Let us begin with the simplest question: 82 cents of what? The answer, though rarely advertised, is this: 82 cents of the average wage, across all men and all women, irrespective of profession, education, hours worked, job tenure, or risk. It is an aggregate figure, not a measure of like-for-like compensation. To treat it as evidence of discrimination is like noticing that NBA players earn more than poets and inferring that the National Basketball Association is hostile to literature.