Quebecers and Their Beloved Entitlements

Instead of the motto "Je me Souviens," it wouldn't be unreasonable for Quebec to change the old standard to "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" a more appropriate maxim that better reflects the reality of our modern Quebec society.

Last week a devastating report was published by a professor at Quebec's prestigious HEC business school revealing that Quebec was on its way to becoming the poorest province in Canada.

In almost every category, Quebec excels in economic underachievement, the buying power of its citizens eroded by the highest taxes in the country, coupled with lower earnings directly related to poor productivity.

Quebec society has adopted state-sponsored cradle to grave socialism that not only saps the economic strength of the province, but kills the entrepreneurial spirit and teaches indolence and dependence as well as destroying thrift.

But blaming our leaders for this calamitous state of affairs is disingenuous, the government serves at our pleasure and can reign over us only as long as we allow it.

The reality is that we have become used to our entitlements and are loathe to give them up.

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

And so daycare workers go off on strike, making the most absurd salary and benefits demands only because they can, caring not a whit for the pain and suffering they inflict on parents who must make alternate arrangements for the care of their children or stay home from work.

Listening to student leaders justify their position that their low tuition fees should not be adjusted upwards to more realistic North American standards, augers poorly for the future, as the next generation learns from the previous that entitlements are more important than fairness.

Reading the newspaper on Friday, I almost gagged on my coffee at the absurd arguments made by feminists to justify lower tuition for women, by a professor and a student of the illustrious Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Concordia University, an institute dedicated to feminism, where traditional male-bashing and female whining is honed to an art form.

I don't think I've ever seen so many false arguments and stupid conclusions in one newspaper article.

I can forgive the student, but the Professor who penned the article should be ashamed for polluting the minds of students with foolish feminist drivel that promotes the fiction that women are horribly oppressed and thus entitled to social redress. Read the entire article in the Gazette   Alternate Link

"For decades, feminists have argued that women earn less than men for doing the same work. Recent statistics support this claim: the latest data available, from 2008, demonstrates that women still earn 71 cents for every dollar earned by men."

The above statement, from the article, intimates that women are underpaid by men who choose to exploit them. It's the feminist holy tenet that they are victims of salary inequity, a holding that somehow isn't quite true.

Show me a male telephone operator who makes more money then the female operator sitting beside him or a female cop who is paid less than her male counterpart and I'll listen to the argument.
Of course feminists don't like to hear this type of inconvenient comparison, they choose to use the  'equivalent worth' argument, a clever way to avoid the obvious.

There are many reasons why women earn less than men, most of it is CHOICE!
Yes readers, women make less money than men because they choose to.

"There is no gender gap in wages among men and women with similar family roles. Comparing the wage gap between women and men ages 35-43 who have never married and never had a child, we find a small observed gap in favor of women, which becomes insignificant after accounting for differences in skills and job and workplace characteristics.

This observation is an important one because it suggests that the factors underlying the gender gap in pay primarily reflects choices made by men and women given their different societal roles, rather than labor market discrimination against women due to their sex."

 What Do Wage Differentials Tell Us about Labor Market Discrimination?

"Since marriage and having children affect male and female earnings differently, men and women workers can't really be considered "counterparts" in a statistical sense, and any unadjusted comparisons would be comparing apples to oranges. In fact, some research has concluded that the factors of age, marriage and motherhood explain all of the male-female pay gap."

Most or All of The Pay Gap Disappears After Controlling for Marriage and Having Children 

 

"A study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30 found that women earned 8% more than men."

"Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics."

There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap 

For Francophone readers, here's a pretty good article on the subject as well.

Le mythe de la discrimination salariale

Finally here's an interview (with French subtitles) that you'll find most interesting.

But even if women earn less than men by choice or not, does it really make a difference?

"Since women still earn less than men overall, raising tuition fees will affect women first. It is an example of social policy that perpetuates gender inequality."

Does the good Professor contend that women should pay less for tuition just as seniors and children pay less at the movies?

Should women pay less for cars and groceries?
Should women pay less at restaurants and should women pay less to get on the bus?

Is this  the equality that the good professor seeks..... Methinks so.

"Members of the teaching faculty at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute maintain that raising tuition fees will have negative consequences for teaching and learning more broadly. The more expensive the tuition is, the less diversity there will be in the classroom, since access is dependent on financial resources"

 "...When social policy results in the exclusion of women and people from diverse backgrounds from post-secondary education, the work of teaching is compromised."

This passage posits that women are more affected by higher tuition than males. Why?
Is it because male students come to university with more money or that they have richer parents than female students?
Will more women decide not to start university because repaying student loans later in life is more of a burden on them, then for men?

This argument is particularly laughable because each year Canadian universities graduate 145,000 women versus 95,000 men.
Enrollment is almost 3 to 2 in favour of women!

Perhaps universities should be required to implement an affirmative action program in favour of men and maybe men should pay lower tuition fees than women in order to redress the inequality of male/female representation!
Maybe university quotas should be implemented to insure gender equality, especially in elite programs like medicine where 65% of students entering med school are women.

Is this over-representation of females in university a blatant case of gender bias and inequality?

No my dear readers, there in no great feminist plot, sometime differences between the sexes are not based on discrimination, other more benign factors are in play, just like the salary gap between sexes.

How do our feminists suggest our government fund reduced tuition fees for women?

"A redistribution of resources – for example, the $105 million given in bonuses to managers of sociétés d’état in 2010 – could make equal access to education possible. One idea: imposing a licensing fee of one cent per litre on mining and industrial manufacturing companies’ use of water could yield $775 million annually."

Let business pay!

Let the rich pay!

Let the men pay!

Let Ottawa pay!

Let me pay!

I myself have a good idea on how the government can save money.

Get rid of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Concordia University and get rid of professors that teach students that they are victims and that they are justified in whining for entitlements.

The reality is that in Quebec each and every special interest group, be it women, students, union workers, single mothers, natives, the infirm, the poor, and left-handed clowns with red hair, believe they have a special right to ask society to subsidize their existence.

Some groups (especially the poor and infirm) deserve consideration, most others, especially women students, don't.

When females students whine that they need special treatment, it is nothing more than a sad display of greed and avarice, just like the day care workers.

Shame on them and shame on us all who demand an undeserved slice of the social pie, just because we feel entitled to a free lunch.