(2014-04-10) — At a White House news conference today, President Obama encouraged employers to boost their profits by slashing expenses, or in his words: “Dump costly men, hire cheap women.”

“With women earning just 77 cents on the dollar compared with men,” Obama said, “they’re a real bargain, allowing you to move 23 percent of your HR budget straight to the bottom line.”

The president noted that, “Not only are women cheap and renewable, but they’re smart and they work hard, often doing jobs that no man would do. And some of them have even bigger biceps than their husbands.”

An unnamed economist at the American Woman Cooperative Marketing Board agreed.

“If women really earn so much less,” he said, “why would a business ever hire a man? All other things being equal, it makes no economic sense.”

However, a spokesman for Man Worker International noted that despite their proclivity to engage in risky after-hours behaviors and to die sooner, men are still a good deal.

“Sure, they cost a little more up front,” the spokesman acknowledged, “but men consistently put work before family, senselessly devote their lives to developing boring but useful expertise, and rarely get pregnant.”