Month: August 2022

Trouble with definitions

AustralianActuary Business

If you can’t define what a woman is, how can you define “gender pay gap”?

I’m going to hazard a guess here: those acquaintances of yours who claim that there is a gender pay gap in Australia will be unable to define a woman when asked. You try it out for yourself.

There are two ways of defining gender pay gap. One is correct and the other isn’t. The incorrect way is to add up total earnings of men and women separately then divide by the total number of men and women respectively and compare the two answers. They will be different. That allows the unscrupulous and the unthinking to cry “gender pay gap!” very loudly. Just like how today’s story in The Age reports.

However, the above calculations merely represent average earnings of men and women. Nothing can be inferred about whether men and women are paid equally by looking at averages.

The correct way to test for a gender pay gap is to look at pay for equivalent work. Then you will find that Australian business does not pay different rates for men vs women.

Not every problem requires a law

AustralianActuary Life

I don’t know how the disgruntled will cope when Australia becomes a republic: “There are calls for a Royal Commission following [insert grievance text here…]” will disappear from the lead stories of The Age and The Guardian and Their ABC.

Reading into the story it seems the disgruntled underwent surgery for a Brazilian Butt Lift, which the reporter helpfully referred to as the BBL. The surgery went wrong, I think.

Now, having lead a sheltered life, I was unaware that the BBL could refer to either a round robin T20 cricket comp or a butt lift. It’s also not clear whether the lift is one performed only on butts of Brazilians or only by Brazilian surgeons or can anyone shuffle into the surgery and bounce out newly uplifted? I remain ignorant in this regard because I stopped reading.

Let’s keep Royal Commissions for more weighty topics.

CEO employment prospects for middle aged white straight men are on the up

AustralianActuary Business

I’m in a sunny mood today as I have become convinced that my employment prospects as a business CEO are on the rise. In the event that I should need to come out of retirement and get back in the workforce, perhaps because the expense of keeping a wooden ocean going yacht has gone beyond eye watering levels, then I can see opportunities opening up aplenty. The reason is simple. Boards of directors appoint CEOs. Boards also sack CEOs. Boards are increasingly fearful of sacking a CEO who happens to belong to a protected species. Middle aged, white straight men are not a protected species. Everyone else is. So, the obvious conclusion is: appoint someone who, if they turn out to be hopeless, we can sack! Times are good, even for hopeless middle aged white straight men!

Mr Market is never wrong

AustralianActuary Economics ,

I am one of the strongest advocates of free markets among people that I know. When I hear of the left, the cronies, the globalists and the common or garden rent seeker claiming the need for state coercive intervention owing to ‘market failure’, my response is invariably “there is no such thing as market failure, but there are outcomes that you don’t like: don’t get those two confused.”

Really?

In this case, without proclaiming the market is wrong, I can’t see how it can be right. Ordinarily, higher interest rates will not curb inflation until the real interest rate is positive. So, we’ll see if Mr Market is merely sorting cards on the table and still making up his mind.