Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Skirting the Wage Gap



At PF Wisconsin wage disparity for doing the same job merits a False; elsewhere, not so.

This post is a combination Grading PolitiFact Review and Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style, because it's turned out to fit both. It focuses on four PolitiFact (PF) rulings on the same subject. Grading PolitiFact’s Bryan White wants them all to be False or Pants on Fire, while to me they're a tentative Half True. The statement is that women earn, on average, 77 cents (or 79 cents or 81 cents, depending on the ruling) for what a man makes…and the addition of “doing the same job” (except for one) which was what brought them down in their rating for the ruling. Four fact-checks on this were done this quarter by PolitiFacts National (a Mostly False for Obama) and Rhode Island (a Mostly False for Congressman David Cicilline) and for the less specific (but supposedly “correct”) statement from senate candidate Tim Caine that it’s not for the same job, which merited a Mostly True from PolitiFact Virginia.

The fourth was from PolitiFact Wisconsin: it was women on average earned 81 cents on the dollar for the same job coming from  Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Falk, for which she received a False.  So White got his False on one of the statements; however, the PolitiFact Wisconsin review committed the same type of error he lamented in determining the real wage differential among all the occupations, because (according to most of the writers) it couldn’t really be done.

Looking at this chart (see below) from Wikipedia, I don’t know how one couldn’t conclude that women earn less than men. Maybe the gap is closer for the same work in certain categories, but there’s still a gap. Women earn less in almost every occupation ( only more in 4 out of 111, according to PolitiFact Wisconsin). But since we know women generally earn less overall, that gender bias exists (and studies show we’re not sure why) and it’s difficult to find evidence to show that women earn less for the same work across the board, the Mostly Falses (and the False) should have been more like inconclusive Half Trues.

Click to enlarge:  Women's median usual weekly earnings as percentage of men's, for full-time workers, by industry, 2009.

The ruling on Tim Caine of Mostly True where he didn’t add the “for the same job” came with the subtitle “There are many ways to look at pay gap.” This should have been how the “Mostly False” finders should have looked at this to conclude a Half True. Indeed there are many ways to look at it, but there’s still a gap.

Sidebar: Credit Going South

Recently I made some large purchases and took advantage of what used to be known as “same as cash” payment terms. So I thought it might be a wise thing to see how this was affecting my credit score. I tried a site called “My FICO” and there it was—a map of the United States allowing a mouse-over where you could see the average FICO for every state. And of course, my immediate thought was this was the perfect vehicle to look at the red states and the blue states to see if there was anything that could be added to my red state socialism compilation. So far I have looked at:

1. State expenditures of federal tax dollars versus amount of taxes paid in by the state

2. Food stamp usage

3. Percent of uninsured (medical)

4. Percent of obese

5. Percent of Diabetics

6. Percent of Heart Disease

7. Rate of Cancer Mortality

8. Most versus least “peaceful”

9. Per capita on-line porn subscriptions

10. Smoking

11. Teen age pregnancies

12. Amount of debt per capita

13. Job opportunities

Because of the large number of uninsured, the red states are featured predominantly as part of the top ten least healthy, while blue states dominate the most healthy. For the first 11 categories, the red states exceed the blue states (are “worse”), particularly those red states in the Bible belt: Louisana, Mississippi, Georgia, etc. They are  better, however, in the last two: job opportunities and amount of debt per capita.

The “new” category is FICO scores, the well known measure of credit worthiness. I’ve heard that over 60 percent of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills, which may be related to this, although one would think with a lot less debt per capita it might not be so. The average FICO for the top ten least healthy states (80% red) is 667; the average FICO for the top ten most healthy states (80% blue) is 708. Now this is just an average without calculating in the populations, so it may be off slightly. But it just adds fuel to the fire. Every red state score was below 700, and almost every blue state score was above (very  blue state California was a 691).  Maybe the stress of bad credit affects one's health adversely?

I also believe what could be pulling down some of these scores is the degree of how the housing crash affected that state: in particular, Nevada (665) and Florida (673). California, as noted above, has also had problems in this area and is below 700 as well.

Another category I took a look at but got somewhat mixed results was liquor consumption. Of course, you’d get zero in a red state like Utah (at least the last time I was actually there in the late 1980’s, liquor could not be sold, so things may have changed), and there are many “dry” counties in red state Tennessee, so this might be a difficult measure. You also have to take into account the mostly red Appalachian “moonshine” states where who-knows-what is going on. But I found that the most-liquor-per-capita state was blue New Hampshire, and it was due to the fact they did not tax liquor, which meant there were probably people taking advantage of this in the nearby states.

If you use a measure called “binge drinking”—defined as “adults having five or more drinks on one occasion”—it appears that the least healthy states binge drink substantially less. Red states Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky and Tennessee rank in the bottom five (Tennessee is at the bottom with Utah), while the top five include Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa and Rhode Island. So that’s one more we can add to the positive side for the red states.  One more to make three out of 13. 

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Walmart Welfare 2012

Earlier this year, my former wingnut carpoolian buddy boasted in a comment section of my blog how he had annuitized his 401K through an insurance company: he expressed a seeming anger that if he had the opportunity to invest himself, he could have done much better over what he received from Social Security, to which he had contributed heavily over the years. Although I am highly dubious of the value of such annuities, he may be correct about “doing better” himself than through “forced” contributions to social security; however, the point is that in either case Social Security is an insurance annuity option for retirement income.

All this (and a little more) is part and partial to a statement by Rick Santorum which PolitiFact (PF) rated Mostly True, that “a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them." An excerpt from PolitiFact’s finding:

The Census Bureau found that a little over 147 million Americans received payments from at least one of these programs at a time when the U.S. population was just over 303 million. This meant that 48.5 percent of Americans received federal cash or cash-like benefits -- and it means that Santorum’s number is well-supported. In fact, counting such items as amounts refunded from the Earned Income Tax Credit or agricultural subsidies -- neither of which are included in these figures -- would push that number higher.

I believe Santorum’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details (Half True by PolitiFact): many of the entitlements are actually a form of insurance that have already been contributed toward through payroll taxes. Then there’s the point made by the Washington Post that “the usefulness of these numbers is weakened because they count everyone in a household as benefiting from a particular federal payment even if that payment is made in the name of only one person.”

Then, there’s the statement following which, taken in context, was a patently absurd one: that “After Obamacare….it will be 100%.”

Then there’s a problem I have with the states that Santorum won in the primaries: the “bite the hand that feeds them” states, in particular, Mississippi and Alabama, where we already know there are a higher percentage of food stamp recipients relative to other states, and where they receive more assistance than what they pay in taxes. As noted by Lee Pappas, the Rude Pundit:

Some conservatives see the social safety net as a calculated plot by liberals to make people dependent on the federal government, a way of controlling them. Of course, since the states where people receive more in government assistance than they pay in taxes vote Republican, that's pretty much demonstrably false.

Let’s get back to the first point, Social Security as insurance. Over 37 million people age 65 or higher receive Social Security. Almost 8 million people under 65 receive social security because of a disability. I would imagine the vast majority of the total 45 million contributed to the Social Security system. Even my conservative counterpart admits it’s a form of insurance. If that’s what it is, how can Santorum say those who receive it depend on it, when they planned to get it because they contributed to it in the first place?

Sidebar: Those Dirty Red States

In March and May of last year I did two posts about what is now being called “Red State Socialism”—showing undeniable evidence that “in essence, the blue states subsidize the red states.” (This was also confirmed as "Mostly True" by PolitiFact) In addition, they have the highest percentage using food stamps, and are statistically less healthy, which could be correlated to being more under-insured than the blue states: they have higher rates of obesity,  diabetes,  heart disease and cancer mortality. They also have the highest rates of smoking.

It seems there’s an inverse correlation between support for Democrats and receiving government largess, as this article in the New York Times reported: (italics added)

But Dean P. Lacy, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation.

Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates. And Professor Lacy found that the pattern could not be explained by demographics or social issues.

In 2010, Ezra Klein at the Washington Post sums it up this way:

There is a very strong correlation, then, between a state voting for Republicans and receiving more in federal spending than its residents pay to the federal government in taxes (the rust belt and Texas being notable exceptions). In essence, those in blue states are subsidizing those in red states. Both red and blue states appear to be acting politically in opposition to their economic interests. Blue states are voting for candidates who are likely to continue the policies of red state subsidization while red states are voting for candidates who profess a desire to reduce federal spending (and presumably red state subsidization).

The “Rude Pundit” Lee Pappas explains, in his wonderfully acerbic style,  this “phenomena” as follows (February 13):

Sidebar: Miserable in Mississippi

Earlier this year I posted about the curious trends noticeable in health statistics collected for the “Ten Most Healthy” as compared to the “Ten Least Healthy” states. The chart I originally posted listing the states may be more difficult to read, so I decided to average it together and here is what I came up with:

The Ten “Most Healthy” states are, in order: Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Utah, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine and Washington. The Ten “Least Healthy” states are Lousiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nevada and Georgia. There may be some argument over how “red” or “blue” the states are, but it should be pretty obvious, especially in the case of the “Least Healthy”, that the red states predominate.

Sometimes I think this is something Liberals and Democrats aren’t considering. If I was a Democratic congressperson, I’d be on the floor of congress with bigger, more colorful graphs and asking those in Republican strongholds such as South Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma why their policies have not resulted in healthier, more insured constituencies, and why in the hell do they have to take more Federal money than they send back. I might even ask the Congressional Budget Office, if I had that power, to calculate the costs of having a 39% higher incidence of diabetes, more obesity, more deaths from heart disease and cancer in those states, especially given the fact that more of these people go without health insurance.

On the positive side, there are better job opportunities (or opportunities to “make a living”) in the “unhealthy” states, and there is less personal debt, less than half the debt on average, than those in the healthy states. It should be noted almost every “Least Healthy” state was a “right to work (for less)” state, while most of the “Healthier” states were not. Which basically might mean that you probably can’t get as much credit with a lower-paying job (in a “least healthy” state), so you don’t get into as much debt.

Sidebar: How scarey is Perry-Care?

Previously I put together this chart comparing the ten healthiest with the ten unhealthiest states, which I think will be not only expanded upon, but referenced many more times, because it clearly shows there's a strong correlation between good health and having healthcare: 

Texas has one of the highest rates of obesity, giving new meaning to everything being bigger in Texas.

Now that it’s been found that Texas is one of the fattest, most diabetic and unhealthiest states in the union (see above), as well as having the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance, PolitiFact found Texas Governor Rick Perry might not even know this (or is denying it) in this Pants on Fire ruling from January:

It's no secret that Texas Gov. Rick Perry thinks states can do some things better than the federal government, including coordinating health care for its poorest residents.

In a Dec. 19 interview with Kathleen McKinley, whose blog appears on the Houston Chronicle's website, Perry said the state has good ideas for delivering care effectively. As an example, he pointed to a proposal that Texas submitted to the federal government with the goal of reducing the number of uninsured residents by "restructuring federal Medicaid funding." Medicaid uses federal and state funding to provide health insurance to low-income Americans.

…We confirmed that Texas had sought permission from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in April 2008 to redirect Medicaid hospital funds into a state pool intended to help some low-income Texans get private insurance. However, in August 2008, during George W. Bush's presidency, an official with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of the federal health agency, sent a letter to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission stating that "a number of areas under this proposal have been identified as problematic" — making it impossible for the federal agency to approve the proposal as written.”

Maybe it should be called “Perry-Care”? Yep, states like Texas sure can do some things better, and economist Paul Krugman is here to explain (and PolitiFact to verify):