Despite all evidence to the contrary, the wage gap between men and women remains a vacuous slogan. Famously the US Women’s soccer team sued for pay inequity despite having rejected the contract terms negotiated for the men’s team.

I have a modest proposal to settle this debate in response to claims the women who play for the perpetual money losing WNBA are underpaid compared to men in the NBA. Let’s merge the NBA and WNBA.

Each team will have both male and female players. Men and women will play equal minutes. A lineup of women will play against women and men against men so competition is fair. Meanwhile there will be no more separate but unequal treatment. Men and women will play before the same paying audience under the same television contract so the same revenue stream to get equal pay.

Shouldn’t the starting female power forward get the same pay as the male one for playing equal minutes?

Of course the NBA plays more games than the WNBA; 82 vs 40 regular season and best of 7 vs 5 game series in the playoffs. That can’t really change as it would depress revenue thus pay. The ladies will just need to put on their big girl panties and ignore the consequences of the longer season’s physical toll. How does the line from Rocky IV go? If they die, they die.

Unfortunately, fans will not like this product. As the corporate mantra in current year is “Going broke, so go woke,” professional basketball should just power into that iceberg and like Disney ignore the interests of their paying customers. As the Critical Drinker jibes, “it will be fine” to ignore the obvious problems.

As with Swift’s modest proposal this one is intended to be absurd. While proclaiming equal the nonessential and ignoring the important, it only emphasizes the gap in productivity which drives compensation. The audience is there to see the men play not the women. Most points will be scored by the men, not the women. Men’s jerseys will outsell women’s. The most popular players will continue to be men, not women.

I am not intending to dunk on women. With some jobs women can out earn men and in others they get the jobs because they will work for less money. I am however saying that when political activists say that government should force equal pay for men and women in similarly categorized jobs that the context of productivity driving compensation is evaded.