Contrived, artificial new “equal pay for similar work” law could hit California’s most contrived and artificial industry, the movies, which tends to bid up bankable male stars to higher compensation levels than it does their bankable female counterparts [L.A. Times]
4 Comments
I’m sure that a lot of working stiffs with unpaid bills are unable to sleep at night because Meryl Streep pulls down a measly eight million dollars a picture, while Tom Cruise typically gets twelve (figures pulled off the Internet Movie Database).
A recent article tried to spur my outrage over the fact that the richest female technology multi-billionaire had only a tenth as much money as the richest male technology multi-billionaire. Somehow I wasn’t, since I focused more on “multi-billionaire” than “one-tenth”.
Bob
I’m pretty sure there is a genre of movies where the female stars get a lot more than the male stars, and I’m also pretty sure that genre of movies is much bigger than all of the other genres, so maybe this will even out in the end.
Why don’t the lady mega-stars invest their money and start their own studio that could pay everyone equitably while producing films about socially relevant topics such as underpaid lady mega-stars?
(punctuation purely decorative)
Ras:
See Ms. Witherspoon’s production company for exactly what you’re talking about.