increased rate of women attending university. Again, gaining skills and accreditations required by the general employers at the time. As to mansplanning, I didn't do that. I never said the individual was a woman. In fact it was a portly, hairy MALE friend of mine. I also didn't say women in the workplace was bad. Just there are consequences of expanding the labour pool with more intelligent hard working people.
  - cbhl 9y ago
    I want you to consider the way you phrased your statement, and compare it to the way I phrased my question. You: "[The] reason for wage stagnation is that women hit the workforce" Me: "because women weren't expected to have jobs" The way you phrased your statement can be interpreted as saying that women are the cause of wage stagnation. Surely, that's not what you meant at all. The way I phrased my statement implies that society, and the change in society's expectations of women, are the trigger. This shifts the "blame", if you will, from women, to everyone. I realize I'm being nit-picky about words, but in my experience, women and minorities care about words a lot, and so taking care in the way you use words can help them be more receptive to your facts and ideas.
    - rhapsodic 9y ago
      *>I realize I'm being nit-picky about words,..." If you were nit-picky about words, you would realize that the entire post you quoted from was utterly inoffensive to anyone not trying to find offense. FFS, he (excuse me for assuming that) even said "I made no judgement on women working."
    - weberc2 9y ago
      I really perceive no difference between those phrasings. I also don't have a strong desire to pander to those who go so far out of their way to avoid charitable interpretations. Fortunately, I know very few such people (male or female, majority or minority).
kasey_junk 9y ago
Without any knowledge of the situation in question, I'd offer that the way facts are presented is more likely to cause emotional responses than the facts themselves regardless of audience.
- wavegeek 9y ago
  > Without any knowledge of the situation Above poster argues that the problem is the way the facts were presented. - Doesn't provide any evidence for this My experience is the opposite. When dealing with ideologues there is no way to mention some things without "triggering" them.
  - cbhl 9y ago
    I'd say it's both! If the recipient is in an "us versus them" mindset, then they are going to be biased toward poking holes for ideas on the "other side". See also: "Why you think you're right -- even if you're wrong", by Julia Galef [video] https://youtu.be/w4RLfVxTGH4 https://youtu.be/w4RLfVxTGH4 There are obviously ways to present facts that cause people to be predisposed to rejecting them. I would argue that there are also techniques that can help pull people out of this mindset (for example, acknowledging that the listener's opposing view is a valid one), which can improve the odds of them being receptive to new information.
rhizome 9y ago
Why does that only hold for labor, why is there no corresponding executive and management pushdown? There is additional supply for those positions, too. P.S. Why even mention the "feminist" angle? It doesn't feed your point, and it seems you use it self-servingly to go silent on their response.
- randomdata 9y ago
  > There is additional supply for those positions The supply of executive and management workers is constrained by the intimate trust that can be formed with the individuals. I'm not sure that scales with the total workforce. Much like friendship, I suspect that the average person has no more friends with 7B people on earth than an average person had when there were 2B people on earth. There are just practical limitations to the number of people that you can build that kind of relationship with. It is not like a line worker where the job is implemented such that almost anyone can walk into the job as a 'replaceable cog'.
CPLX 9y ago
Those aren't facts they are things you made up. Economists and others actually study this stuff you know, there are empirical ways to make this judgement without back of the envelope guessing. But if you like superficial reasoning explain the variance in wage growth between the US and countries where feminism has had more impact on the labor pool like Scandinavia, which suggests the exact opposite of your hypothesis.
- virmundi 9y ago
  Which economists, [1]? 1 - http://www.nber.org/digest/nov02/w9013.html http://www.nber.org/digest/nov02/w9013.html
fulafel 9y ago
Increased labour supply doesn't naturally lead to lower wage growth, so she was right.
- Spivak 9y ago
  Right, but this one is easy to push back on. If only men work, and most men need to support a family then the wages that all men are willing to accept is higher. Once families have two breadwinners, both men and women are willing to accept lower wages. The average household income is $55k but the average two income household makes $100k which I would hypothesize is the real growth area. The 'middle class factory worker' making $80-90k lifestyle now takes two people to realize.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    But since the 2 people are creating much more material value, this explanation would mean that a much bigger % of it was going to profits instead of wages. I think the decline of unions and globalization are more credible explanations.
    - virmundi 9y ago
      I think it is a combination of all those. It's just an overlooked cause. I think many avoid it entirely because they believe it demeans women. As I said in another post, more capable about came to the fore in much large droves than the US could ever take at one time from immigrants. We now had a massive surplus of labor. This would drive wages down. With this, the collapse the union base, and add new cheaper labor in the rest of the world. Also enact free trade policies that didn't tax imports that used essentially slave labor to make their products. The end result is depressed wages from without and within. So too automation rendering a portion of this pool redundant.
- wahern 9y ago
  Huh? As a general matter, increased labour supply _does_ naturally lead to lower wage growth. That's simple supply and demand, which is about as "natural" of a phenomenon as you can get. It doesn't necessarily lead to lower wage growth, of course, particularly when you take into account other factors that might change contemporaneously. For example there might be union or political pressure to redistribute more profits to workers. But the point is that with an increase in the labor supply, ceteris paribus, we should expect lower wages, and thus lower wage growth averaged over the period before and after the change in labor supply. The persuasive burden should be on someone trying to prove otherwise. That burden might be easy or difficult to overcome, but we shouldn't mistake where the burden should lie. Otherwise we're rejecting basic, sound economic theory.
dang 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277113 and marked it off-topic.

pmyteh 9y ago

She probably became combative because you were deploying the lump of labour fallacy and in doing so either explicitly or implicitly blaming women working for the failures of economic policy since the 70s. Although this would at least make a refreshing change from the usual gambit of blaming immigrants, unfortunately you seem to have managed to do that as well. Your 'just tried to explain' (wrongly) is a classic example of why the expression 'mansplaining' is a thing. Please stop.

rhapsodic 9y ago
>She probably became combative because you were deploying the lump of labour fallacy and in doing so either explicitly or implicitly blaming women working for the failures of economic policy since the 70s. That's not a valid reason to become combative. If she felt the GP was wrong, she could have simply, with facts and logic, explained why she felt that way. In my observation, when people respond to an argument with combativeness, it usually means they realize they cannot refute the argument with facts and logic. So they get all nasty and start name-calling (e.g. "you're a racist!") or they deploy some childish, imbecilic bromide like accusing the other person of "mansplaining".
- pmyteh 9y ago
  Sure. And people also beecome combative when the person arguing with them is being a dick. Case in point: my previous post has attracted a rapid slew of (not exactly undeserved) down votes, and precisely one person (you) even attempting facts and logic. And even yours pitches 'childish, imbecilic', which isn't uncombative itself, in context.
  - rhapsodic 9y ago
    >And even yours pitches 'childish, imbecilic', which isn't uncombative itself, in context. The term "mansplaining", and the use of it, is in my view extremely childish and imbecelic, in just about every scenario in which I've seen it used. And it's based on a gender-based generalization that is as illogical as if I had said "she became combative because women are driven by emotions rather than reasoning! She should stop fem-plaining!"
  - Clubber 9y ago
    I down voted your post too. You told him he was mansplaining and to please stop. How does that help anything in the discussion? I appreciate the wage gap problem, but throwing terms like "mansplaining," are typically done by garbage websites trying to get clicks by stirring up gender tensions. It actually stands to freeze progress rather than further it, but hey, ad revenue right?
    - slavik81 9y ago
      I'd like to note, though, that it was a good post aside from the personal attack. I would have upvoted if the text dedicated to admonishing the parent were instead dedicated to expanding on how the lump of labour fallacy applied.
      - Clubber 9y ago
        Yes, I would also like to know how doubling the work force as a factor in pushing down wages is a fallacy (particularly in the 80s). I understand it's a complex problem. Another factor in stagnant wages is automation and much of what we tout as worker productivity isn't necessarily workers working 10x faster or harder, but automation allowing them to get 10x more done. Think in terms of Excel vs "running the numbers" manually, databases vs. file cabinets, etc. As an aside, part of the reason the VA is so inefficient is that many of their patient records are (were?) in file cabinets. The worker doesn't do 10x the work out of pure skill (though learning to use Excel is part of it) but the investment in licenses and software done by the business. It's fair to say if the business invested in building a software system, they should reap the benefits of the productivity it yields, even though that stagnates wages. I also believe a worker who understands Excel should have higher wages than one that doesn't, though today, it's a requirement for a job in accounting.
virmundi 9y ago
I don't think I'm committing that fallacy given history. Look where women went to work: office level work, or service work if you will. Look where men were transitioning during the late 60s: office level work, or service work if you will. Now you've got 2 groups of people competing for the same work. Historically with a constrained pool of labour, you'd expect wages to rise to get the few available candidates to work for you. Since the 1970's, that pool is essentially 33-60% great than what it could have been. Also during the 1970's you saw an increased rate of women attending university. Again, gaining skills and accreditations required by the general employers at the time. As to mansplanning, I didn't do that. I never said the individual was a woman. In fact it was a portly, hairy MALE friend of mine. I also didn't say women in the workplace was bad. Just there are consequences of expanding the labour pool with more intelligent hard working people.
- cbhl 9y ago
  I want you to consider the way you phrased your statement, and compare it to the way I phrased my question. You: "[The] reason for wage stagnation is that women hit the workforce" Me: "because women weren't expected to have jobs" The way you phrased your statement can be interpreted as saying that women are the cause of wage stagnation. Surely, that's not what you meant at all. The way I phrased my statement implies that society, and the change in society's expectations of women, are the trigger. This shifts the "blame", if you will, from women, to everyone. I realize I'm being nit-picky about words, but in my experience, women and minorities care about words a lot, and so taking care in the way you use words can help them be more receptive to your facts and ideas.
  - rhapsodic 9y ago
    *>I realize I'm being nit-picky about words,..." If you were nit-picky about words, you would realize that the entire post you quoted from was utterly inoffensive to anyone not trying to find offense. FFS, he (excuse me for assuming that) even said "I made no judgement on women working."
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I really perceive no difference between those phrasings. I also don't have a strong desire to pander to those who go so far out of their way to avoid charitable interpretations. Fortunately, I know very few such people (male or female, majority or minority).

kasey_junk 9y ago

Without any knowledge of the situation in question, I'd offer that the way facts are presented is more likely to cause emotional responses than the facts themselves regardless of audience.

wavegeek 9y ago
> Without any knowledge of the situation Above poster argues that the problem is the way the facts were presented. - Doesn't provide any evidence for this My experience is the opposite. When dealing with ideologues there is no way to mention some things without "triggering" them.
- cbhl 9y ago
  I'd say it's both! If the recipient is in an "us versus them" mindset, then they are going to be biased toward poking holes for ideas on the "other side". See also: "Why you think you're right -- even if you're wrong", by Julia Galef [video] https://youtu.be/w4RLfVxTGH4 https://youtu.be/w4RLfVxTGH4 There are obviously ways to present facts that cause people to be predisposed to rejecting them. I would argue that there are also techniques that can help pull people out of this mindset (for example, acknowledging that the listener's opposing view is a valid one), which can improve the odds of them being receptive to new information.

rhizome 9y ago

Why does that only hold for labor, why is there no corresponding executive and management pushdown? There is additional supply for those positions, too. P.S. Why even mention the "feminist" angle? It doesn't feed your point, and it seems you use it self-servingly to go silent on their response.

randomdata 9y ago
> There is additional supply for those positions The supply of executive and management workers is constrained by the intimate trust that can be formed with the individuals. I'm not sure that scales with the total workforce. Much like friendship, I suspect that the average person has no more friends with 7B people on earth than an average person had when there were 2B people on earth. There are just practical limitations to the number of people that you can build that kind of relationship with. It is not like a line worker where the job is implemented such that almost anyone can walk into the job as a 'replaceable cog'.

CPLX 9y ago

Those aren't facts they are things you made up. Economists and others actually study this stuff you know, there are empirical ways to make this judgement without back of the envelope guessing. But if you like superficial reasoning explain the variance in wage growth between the US and countries where feminism has had more impact on the labor pool like Scandinavia, which suggests the exact opposite of your hypothesis.

virmundi 9y ago
Which economists, [1]? 1 - http://www.nber.org/digest/nov02/w9013.html http://www.nber.org/digest/nov02/w9013.html

fulafel 9y ago

Increased labour supply doesn't naturally lead to lower wage growth, so she was right.

Spivak 9y ago
Right, but this one is easy to push back on. If only men work, and most men need to support a family then the wages that all men are willing to accept is higher. Once families have two breadwinners, both men and women are willing to accept lower wages. The average household income is $55k but the average two income household makes $100k which I would hypothesize is the real growth area. The 'middle class factory worker' making $80-90k lifestyle now takes two people to realize.
- fulafel 9y ago
  But since the 2 people are creating much more material value, this explanation would mean that a much bigger % of it was going to profits instead of wages. I think the decline of unions and globalization are more credible explanations.
  - virmundi 9y ago
    I think it is a combination of all those. It's just an overlooked cause. I think many avoid it entirely because they believe it demeans women. As I said in another post, more capable about came to the fore in much large droves than the US could ever take at one time from immigrants. We now had a massive surplus of labor. This would drive wages down. With this, the collapse the union base, and add new cheaper labor in the rest of the world. Also enact free trade policies that didn't tax imports that used essentially slave labor to make their products. The end result is depressed wages from without and within. So too automation rendering a portion of this pool redundant.
wahern 9y ago
Huh? As a general matter, increased labour supply _does_ naturally lead to lower wage growth. That's simple supply and demand, which is about as "natural" of a phenomenon as you can get. It doesn't necessarily lead to lower wage growth, of course, particularly when you take into account other factors that might change contemporaneously. For example there might be union or political pressure to redistribute more profits to workers. But the point is that with an increase in the labor supply, ceteris paribus, we should expect lower wages, and thus lower wage growth averaged over the period before and after the change in labor supply. The persuasive burden should be on someone trying to prove otherwise. That burden might be easy or difficult to overcome, but we shouldn't mistake where the burden should lie. Otherwise we're rejecting basic, sound economic theory.

dang 9y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277113 and marked it off-topic.