Liberal Hypocrisy, an International Phenomenon

American liberals trumpet a “wage gap” between men and women, notwithstanding reams of social science data demonstrating that men’s higher average earnings reflect life choices, not discrimination. White House salaries are published, so analysts have shown that Barack Obama’s own staff manifests the same “pay gap” that Obama and Hillary Clinton decry in private industry. Democrats have no response; as usual, they count on voter ignorance.

It is entertaining to see the same drama play out in the United Kingdom: “Jeremy Corbyn accused of hypocrisy for refusing to publish gender pay gap of Labour staff.”

Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of hypocrisy after he demanded small businesses publish details of their gender pay gap but refused to do so for his own team.

Well, yeah, that’s hypocritical. It’s nice to see the far-left, terrorist-sympathizing Corbyn skewered.

It came as a senior Labour source claimed to have seen documents showing a significant pay gap in the leader’s office of 25 to 30 per cent between men and women in equivalent jobs.

If that’s true, it would be much larger than a typical “gap” in private industry, if the jobs are anywhere near equivalent.

Corbyn isn’t exactly refusing to release the data on his own staff, he just doesn’t plan on doing it any time soon. Like in our lifetimes:

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: “Staff salaries will be published by the Labour party under new short money rules.

“Before that happens, consent has to be sought from staff and trade unions have to be engaged in a process of consultation.”

However, the spokesman did not commit to a date to publish the information.

I’ll bet he didn’t.

Politicians love to impose burdens, sometimes impossible burdens, on others, especially business people, but they are much more understanding when it comes to their own conduct. In 1994, Newt Gingrich and his colleagues drafted a Contract With America, a key provision of which was that Congress should live by the same laws it imposes on the rest of us. That proposal was wildly popular, given that Congress had made a regular practice of inserting an exception for itself in legislation.

The basic issue hasn’t changed: liberals love to tell the rest of us what to do, but politicians implicitly admit the unreasonableness of their own demands by exempting themselves from them. (If you haven’t read Peter Schweizer’s Do As I Say (Not As I Do), you should.) This whole phenomenon is an important reason for the rise of Donald Trump.

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