Worstall’s Fallacy, Worstall’s Fallacy

Sigh, Polly:

But even if most do comply, from everything we know about inequality after decades of never-ending research, we know that knowing the facts doesn’t lead to action. There is nothing we don’t know about gender, race and social immobility, but policy-makers pick the knowledge that suits them. Women are poorer? This week Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary most responsible for impoverishing them, offered £30m in counselling to stop poor women rowing with their partners as it spoils their children’s employment prospects. Good idea maybe, but no recompense for the £12bn taken mainly from women’s pockets in benefit cuts beginning this week.

We know that women get less money from their employers. We don’t know, because absolutely no one has ever calculated it, whether women have less money after the welfare state kicks in. Thus is Worstall’s Fallacy again, looking at the pre-things we do about a problem not the post-.

Actually, the only person I know of who has even tried to calculate this is me. the answer being that for the median or even mean woman the combination of child benefit and child care credits or whatever they’re called is larger than the gender pay gap.

Good. British employers are notorious for investing too little in training, while our education system has utterly failed on technical skills.

That’s the one that closed down the technical schools in favour of comprehensives, is it?

36 thoughts on “Worstall’s Fallacy, Worstall’s Fallacy”

  1. “…£30m in counselling to stop poor women rowing with their partners as it spoils their children’s employment prospects.”

    What a fatuous waste of money.

  2. So Much For Subtlety

    Theophrastus – “What a fatuous waste of money.”

    Actually it probably is, but theoretically it isn’t. The only thing we can do to reduce rape, child abuse, domestic violence, inter-generational poverty and poor education outcomes – the *only* thing – is to encourage parents to get and stay married.

    And it could work. We certainly have spent enough time and money encouraging them *not* to be married.

  3. Slightly O/T, there’s a current TV ad for Quorn which opens with words to the effect of, “What does Trevor to to make up for working late? He makes Sally a delicious meal…” .

    So the man has to work more than the woman and then apologise for it.

    I’m toying with the idea of complaining to the regulator (except I have a job, so I’m busy). It’s what the other side would do.

  4. SMFS: I agree that it would be better for us all if more people married and stayed married. However, counselling is largely ineffective, and counsellors are usually left-inclined femi-loons anyway.

  5. Nevermind the earning’s gap, what’s the spending gap? Womens’ stuff certainly seems to cost more (pink razors) than mens’ apart from the odd boy’s toy to stop the man going mad. And when it comes to expenditure on non vital stuff – beauty products, making things look nice, spa days, more than one pair of shoes, organic malarky, women have that sown up. There are millions of men who basically spend on themselves the same as their male counterparts did 100 years ago. If a young man gets a bit of money, that becomes immediately channeled to alluring a mate. Indeed, the only reason this earnings thing is a debate is because women care more about money than men. Give a man a mate to look after and a modicum of self worth and social status and he’s happy.

  6. So Much For Subtlety

    Theophrastus – “However, counselling is largely ineffective, and counsellors are usually left-inclined femi-loons anyway.”

    As I said, theoretically, but not realistically. Given they are femi-loons, from what I have heard, they are often not ineffective. Some times they are all too effective.

    Any man who agrees to counselling is insane.

  7. “Slightly O/T, there’s a current TV ad for Quorn which opens with words to the effect of, “What does Trevor to to make up for working late? He makes Sally a delicious meal…” .

    So the man has to work more than the woman and then apologise for it.”

    Lol, yes this kind of inversion of reality is so common. No wonder a large proportion of women are nuts by the time they reach adulthood, constantly hearing this kind of thing.

    It’s a kind of sexism of lowered expectations- assumes women crazy, easy to anger, have to be appeased constantly, automatically in the drivers seat of any relationship. Men super beta, need to serve her majesty, automatically guilty of something-or-other. It is an insane message.

    Although he is cooking her Quorn, so maybe a hint of rebellion there.

    In reality, given how hard Trevor is working, Sally should probably be fetching him a drink then giving him a blowjob.

  8. “Slightly O/T, there’s a current TV ad for Quorn which opens with words to the effect of, “What does Trevor to to make up for working late? He makes Sally a delicious meal…” .

    So the man has to work more than the woman and then apologise for it.”

    A man’s place is in the wrong!

  9. It rather depends on the advice given. If the stated goal of this counselling is to keep couples together, then the advice could be good. But if it’s a feminist pep talk, it’ll lead to even more breakups.

    Whatever system is put in place, there needs to be a control group of couples who don’t receive counselling, to measure effectiveness against the stated goal.

  10. while our education system has utterly failed on technical skills.

    Polly wouldn’t know “technical skills” if they turned up at her villa in Umbria in a giant orange spaceship.

    after decades of never-ending research

    Unintentionally honest sentence.

    “…£30m in counselling to stop poor women rowing with their partners as it spoils their children’s employment prospects.”

    So we have one part of government funding Olympic rowing and another part wasting millions trying to stop it? This is madness.

  11. “the £12bn taken mainly from women’s pockets in benefit cuts beginning this week.”
    Odd.
    Women’s clothes are generally extremely short on pockets. Particularly practical ones. And I don’t think I’ve ever known a women kept money in whatever pockets she had.
    Jus’ an observation.

  12. The Meissen Bison

    @ Edward Lud / tomsmith

    It’s an ad for Quorn, for heaven’s sake – can there be a more gender-fluid comestible?

    Sally probably insists that Trevor sits down to pee.

  13. “our education system has utterly failed on technical skills”: put Polly in charge and all the girls would be taught how to repair a betamax video recorder.

  14. put Polly in charge and all the girls would be taught how to repair a betamax video recorder.

    Or how to clean Umbrian villas. “And I want it done properly this time!”

  15. “Did you see my piece today, Kath?”

    “Yes Polly, very good… And no, you can’t have another pay rise.”

    This seems to be typical of journalism today, though. A bunch of false assertions that don’t even amount to a strawman, followed by a couple of conclusions that don’t even follow from the fake premises.

    And she still gets paid a lot more than most male hacks.

  16. “tomsmith, there’s a nail whose head you’ve just whacked.”

    Unless by “working late” the Quorn ad means that Trevor is fucking the young intern, and he goes home filled with a confusing mix of guilt and rage. A “delicious” meal of Quorn for Sally is the result.

    Quorn- for when you are sick of your wife and have better options, but hate yourself for what you are doing to the family

  17. the £12bn taken mainly from women’s pockets in benefit cuts

    And in the relentless descent of English into Newspeak, yet another step is taken in which “not put into” is equivalent to “taken from”.

  18. @The Meissen Bison
    Sally probably insists that Trevor sits down to pee.
    I’ve always sat down to pee. Since I was about 10, anyway.

    I figure even if I only miss one time in 100, with 3 pees a day that’s nearly once a month I make a mess, and I really can’t be arsed to clean it up (and neither can anyone else, judging by public men’s loos).

    And I bet the figure is a lot closer to 1 in 2 than 1 in 100 (again judging by those public loos).

    Of course, if my wife insisted that I sit down, I’d have to stand up on general principles…

  19. One may reach an age where sitting down is the better option because it lets one empty one’s bladder more completely. I hope you’re all looking forward to old age, chaps.

  20. “Unless by “working late” the Quorn ad means that Trevor is fucking the young intern, and he goes home filled with a confusing mix of guilt and rage. A “delicious” meal of Quorn for Sally is the result.”

    I have to admit that was the very first impression I got when I saw the ad.

    Quorn- for when you are sick of your wife and have better options, but hate yourself for what you are doing to the family

    Hmm.

  21. “Employers pay what they have to pay to attract and retain people who can do what they want done.” – GC

    What women are paid is controlled by . . . women. Don’t like the pay? Quit and go somewhere else, honey.

    Leave the bogus group politics in the toilet where it belongs. Women are individuals, not a group.

  22. Andrew M

    “If the stated goal of this counselling is to keep couples together, then the advice could be good.”

    But it’s not advice, it’s counselling – which is supposedly non-judgemental and non-directive, except when it comes to feminism and ‘autonomy’.

  23. Kevin B
    April 7, 2017 at 11:46 am

    This seems to be typical of journalism today, though. A bunch of false assertions that don’t even amount to a strawman, followed by a couple of conclusions that don’t even follow from the fake premises.

    Thank $deity. I thought it was just me had noticed that.

  24. “Quorn- for when you have better options, but hate yourself”

    You should work in advertising

  25. I tried Quorn once. Not the hunt, the comestible. It was like eating inoffensive congealed dust.

    But does Trevor deserve it?

  26. Maybe its a plan. After all if you all become homosexual all will be well.
    That’s what they say.
    Homosexual never frown.

  27. The Meissen Bison

    @ Edward Lud

    The unspeakable Trevor and Sally in pursuit of the uneatable?

    Quorn: a modern Wildean metaphor?

  28. @ISI3
    “If you pee standing up how do you read the paper?”

    It’s generally posted above the urinal in better bars and pubs.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *