Who Has A Better Economic Record: Obama Or Romney?

With the general election underway in which Mitt Romney will challenge Barack Obama for the Presidency, both candidates will try to make the case that they are the one who can turn this economy around.

Unfortunately, Obama cannot make that case because he's never been serious about improving the U.S. economy. And it shows. Now that Obama has been in office for almost four years, his economic record is something that Americans are not proud of. 

Obama's reelection strategy is to blame the previous administration for the current problems. If that's the strategy he wants to use in this election, its not a very good one because he hasn't done anything to fix the problems he has inherited from the Bush Administration. Take a good look at the chart below and you'll see why: 

When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the previous administration had left him with a terrible financial mess for him to deal with. When Mitt entered into office in 2003, he was a left with a massive deficit of approximately $3 billion. Mitt Romney did not complain about the previous administration nor did he attempt to place the blame on anyone else. He simply went to work to balance the budget. By 2005, Mitt Romney had a budget surplus of $1 billion and by the time he left office in 2007, he left the state had a $ 2 billion surplus. Moreover, when the state was threatened with a loss in credit rating, Mitt Romney took swift action to take care of the problem.

Mitt Romney's economic record stands in stark contrast with Barak Obama's. Our economy is in grave danger and we need a candidate who knows how businesses work, knows how to create jobs, and how to whip a government back into financial shape. 

The choice for who should be the President is clear. We need Mitt Romney in the White House. You can make that happen by voting for Mitt in November.

WSJ: Bain Saved America In The 1980s

The Wall Street Journal has an article explaining how private equity firms like Bain helped saved America during the 1980s:

Not only did Bain Capital save America, but no matter what turn Mitt Romney's political career takes, Bain Capital may stand as the best of Mr. Romney's lifetime contributions to the nation's economic well-being. If only he'd tell the story.

We are of course putting forth "Bain Capital" as not merely the Romney private-equity house but as the stand-in for the period of American economic history that ran from 1980 to 1989. Back then it was called the Greed Decade, with asset-stripping barbarians at the gate. Virtually everything about this popular stereotype is wrong. Properly understood, the 1980s, including Bain, were the remarkable years when an ever-resilient America found a way to save itself from becoming what Europe is now—a global has-been. 

...

Arguably, the primary force that set off the 1980s upheaval in U.S. corporate restructuring was the deregulation begun by Jimmy Carter and continued by Ronald Reagan. Airlines, ground transportation, cable and broadcasting, oil and gas, banking and financial services all experienced regulatory rollback. Meanwhile, a competitive, globalized marketplace was rising. Management at some of America's biggest companies, confused by these rapid changes, found themselves sitting on huge piles of unused or poorly deployed cash and assets.

Thousands of Mitt Romneys allied with huge pension funds representing colleges, unions and the like, plus a rising cadre of institutional money managers, to force corporate America to reboot. In the 1980s almost half of major U.S. corporations got takeover offers.

Singling out this or that Bain case study amid the jostling and bumping is pointless. This was a historic and necessary cleansing of the Augean stables of the American economy. It caused a positive revolution in U.S. management, financial analysis, incentives, governance and market-based discipline. It led directly to the 1990s boom years. And it gave the U.S. two decades of breathing room while Europe, with some exceptions, choked. 

Obviously, Bain didn't single handedly save America but the private equity firms did of which Romney's company was among many firms that helped America revitalize its businesses by forcing them to reform, restructure, evolve and slim down. 

We need a candidate who will reduce the size and scope of government and create an atmosphere were businesses can grow or reform and revitalize itself. If you want to return to another economic boom of prosperity similar to the one America experienced in the 1980s, then Mitt Romney is your candidate.

Why The Attacks On Bain Have Backfired on Perry and Gingrich

Sometime in the future when Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry will suspend their campaign, they will have no one to blame but themselves for losing to Mitt Romney and failing to win the Republican nomination. They could have turned their campaigns around but they didn't. Instead, they chose to attack Romney for his work in Bain with the hopes of hurting him but instead they have damaged themselves beyond repair.

Below are several reasons why their ship is sinking and will continue to sink until they bow out of the race:

How The Attacks Have Hurt Them

1. The biggest reason why Gingrich and Perry's attacks on Bain have blown up in their faces is because these candidates who are willing to break Reagan's 11th commandment of attacking another conservative and going on to commit the ultimate unpardonable sin of disparaging Capitalism. For many conservatives, their is no atonement that is sufficient to redeem them from their mistake of launching an assult on capitalism. 

That's why  a big supporter of Rick Perry has backed off from supporting him and is now supporting Romney precisely because of his leftist attacks on Mitt Romney's work with Bain. Another Rick Perry supporter named Roger Simon has also abandoned Rick Perry for his assault on capitalism. 

2. It is impossible to believe their claims that they are not attacking capitalism but just attacking his record. Either they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how creative destruction works or that their knowledge of how free market economies work is getting in the way of their attempts to take Mitt down. These men are claiming that Romney's business was not capitalism but but a destructive, profit-driven perversion of it. Thanks to them, this is no longer a left-wing argument. They have now legitimized Obama's attacks on the free market which makes it harder for them to defeat Obama. Businesses know this and that's why they're rallying around Mitt. They know that they need someone who can defend capitalism and defeat Obama. Mitt's got both. 

3. If Gingrich or Perry become President, their attacks on Romney will come to haunt them. Obama will essentially argue that their attacks on Romney is an agreement with Obama's perspective on wall street, free markets and capitalism.  It will be hard for them to switch from being attackers of capitalism to defenders of capitalism. If they try to defend it, Obama will run attack ads against them using their own words. Mitt Romney has perfectly summed up the core issue of the 2012 election by saying that "Capitalism is on trial."

4. As a result of their attacks on Romney and his businesses, many businesses are choosing to rally around Mitt instead of the other GOP candidates. They've already had four years of Obama villifying businesses, they're not excited for enduring another four years from Obama. They're not excited to have a Republican in office who may or may not vilify them while in they're in office either. Hence, Mitt Romney is the smart choice for them. That's why it is no surprise that the chamber of commerce has told the two Republican candidates to shut up about their assault on capitalism. 

5. Not only are business not lining up behind Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich but the assault on Mitt Romney's career as a venture capitalist makes the Occupy Wall Streeters happy because it plays right into their argument that the 99% deserve to attack are being taken advantage of by the wealthy 1%. However, this argument doesn't make the 53% of Americans happy. They're tired of class warfare. They're tired of anti-capitalism. They're extremely unhappy at Perry and Gingrich because they've been vilified by the President and they don't want another four years of attacks on them from Democrat or Republican. That's why they're rallying around Mitt. At least he defends the American economic way of life.

6. The attack on Bain are far left tactics. It doesn't matter that the attacks on Bain have are not true, they will still press the attack hoping that it will hurt Romney. That's what liberals do. They will attack even if its factually not true because they think the attack works or that it actually does work. That's what Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman are doing. That's why Gingrich is airing segments of an anti-capitalist movie he's purchased in his false attack ads on Mitt. He's now desperate enough that he's now willing to buy a movie that uses every trick in the liberal play book in order to take down Romney. Even Michael Moore admires this movie.

7. When people are desperate they either show their true colors or their weakness. This is true for both Perry and Gingrich in that they have shown both at the same time as they continue to attack Mitt. They have shown themselves to be disloyal to conservative principles and they demonstrate how they really feel about the free market. As a result, Mitt Romney will most likely win South Carolina. 

 How The Attacks Have Helped Mitt

8. The Bain Attacks has had the opposite effect of uniting conservatives of all stripes into defending and supporting Mitt Romney. Conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and others are appalled at the leftist attacks from so-called conservatives. 

9. Politicians like Rudy Guiliani, Jim DeMint, Tim Pawlenty, and others are disturbed by these class warfare attacks from these so-called conservatives. Conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and The Club for Growth have come to Mitt's defense. 

10. These attacks have even got Mitt Romney's old Republican rivals like John McCain and Mike Huckabee to defend him. Moreover, they have gotten conservatives such as Michelle Malkin and Philip Klein, who are well known for their dislike of Romney,  are now defending him.

11. Lets not overlook the fact that other GOP candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have refused to join in on these attacks on Romney. They're actually defending Romney.

12. They are helping Mitt Romney in the general election by inoculating the public against attacks on Romney that will surely come from Obama:

Tony Fratto, a former Bush official who now operates his own consulting and communications firm told me, “It’s best for Gov. Romney and the party that . . . [Gingrich] chose New Hampshire to blow up, so there’s no chance of the GOP being saddled with with a Gingrich candidacy. The additional benefit to Romney is that we’ll have the Bain/private equity debate now in January instead of in the late-summer and fall. By the time the Obama campaign tries to raise it, voters will wonder why the president is raising an old issue.”

13. They're helping Mitt Romney make the case that he's the you go to in order to save an organization from economic failure. After all, he's saved many businesses from going under. He rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics. He's turned Massachusetts around. America needs a president who knows how to reduce the size of government by consolidating, restructuring, or eliminating government programs and firing government employees. 

As a result, the attacks on Romney's experience in the private sector has been a total flop. It may not even have any effect on the upcoming South Carolina Republican primary. It is pretty clear that these attacks on Mitt have backfired on them and it will lead to their demise in the South Carolina primaries or beyond if they choose to limp on to the next primary.

Mitt Romney To Give Major Speech About Spending On November 3rd

Mitt Romney has revealed that he will be giving a major speech on government spending on November 3rd:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, will be in Exeter on Thursday, Nov. 3, to “deliver a major policy speech on spending,” according to an e-mail sent out Sunday night by Doug and Stella Scamman.

Romney announced his candidacy for president in June at the Scammans’ Bittersweet Farm in Stratham. Both Doug and Stella Scamman are former state representatives. Doug served two terms as House speaker.

According to the Scammans, the event will be held at 5:30 p.m. at Exeter Town Hall, 10 Front St., Romney was last in Exeter in August, when he appeared at a small forum at the Exeter Historical Society.

In his 2008 presidential bid, Romney led the early polling in New Hampshire, but was beaten by the party’s eventual nominee, Sen. John McCain. Romney enjoys a sizeable lead in the 2012 New Hampshire polling but is fighting tough battles with Herman Cain in Iowa and South Carolina and is facing intense attacks from former Gov. Rick Perry, who is trying to claw his way back into the race after some early missteps.

Mitt Romney has given lots of policy speeches on this issue. Yet, from the way I understand this, this is going to be something much more bigger and more significant than the speeches he's given in the past. Team Romney hasn't revealed the details of his speech yet but the fact that they have only stated that it was about spending has me excited and curious about what more he could say on this subject since he has written extensviely on the subject of spending government spending in his book, No Apology: Believe in America and provided voters with 160 page economic plan which includes ways he will rein in excessive government spending.  

However, Mitt Romney has revealed his underlying guiding principle that is foundation of each of his economic proposals: 

Each proposal is rooted in the conservative premise that government itself cannot create jobs. At best, government can provide a framework in which economic growth can occur. All too often, however, government gets in the way. The past three years of unparalleled government expansion have retaught that lesson all too well.

As a result, we can be confident in what Mitt will say on November 3rd. Like most Americans, I look forward to hearing Mitt Romney's speech on Thursday. 

The Power Of Captialism: Making People's Lives Better And Healther

Capitalism provided people with the freedom to make major discoveries in science, medicine, nutrition and technology which has increased the life expectancy and wealth of individuals all over the world over a long period of time. Hans Rosling explains: 

Another video takes a different approach in making the same point about how capitalism has helped improve the qualify of life for people: 

Another video demonstrates that capitalism provides the freedom for wealth to expand which makes it possible for living standards to rise for everyone, not just the rich only.  Capitalism has made it possible for the poor today to enjoy things that previous people in poverty could never enjoy before. The video shows how capitialism has raised the income of rich and poor people alike in just the last 40 years. What makes the video you're about to see even more powerful is that not only do we see a comparison between the rich and the poor in the United States but goes one step further by comparing the American poor and the average citizen in Europe, Asia, and Africa:

As shown in these videos above, capitalism has done more to improve the lives of humankind than any other political, social or economic system invented by mankind.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters do not realize that we stand on the shoulders of the men and women in the past who made these amazing discoveries which has led to further discoveries that made it possible to enjoy the life we live today. In fact, these protesters fail to see the irony in their protests against capitalism. One photo demonstrates the irony perfectly:   

In attempt to get the world to wake up to the flaws of capitalism, they are unknowingly promoting the benefits of capitalism by using products created by business organizations who have the economic freedom to create products and services in their protests against capitalism.

Obama's Dismal Economic Record

Unfortunately for Americans, we are enduring the consequences of Obama's inexperience in handling the economy. To make matters worse, Obama is a progressive which means his views on economic matters is not a political philosophy that promotes economic growth. 

Obama's record since he's been in office has never been good. Ace, a fellow conservative blogger, serves up a nice infographic that demonstrates a discrepancy between what Obama's statements on the economy places it next to current economic statistics. The infograph is an eyeopening look at how Obama's incompetence has affected the economic health of our country.

Why Job Creators Like Steve Wynn Can Rally Around Mitt Romney

The economy is on everyone's mind these days. Its not just the 14.1 million unemployed Americans who are unhappy with Obama's performance on the economy. Business owners are also unhappy with our President. Recently, Steve Wynn, the CEO of casino company Wynn Resorts unloaded his feelings about how bad Obama has been for business owners:

I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I'm afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States. You watch television and see what's going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing's going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress. But everybody is so political, so focused on holding their job for the next year that the discussion in Washington is nauseating.

And I'm saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration.And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.

You bet and until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.

Steve Wynn isn't the only big business CEO that is unhappy with Obama. There are others who agree with Mr. Wynn's assessment of Obama's lack of concern over the economy: 

3M's George Buckley, who blasted Obama last February as anti-business. "We know what his instincts are," Buckley said. "We've got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada or Mexico — which tends to be more pro-business — and America," he told the Financial Times.

Boeing's Jim McNerney, who in the Wall Street Journal last May called Obama's handpicked National Labor Relations Board's suit against his company a "fundamental assault on the capitalist principles that have sustained America's competitiveness since it became the world's largest economy nearly 140 years ago."

Intel's Paul Otellini, who told CNET last August that the U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business that there is likely to be "an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we're seeing today in Europe — this is the bitter truth."

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who observed to radio host Hugh Hewitt last month that Obama "never had to make payroll," that "nobody has ever created a job in this administration" and that the president is "surrounded by college professors."

GE's Jeffrey Immelt, one of Obama's biggest supporters, who hit out at the president last year. "Business did not like the U.S. president and the president did not like business," the FT reported him saying. "People are in a really bad mood. We have to become an industrial powerhouse again, but you don't do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in sync."

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, another Obama backer, who blasted Obama's bank tax in January 2010 as a "guilt tax," once called Obama's carbon tax idea "regressive" and this month denounced Obama's obsession with corporate jets.

Unemployment is the number one concern of all Americans. It doesn't matter if you are a young adult looking for a job, one of the 9.1% of Americans who are unemployed, a CEO of a small or large business, or employee of giant corporation or a small business, unemployment affects you, your family and friends and ultimately our country.  

Its becoming increasingly clear that America needs Mitt Romney.  He is someone that everyone can rally around. The employed, unemployed and job creators can unite around Mitt Romney.  He knows why business are crucial to America's strength as a nation and how government can have a positive or negative influence on job creation. Governments don't create jobs. They can only create an friendly or hostile atmosphere that either encourages or discourages business activity.

That's why job creators and innovators can easily get behind Mitt Romney in this election because he shares the same frustrations that they do. By creating a pro-business environment for CEOs and entrepreneurs, they can start hiring people. This concept is something Obama doesn't understand. To reduce unemployment, you have to support businesses in creating wealth and jobs, not chastise and belittle them for it. 

Mitt Romney having worked in business offices and in the governor's office, he has seen things from both the business perspective and the government's perspective. As a result, he has necessary experience and knowledge needed to reduce unemployment, stimulate business growth and expansion and make America competitive in the global economy.

The Senate's Equal Pay Act: Legislating Wage Descrimination Despite Women Choosing To Accept Less Pay

One of the legislative items that the current democratically controlled Senate would like to pass before the election season ends is S.3772 or otherwise known as the "equal pay bill" or "paycheck fairness bill." While the Senate seeks to pass the bill with the good intention of ensuring that people receive the same wages regardless of gender, the evidence justifying the passage of this legislation is very slim. 

There is growing evidence that the wage gap between men and women occurs for reasons other than intentional wage discrimination on the basis of gender. Perhaps the most solid evidence for this is the United States government itself. The U.S. Labor Department contracted with CONSAD Research Corporation to review of more than 50 existing studies as well as a new economic and statistical analysis of the pay gap. The results of the review was laid out in the report titled , "An Analysis of Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women." In the summary of that report, CONSAD made this observation about the causes of the pay gap: 

"Economic research has identified numerous factors that contribute to the observed difference between wages paid to women and wages paid to men, commonly called the gender wage gap. Many relate to differences in the choices and behavior of women and men in balancing their work, personal, and family lives. These factors include, most notably, the occupations and industries in which they work, and their human capital development, work experience, career interruptions, and motherhood. Other factors are sources of wage adjustments that compensate specific groups of workers for benefits or duties that disproportionately impact them. These factors include health insurance, other fringe benefits, and overtime work."

In the full length report, CONSAD explains that they were able to reduce the pay gap from approximately 20% to about 5% when they controlled the various factors that may contribute to the wage gap. CONSAD explains, in the summary of their findings, that even with taking in various factors for the pay gap, there is no detectable and tangible proof of wage discrimination:

"report demonstrates that it is not possible now, and doubtless will never be possible, to determine reliably whether any portion of the observed gender wage gap is not attributable to factors that compensate women and men differently on socially acceptable bases, and hence can confidently be attributed to overt discrimination against women."

In other words, they cannot state with confidence or certainty that there is any proof of any actual or intentional wage discrimination on the basis of gender. The Labor Department agreed with CONSAD's conclusion that the gender pay gap is the result of wide range of factors rather than any overt sex discrimination. As a result, the Labor Department made this statement with regards to any legislative attempt to correct wage discrimination that may not exist: 

The “raw wage gap should not be used as the basis for [legislative] correction. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”

American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation published a report in 1997 came to the same conclusion:

"After accounting for all factors known to affect wages, about one-quarter of the gap remains unexplained and may be attributed to discrimination."

Steve Chapman, writing for Reason.com explains that the AAUW report is essentially admitting that "that three-quarters of the gap clearly has innocent causes—and that we actually don't know whether discrimination accounts for the rest."

It appears that the common thread behind the wage gap can be attributed to the choices women make in how they will get compensation for their services. In many cases, it is women themselves who create their own pay gap, even in employments fields where women make up the majority of the industry. For example, women dominate the veterinarian business and yet there is evidence that females earn less than their male counterparts. One study reveals that the pay gap for female vets is the result of intentional trade off that they choose to make. Women choose to take less pay in exchange for solidifying their relationship with their clients. 

"Analyzing the pricing patterns of 536 veterinarians, the study found female vets charged needier clients less than more affluent clients, while male vets set their prices regardless of a client's situation.

The female veterinarians -- about one-third of the total group -- adjusted their prices because they cared more about their relationships with their customers than did the men, the study said.

The vets were asked to respond to a hypothetical scenario involving a 12-year-old dog with advanced kidney failure. The vets could offer treatment options to the hypothetical client, described either as a "young professional" or an "elderly widow." The female vets tended to charge the widow less.

In larger veterinary practices, however, female veterinarians charged higher prices, as they took into consideration the needs of their co-workers as well, the study said.

"Women ... take into consideration their customers, and they take into consideration their associates," Gilly said.

"For women, their relationships with customers matter, their relationships with people they work with matter, and it doesn't seem to matter for men," she said. "Men just price the same, regardless."

The study seems to mirror the results of another study in which they found same results of pricing patterns among female mortgage lenders. They found that women made $575 less per loan than their male counterparts. 

Micaela Z. Shaughnessy, a female vet who blogs about women in the veterinarians industry has her own theory for why women charge less than men for the same services. She thinks that a woman's sense of compassion might be her own worst financial enemy.

Studies clearly show that men and women make different business choices when dealing with clients. In these studies, no one is forcing the women to take less pay. They're making that choice themselves. They make a trade off of less pay to solidify client relationship whereas men don't. Men charge the same price regardless of the client's condition.

Regardless of why women who are in the position to state a price for their services will often charge less than men, the conclusion is clear: women, knowingly or unknowingly, choose to accept less pay. However, a legitimate criticism of these kinds of studies is that one cannot take the results of a study that used a small pool of people and that they cannot make apply these studies that are based on women who own their own service-related businesses and say that it applies to positions where the salary is determined by another person or persons. 

However, that criticism lacks merit because in fields where a woman's pay is determined by someone else, women often to fail to negotiate for an increase in pay whereas men have no difficulty in asking for more money. Pink, a women’s business magazine, did a study on women and negotiating for salary in the work place and this is what they discovered: 

"Nearly half of 2,400 women surveyed did not ask for a raise, additional benefit or promotion in the past 12 months. And alas, they’re missing out, because 72 percent of those who asked got what they wanted, according to the survey."

The article states that the reason for the pay disparity isn't due to intentional sex discrimination but that women's failure to negotiate for a salary increase may partly be due to a mix of gender and social upbringing speaking, women are more likely to be passive then men and society teaches women to wait whereas boys are taught to be aggressive and get what they want. However, through training and education, women can learn to ignore arbitrary cultural rules and improve their negotiation skills. 

Another example of a trade off that women make is that women will accept less pay in exchange for stability. MoneyWeek's Editor-in-chief Merryn Somerset Webb 1997 article gives us the explanation:

"We’re trading pay for stability and, we hope, understanding. Someone with children who isn’t entirely sure she can keep coping with full time work; who knows for sure she can’t cope with the upheaval of changing jobs (something you often come to after laying down pay ultimatums); who would quite like to have another baby; and who feels a bit guilty about wondering how her toddler is doing at play group during boring meetings both wants and needs to keep her employer sweet. 

Ask for more money? No way. Move jobs to bump up her salary and give up years of accumulated maternity benefits (stay at a good company for five years plus and you can get 6 months of full pay)? No way."

The interesting thing about her explanation is that she thinks women make this trade off with the hope that it will pay off in the future when a nation faces a economic downturn in that employers will prefer to layoff men and keep women on the job precisely because women are cheaper: 

"I think a lot of women also rather hope that taking a little less out of the pot protects them: that being cheap means they’ll be last out of the door when tough times come – surely, we think to ourselves, they’ll fire all those expensive men first. Women working in the City may be about to find out if that was a good bet or not."

And boy have women made the right bet. The trade off ultimately worked.

For the first time in the American history, more men are out of work than women. They even gave this historical phenomenon a name: mancession. The New York Times noticed this trend in February of 2009 and became a hot topic during the summer of that year. The Atlantic, in July of 2009, cited a statistic that "eighty percent of job losses in the last two years were among men." In August of 2009, Professor Mark J. Perry, who teaches economics and finance at the School of Management at the Flint campus at the University of Michigan pointed out in his blog that the trend could be traced back to December of 2006. However, some people even questioned whether or not the mancession was real. Despite the minority who question this phenomenon, it is real and it still is an ongoing economic issue. Some people think the mancession is now slowing down and others think the trend is reversing in which they're calling it a "He-covery."

Getting back to the Senate's goal of passing S.3772. 

This law will not benefit women because they're making laws on a form of discrimination that cannot be clearly accounted for in any study. Moreover, Congress is forcing  people to provide or accept equal pay despite the fact that men and women freely make their own decisions about how much or less pay they will negotiate for. This tactic is familiar. Congress recently passed a law forcing people to accept ObamaCare even if millions of people intentionally choose to go without health care. You cannot make choices for yourself. Congress will make your choices for you. We will tell you how much pay you will get. We will tell you you need health care. We will tell you to keep stimulus money even if you want to pay it back.

Moreover, they're attempting to right a wrong that on a host of factors that are beyond legislative control. A government cannot control individual choices, free market forces or social conditions. It can only squash them.

However, there is a more pernicious consequence of this law. Christina Hoff Summers, in her New York Times opinion editorial, Fair Pay Isn’t Always Equal Pay, explains: 

"Some of the bill’s supporters admit that the pay gap is largely explained by women’s choices, but they argue that those choices are skewed by sexist stereotypes and social pressures. Those are interesting and important points, worthy of continued public debate.

The problem is that while the debate proceeds, the bill assumes the answer: it would hold employers liable for the “lingering effects of past discrimination” — “pay disparities” that have been “spread and perpetuated through commerce.” Under the bill, it’s not enough for an employer to guard against intentional discrimination; it also has to police potentially discriminatory assumptions behind market-driven wage disparities that have nothing to do with sexism.

Universities, for example, typically pay professors in their business schools more than they pay those in the school of social work, citing market forces as the justification. But according to the gender theory that informs this bill, sexist attitudes led society to place a higher value on male-centered fields like business than on female-centered fields like social work.

The bill’s language regarding these “lingering effects” is vague, but that’s the problem: it could prove a legal nightmare for even the best-intentioned employers. The theory will be elaborated in feminist expert testimony when cases go to trial, and it’s not hard to imagine a media firestorm developing from it. Faced with multimillion-dollar lawsuits and the attendant publicity, many innocent employers would choose to settle.

The Paycheck Fairness bill would set women against men, empower trial lawyers and activists, perpetuate falsehoods about the status of women in the workplace and create havoc in a precarious job market. It is 1970s-style gender-war feminism for a society that should be celebrating its success in substantially, if not yet completely, overcoming sex-based workplace discrimination." 

I want women and men to be paid equally. I just don't want the government to do it. No government intervention is needed. Government intervention usually makes the problem worse. Christina Hoff Summers, I'm sure, is a traditional feminist who wants equal rights with men. Its clear that even she recognizes that this is a bad bill.

Fact: Capitalists Give Better Hugs!!

This is the perfect demonstration that capitalism is better than other economic systems because the free market will encourage people deliver a better product at a competitive price.

In this case, this video shows that that the free market will deliver better hugs than free hugs!!