New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

1) In such scenarios, I wonder how is it okay for an applicant to use all tactics they want (note: there is minimal if not no regulation on applicants to a position. Okay, let's make this concrete, this new law bans Cali employers from asking applicants their prior salary. There are more laws which ban or force an employer to do something. BUT an applicant is NOT banned from asking any question. This next sentence I might be going out on a limb here, the applicant is NOT forced to do something either (as opposed to a ban on something). This is systematic bias.

2) It's NOT okay for a corporation to discriminate on race or sex, etc. But it IS OKAY for an applicant to discriminate on race or sex, i.e. if an employer is black, I can choose not to work for him just on that basis, or if it's a woman, I can choose not to work on that basis.

You might say the positions of power are asymmetric and in favor of the employer. I'd say you're correct about the former (asymmetricity) but not about the latter. The employer has power by having more money and applicant has power by having more skills. Employers usually respond to such laws as this by coming up with new ways to accomplish what they want, then govt responds with even more regulation. Compliance is a cost which takes away from the pie which any of the stakeholders could've benefited from.

A voluntary unregulated hiring market would benefit all parties involved.

It has been documented that when a job becomes a predominantly female job, society tends to pay less than when it was a male job.

The crux of the issue here is that no matter how you slice it and dice it, on average, women make less money than men.

We can debate all the live long day exactly why women tend to make less than men, but that is an established fact. Furthermore, when teaching was a male profession, it paid better than after it became a female profession. This is such an established phenomenon there is a term for it: The Pink Collar Ghetto.

Your original remark top which I was replying was this:

Why are you not asking why out of 100 janitors, or 100 trash collectors there are only 1 women?

I love how every time this subject somes up it is always how there is a lack of women in tech, never pluming, janitorial, auto mechanics, etc. Only Tech.

And I am telling you women already do similar work to janitors. It just has a different name and pays less. You are moving the goal posts. Your position seems to boil down to "No matter what you say, I am fine with women making less money than men and I will justify it to the end of time."

So, I regret trying to engage you. This does not seem to be a good faith argument and your remarks come awfully close to being personally insulting to me.

One of the reasons people talk a lot about the lack of women in tech is that it is a highly desirable job. You know that. You know that janitorial work and plumbing is not nearly as cushy, attractive or well paid as IT. You are de facto objecting to any concern expressed about "Why are the cushiest, best paid and most prestigious jobs held almost entirely by men?" and tossing in a lot of flak to distract from that question.

Personally I think I've gone a bit deeper in this topic, because I also think that if taxes were public, people with the same job but different tax situation will have a different bargaining position, meaning salaries will be affected by the actual tax rates people pay.

I'm also interested in the visible effects of wealth and income regarding wages: do people with some money in the bank earn more money in general? (would it thus mean that the best investment is to get some cash first ?) etc.

For the more emotional argument, wouldn't public wages also prevent people with lower incomes giving money to higher incomes? Something that happens often is many human relationships where wealth can be hidden? Wouldn't you tip higher to the waitress you know is gaining well below what you think she would, and wouldn you demand more of your boss if you knew exactly how much more they made?

I'm not going to say its strictly better for everyone to have the information public, but I can rarely fathom believing that hiding information leads to better decisions. And isn't that what its all about. At this moment all these objections are a sort of growing pain, not objections for the long term.