“It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” Patricia Arquette bellowed during her acceptance speech while accepting the Best Supporting Actress award at the Oscars.

I didn’t realize that women didn’t have equal rights. Is anybody stopping Arquette from working, making millions of dollars in her chosen profession, and speaking freely in a venue that reaches tens of millions of people?

What about the pay gap between men and women? Ashe Schow point out the following in the Washington Examiner:

“The reason women on average earn less than men is not due to discrimination or a lack of equal rights, but because of the choices women make in what careers they take, what hours they work or whether they leave the workforce for children, among other things.

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“In 2008, Arquette donated the maximum to Barack Obama, who was running against Hillary Clinton at the time (way to stand up for women, Arquette!). Obama’s White House pays women on average less than men.

“Obama’s spokespeople point out that the gap is due to what jobs women hold in the White House — namely lower-paying junior jobs. So when it comes to their own pay gap, the White House admits that it is not due to discrimination but other factors — the same reason the wage gap exists for the population at large.”

 Women who worked for Hillary Clinton when she was in the U.S. Senate “were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of her Senate years’ salary data.”

But putting this aside the equal pay for equal work argument for the moment, who is Patricia Arquette to complain about wage inequality and for Meryl Streep and other multi-millionaire Hollywood types to applaud her? I don’t see Streep volunteering to give up her salary to women who make less than she does.

Meryl Streep has a net worth of from $45 to $65 million dollars. “During her career Meryl has won three Academy Awards out of 18 nominations, two BAFTAs out of 14 nominations and even two EMMYs just to name a few.”

When she acts in a film, she may do less work than other actors and actresses working on the same film, and yet she makes more money than they make per film. It most likely has to do with her abilities and her box office drawing power.

A case could be made that the people who film, edit, and produce the film work harder than she does. Next time you watch a film, take notice of all the people who are involved in the film’s production. There are a lot of people in that rolling list who work a lot harder than Streep and Arquette and don’t get paid anything near what they do.

It seems to me that Patricia Arquette is complaining to the wrong people. She should be complaining to her fellow actresses. They have plenty of money to share if they wanted to. But most of them won’t.

She wants to be paid the same as what men get. The film for which she received her Academy Award took in around $45 million. American Sniper, that didn’t receive a major Oscar win, has made more than $428 million. In terms of the marketplace, who should get more for their next film, Arquette or Bradley Cooper even though each of them does the same work?

Sandra Bullock is the highest paid female actress “with an estimated $51 million in earnings between June 2013 and June 2014.” Much of it’s because of the film Gravity that cost $100 million to make but grossed more than $700 million.

Bullock, Streep, and even Arquette (net worth $24 million) don’t need that many millions of dollars. If they really believe their own rhetoric, they all should take a cut in pay and spread the wealth around. They won’t.