Damn Lies, etc.

There is no way that the average American (or world citizen, for that matter) can stay on top of the firehose of mis-information aimed at them in an election season. Any conversation about policy, society or the philosophical underpinnings of living on this planet together, without killing each other, inevitably—and incredibly quickly—devolves into a bilateral effort to disprove facts held by the other party. For example, imagine a devout Republican discussing “equal pay for equal work” with a fervent Democrat.

The Republican will be convinced that John McCain and Sarah Palin are completely for it, mostly because they think that they heard them mention it once or twice. The Democrat will counter that McCain has been in Washington for a quarter century and has effectively spent zero time fighting for equal pay. In fact, he recently banded with others to strike down yet another attempt to pass some regulation enforcing it. His Vice Presidential nominee, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t care for it if she knew what it was.

At this juncture, with both parties in full plumage of heaving chests, reddened faces and twitching lower eyelids, the Republican will pull his trump card (likely obtained in compressed sound-bite form from a talk-radio show):

“In today’s Wall Street Journal, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan has an op-ed entitled “Vote Republican if You Want Equal Pay.” Mulligan looked at Census data on women’s pay relative to men’s in every presidential administration from LBJ to the present. And lo and behold, he found that women’s relative pay increased far more under Republican presidents than Democrat ones. (emphasis added)”

So there. Despite their obvious commitment to equal pay, Democrats suck at making it happen, whereas Republicans emanate fairness in such vast quantities that excess fairness appears in the world solely as a consequence of them being in power.

It is very counterintuitive, but we’ve been trained from birth (at least in America) to love the counterintuitive as the underdog of ideas, discriminated against because it makes no sense and has little to no rational basis. People, in general, like these nuggets of fact because they’re easier to remember. All the more if they happen to reinforce an already-held belief. As pointed out in the article, The fine line between clever and stupid by Kathy G. (The G Spot), it turns out that, while the data are correct, the conclusion of causality is completely fallacious. Factoid; truthiness; call it what you will.

A scientific interest in explaining the apparent contradiction extracts more unpleasant information from the heap of history: Republican administrations are basically “[a]n economic disaster [for] low-skilled Americans, especially young men”. Before continuing, re-read the passage above and note that the word relative is emphasized. That’s a tricky, “coy” word to use because it allows the absolute ugly truth of the situation to be not only hidden, but completely turned on its head to serve those that caused the ugliness in the first place. Bravo. The ugly truth (statistically) follows:

“As Larry Bartels has pointed out (Amazon), the economic prospects of Americans at the lower end of the income scale fare much better when Democrats are in charge, and much worse under the Republicans. And this, I think, is the explanation as to why women’s relative pay increases more during Republican administrations. It’s not that Republican economic policies help women all that much. It’s that they hurt the working class, especially working class men. A lot.”

The original citation does not say that Republicans increase women’s pay, only that their pay is relatively more equal under Republicans. It’s a sleazily brilliant formulation. Most people would think to improve lives in order to increase equality, but the effect of making everyone miserable and worse-off—as the poor tend to be under Republicans (statistically)—is also to increase equality.

The United States will have no useful, credible leadership until scams of this nature stop influencing a large proportion of the voting public. The chances of that happening anytime soon are vanishingly, depressingly small.