One of the more amusing scenes is the "Baby Boomer/60 Something Meat Market" which, if you're ever Twin Cities way you can see in all of its splendor and glory at a joint called "Red Stone" in Eden Prairie. Here you see, in a VERY general sense, men in their peak earning years picking up twice or thrice divorced who are still glitzed up thinking it's 1986. The tactics haven't much changed, but one of the more interesting ones I've seen is men putting their "Audi" or their "BMW" key chain on the bar so girls (well, women) can see what a fancy car they drive. Everyone is still dressed in designer clothes as if these things matter, but there was one thing that made my economic spidey senses tingle;
The men made bank while the women are still employed as hair salonists or waitresses or some other such profession.
Naturally the men buy, but as I waited for my baby boomer friend to show up, it got me thinking;
"Would the wage hap between men and women be closed if we adjusted for all the income transfers?"
Forget buying a lady a beer, just last night you could not have had a better example. $500 costume contest, and who does it go to?
The guy dressed as a sailor?
The guy dressed like Yoda?
Or the girl in a french maid outfit?
Of course this is peanuts to things like the money men fork over for dating, let alone in divorce settlements where I think the plurality of income/wealth transfers occur, but if we adjusted for that would there be an income gap at all?
Probably impossible to measure and we'll probably never know, but it would be interesting to see what the figures are.
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