This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 1st, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama wants the federal government to begin collecting data on millions of American salaries.

That information could then be used in pay discrimination lawsuits.

Thea Knight, Associate Director of Financial Regulation Studies at the Cato Institute,

argues the debate over pay equity needs to face a few facts.

What is the president proposing here?

He's proposing that as part of their tax filings, companies disclose not only a breakdown of employees by race and gender, but also

by how much each person makes in different positions and break that amount down by race and

gender as well. Are companies doing this at all right now? I think that some

companies do this internally already. This is not an issue that is new. The idea of

pay equity has been around for a while. So this is definitely something that HR departments

are aware of. And already, you know, there is a cause of action

for pay discrimination.

We have a law on the books that prevents companies

from paying men and women differently.

So what is the substantial argument for compelling some companies?

Again, not all companies, but some companies to do this.

So there's this argument that women make 79 cents on the dollar and sometimes

that's quoted a 77 cents, sometimes 79 cents on the dollar compared to men and this is comparing on an annualized

basis full-time workers.

So the argument is that there's this what's called the pay gap that men earn more than women for a

...