GOP-Governed and Right-To-Work States Saved the Economy’s Bacon in 2011
Now let’s look at the top six job-gainers in percentage employment growth:
All six have Republican governors and are right-to-work states. Imagine that. Louisiana has been especially resilient despite the federal government’s deliberately slow approvals of post-spill Gulf drilling permits.
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and his state’s legislature have decided that 2012 ought be the year to get with the right-to-work prosperity. Though the Hoosier State outperformed most of its neighbors during the former George W. Bush budget director’s first four years in office, the past couple have been more than a little rough. In 2011, the state added only 18,000 jobs, and its unemployment rate dropped by only a half-point to 9.0%. Daniels and Republicans rightly believe that passing right-to-work would improve the state’s competitiveness, especially against its other Midwestern rivals.
At the time this column was drafted, Indiana’s House had passed the legislation, and State Senate approval followed by Daniels’ signature appeared to be a virtual certainty, while organized labor and Indiana’s Democratic legislators were quite furious. The PR-challenged unions were seriously considering disrupting the Super Bowl in Indianapolis on February 5.
Earlier this month, in one of the most ignorant moves I’ve seen in some time, union leaders brought in two members from Oklahoma, which in 2001 was the last state to enact right-to-work legislation, to moan in public about how miserable the Sooner State has since become.
Hoosier state workers should be so unfortunate:
- At 6.1%, Oklahoma’s year-end unemployment rate was almost a third lower than Indiana’s; at the end of 2003, the two states’ rates were almost identical.
- Since 2001, the Sooner State, whose workforce is about half of Indiana’s size, has added over 87,000 jobs, about the same number as Indiana has lost.
- The deal closer is a stunner which yours truly did not expect. Oklahoma’s per capita personal income, which trailed Indiana’s by 9% in 2001, exceeded it by 4% just nine years later.
Though we shouldn’t forget that Oklahoma’s immigration law-enforcement measures enacted several years ago have also worked in its favor (another thing organized labor has opposed), it’s hard to see why the vast majority of Hoosiers who are not union members shouldn’t have the opportunity to see Sooner-like improvements.
The bigger picture is that if it weren’t for the states where Republican governors are applying common sense solutions to fiscal and economic problems, along with most of the states where getting many jobs doesn’t require you to pay union dues, the economic “recovery,” such as it is, would be somewhere between awfully weak to nonexistent. Yet Washington’s Democrats, led by the president, continue to insist on applying baked-over versions of the policy choices which have left the country as a whole feeling blue during his three years in office.
” along with most of the states where getting a job doesn’t require you to pay union dues,”
The truth is good enough; you damage your credibility when you either accidentally or deliberately misstate things. There are only a few situations in the construction industry or in publicly funded work under what’s called a “project labor agreement” in which you must be a union member to get a job.
In about half the states currently you can be compelled to pay union dues or representation fees as a condition of keeping a job after the 30th day of employment. These are called union or agency shops, though the compelled union shop is technically illegal. Under Hudson v. Chicago Board in the public sector and Beck v. Communications Workers in the private sector an objecting employee cannot be compelled to support the “social, fraternal, and political” activities of a union by being forced to pay full dues, but can be force to pay a fee for collective bargaining services rendered by the union. Of course, adultery is still illegal in lots of places and that must be why nobody does it.
Thanks for catching that distinction. I had that sentence slightly revised so it would be clearer.
Thanks, it’s the little s&*t that kills you. On the conservative/Republican side of the ditch few people know much of anything about unions and unionization and a lot of what they think they know is wrong. I think that goes far to explain why Republicans who tend to come from non-union states or less unionized areas of union states have so much difficulty dealing with the modern Meany School trained Alinsky disciple carrying the spears for the Democrats.
Red state success is a two-edged sword. It brings prosperity to the states’ residents but the economic growth encourages in-migration from less successful, i.e. blue, states. The danger is that these blue state migrants fail to make the connection between blue state governance and that they continue their Democrat voting patterns and over time destroy the red state to which they migrated. Look at North Carolina. Once solidly red ( think Jesse Helms coud be elected there today?) it’s now blue thanks to its economic success. It’s drawn in migrants from the northeast who have changed the state’s political character.
You hit the nail on the head Eric. Lefty idiots from the northeast and the west coast leave the mess they created in their home states in search of greener pastures, completely oblivious to the fact that it was their lib-tard lunacy that created the situation that caused them to uproot in the first place. They bring their stupid ideas with them and spread their cancer to the new homes they just invaded, thinking “This time it will work. I just know it.”
When the Air Force stationed me in Colorado in 1985, I frequently saw bumper stickers that read, “Don’t Californicate Colorado.” They were addressing the very issue you mentioned. Years later, I worked for a company that had recently opened a large engineering office here in Colorado Springs. Many people were transferred here from the coasts and I frequently heard them complaining about the lack of government services they were used to having. One day, after listening to their gripping one too many times, I shut them up by stating, “It just goes to show that you don’t have to go overseas to be an Ugly American”.* They never complained around me again after that.
*If you’re not familiar with the term “Ugly American”, it can have more than one meaning. One of the most recognized is the American tourist who travels overseas and continually complains about how things there aren’t as good as things in America.
True…noticed that while in NC/SC/FL…Blue voters move in to escape NJ/NY/CA taxes…and then continue to vote for the same failed policy that ruined their former State’s economy…stupidity! We welcome you, but please stop voting ignorant!
Ain’t that the truth! Californication is the bane of The West. They foul their nest, leave because they can’t stand the stench, and then start fouling their nest all over again somewhere else. A few years ago when selling a forty year old three bedroom ranch in CA would buy you an island in Southeast Alaska and a nice boat to get to it, they became an absolute pestilence. At least now they can’t sell their houses so they either leave broke so they don’t have any influence or they have to stay put.
Surprised no one mentioned NH as a victim of the liberal cancer. In 1960 JFK lost the “Live Free or Die” state. Now libtards from the neighboring high-tax states have invaded and turned the place blue.
And Rebecca is right about Florida. If not for the damnyankee “Condo Commies” who have taken over the SE part of the state (along with the Puerto Rican hordes now infesting metro Orlando), Florida would be solid red. How bad is it? There are more registered Democrats in Broward Co. (Ft. Lauderdale) alone than in the 28 westernmost counties combined. And that includes liberal enclave Leon Co. (Tallahassee), home to gangs of state bureaucrats, Florida State University, and all-black FAMU.
lefties are parasites
Poor Tom – you cherry pick some stats to fit in with your point. How about these stats that have been consistent for awhile. Compare the investment in educating the children of these states to the red and blue states (and not by who they elect for governor after all we had Romney). Compare family values like divorce rates and number of children who go on to higher education? Also compare who is covered by insurance and has medical care as a subset of family values. You will find the Red States don’t do as well but then that might be by design eh?
Our state has 6.8% unemployment and I still think it’s to high but then we are also number 1 in educating our children and in our citizens having insurance (only 2% uninsured). Our insurance rates have not been going up as fast as other parts of the country and we have significantly more private insurance company choice.
Maybe we should put up Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, GA, OK, SC, Tenn as examples for other states to follow – places where their children are at the bottom of the barrel in education and drag our country down!
Happy to hear you love the northeast. Stay there, and don’t expect the rest of us to bail you out when your state goes bankrupt.
Apparently you have no clue as to the “real” demographic(s) of the southern states you are so quick to snidely discount as “bottom of the barrel in education”. As a person who has lived in many of the states you mentioned, I for one know exactly why we have the localized problems with education. Especially the self described “sanctuary cities”.
If you liberal elites are so damn smart and really, really so passionate about educating the poor, unwashed “bottom of the barrel” masses, then why don’t welcome the illegals and other minorities, who claim that learning in public school “is acting too white”, who then cannibalize their own because of the percieved ugliness of their self inflicted stigma, and invite them home with you?
These are the demographics that are dragging our “bottom of the barrel” economies into the toilet. You can have them all. Please, welcome them home to your Nirvana; we’ll see how long that lasts…
JLanceCombs; The plague of illegal immigration is for a fact a situation that effects every state in the nation, Mass is no exception. Arizona has and is a prime example where they finally passed an anti illegal immigration bill SB1070 which our great leader did sic his cronies from the justice dept on to defeat that bill. As soon as it was signed into law though the folks from south of the border began to migrate back to the south, reducing the number of Illegal immigrants coming across the border and then the prez has the gaul to claim it is he who has reduced the number of these immigrants. I do believe since all this action has begun Arizona has balanced their budget.
Apparently you have no clue as to the “real” demographic(s) of the southern states you are so quick to snidely discount as “bottom of the barrel in education”. As a person who has lived in many of the states you mentioned, I for one know exactly why we have the localized problems with education. Especially the self described “sanctuary cities”.
FL,
If you condescending liberal elites are so damn smart and really, really so passionate about educating the poor, unwashed “bottom of the barrel” masses, then why don’t welcome the illegals and other minorities, who claim that learning in public school “is acting too white”, who then cannibalize their own because of the percieved ugliness of their self inflicted stigma, and invite them home with you?
These are the demographics that are dragging our “bottom of the barrel” economies into the toilet. You can have them all. Please, welcome them home to your Nirvana; we’ll see how long that lasts…
Sorry about the botched double-post; first timer, here.
Dear First Timer.. Not to worry.. Not botched, it was worth repeating.
Dividing education by red state/blue state doesn’t gain the picture you think it does. Granted some of the most liberal states (yours and New York, for instance) have great education rates. But add West Virginia’s dismal ranking to that and California’s mediocre one. In fact, traditionally liberal Nevada is seriously outperformed by it’s traditionally conservative neighbor, Utah. Meanwhile liberal Vermont is being outperformed by it’s more moderate neighbor, New Hampshire. While I’m doing comparisons…remember blue West Virginia? Well, their red neighbor, Virginia, is one of the best performers in the nation. One could say that the split is more between cosmopolitan states versus more rural ones, but how does that explain Nevada’s and California’s underperformance compared to Utah and Wyoming. Wyoming is a decently performing state, though not phenomenal, and is probably the reddest state in the country. In fact, while Wyoming has a fairly average score, it seems it’s performance is more spread out to a greater number of schools, instead of its overall number being lifted by a small number of high performing schools, like most states. The gap DOES, however, seem evenly divided among the Mason/Dixon line, but that is cultural rather than political, as I have pointed out. It seems the south values physical labor and blue color sensibilities more (this explains West Virginia as well) and the North and West values entrepreneurship more, whether that be small business ownership or business management in the Northeast or big business farming and ranching in the west. However, when states of similar cultural backgrounds and diverging political beliefs are compared (Virginia versus West Virginia; Nevada versus Utah), the blue states don’t really come out looking very good.
Oh, and by the way, cherry picking being what it is, it’s still better than sweeping generalizations.
Wyoming has the highest per-capita spending per pupil in the United States (a fact that blows the “conservatives won’t spend on education” meme right out of the water). Being a product of the Wyoming public school system (private education is virtually nonexistent) I know the major advantage they have is natural resource extraction tax money. I personally went to schools largely paid for (at the time) by FMC and Stauffer Chemical impact fees.
Wyoming also has no state income tax and (with sales-tax-free Montana right next door) it is my retirement destination. But then, I’m used to the cold.
Well, actually, the home of the lefts’ bete noir, Sarah Palin, is considerably higher, though some of that is offset by higher costs in Alaska. The incorporated areas of Alaska have property taxes a significant portion of which goes to education. The unincorporated areas, the Bush, generally have little governmental structure other than the Rural Education Attendance Area school structure which provides local governance but relies almost entirely on State funding, which relies primarily on oil revenue. Alaska took over Alaska Native education from the BIA and ran all the schools in the rural areas from the central government. In the ’70s or early ’80s the REAA structure was established for local control; the Bush tends to like State money but not State rules. Most of rural Alaska would be much cheaper for the State if we just bought everyone a condo in Hawaii and paid them $100K/yr. for life.
@ontheright. I messed up in my format. Your post put me in thought of mine, but I’m not responding to you so much as responding to whom you responded to.
First, owning some health insurance plan is much less important to a healthy society than you and your liberal friends seem to believe. My cheapest period of health coverage was when I had an HSA and probably spent about $150 a year on health issues. The rest was gaining interest. I was in control of how much I contributed per paycheck. When I had standard health insurance in a previous job, I paid about that much per month (about $120) and it was use it or lose it. And many of you will notice that my premiums were on the CHEAP range and were still what I considered much more expensive than necessary to cover what I needed. Without insurance at all (current situation) I spend about $150 per year still, I just don’t have extra gaining interest. However, $150 per year is MUCH better than $120 per month.
Second, both health related bankruptcy and private health care spending (the main argument for the national version of the law) INCREASED after the health care law was passed in your state.
Norm the statistics for Southern and Western states for race and you get a very different picture. You shouldn’t complain, though; the people who drags the test scores down in the Red states mostly vote Democrat.
what do you mean, when you say education is better? There are any number of studies basing their “better” on whether or not the the teachers had graduated from education-major schools. In Texas, the state heavily encourages teachers to major in anything else, and then add a certification and training certificate at the end.I think the only ed majors that I know teach kindergarten, or are on the football team at their college.
This means that high school science is usually taught by a trained scientist. Math is taught by a person who could easily teach at the college level. The English department at a scurfy little ghetto school here is headed by a Boston College master’s degree film studies guy. He makes professional films during his summer, as well as keeping his team around so that they can come up with a strong curriculum. None of these people have education degrees.
Education degrees go to people with the lowest GMAT scores, the college counsellors remind students. Nobody wants to sit at the short bus table, so most people do not go for ed degrees. I’ve heard guys say they won’t date girls who choose education majors, b/c they are obviously pretty but dumb.
It’s not just a statement- ed schools are lame- it’s a whole cultural re-inforcing going on. The local high school has a policewoman who got certified to teach freshman remedial reading- she thought she’d stop the problems before they start. She teaches Othello, and includes crime procedural training. An ed school grad doesn’t even have the resources to do what she’s doing. It’s an amazing class, from what I hear.
Lots of states are now refusing to offer teaching certificates to bachelor’s degree Education majors. My state did away with it about a decade ago, though typically and unfortunately it grandfathered those already holding certificates. In any event, a teaching certificate now requires a subject matter BA/BS and post-graduate study in pedagogy that can be finished in 1 1/2 to 2 years.
Interestingly, though, my grandmother was a teacher born in 1886. She had ten years of public education in rural Georgia and two years of “Normal School” or teachers’ college. Into her ’80s her Palmer Penmanship was still perfect, she could speak, read, and write Latin and read Greek, rattle of long passages of Caesar’s Gallic Wars in Latin, great chunks of Shakespeare and the KJB, rattle off the proofs of those Geometry theorums that drove me nuts right of the top of her head, do Algebra up to the College Algebra level as that was in the ’60s, had read and knew well most of the classics of the Western canon, played the piano well and was reasonably familiar with classical music. One area she knew little of was modern science and since she was a “God said it, I beleive it, and that settles it Christian” wouldn’t believe much of it if she did know it. My point is that much of the decline in teaching is a general decline in educational rigor. Some lefty punk on here the other day was talking about how the OWS types are mostly from the “most educated generation that America has ever produced,” and that is simply a lie and the worst sort of self-deception that goes far to explain the attitudes of the yutes. They are the most credentialled and the most indebted, but they are barely literate. They do, however feel very, very good about themselves and their credentials.
I tutored math in my college’s math lab as a side job for the first two years of school. By far, the most mathematically illiterate students I dealt with were the education majors. The school would basically make up some phoney-baloney math class to ensure that they could pass it and call it something like “college algebra for educators”. What they were being taught (notice I didn’t say “what they learned”), basically amounted to 7th grade pre-algebra, or something along those lines. Most of them had trouble even with that.
Oh, and did I mention that at the time I was going to school in the “enlightened” northeast?
I was in exile so I took some college courses in the mid-’90s. One of them was a 200 level Logic class that was taught by one of the few college professors for whom I’ve ever had any intellectual respect, a Jesuit educated attorney who also had a Doctorate in Philosophy. It was at the time when the State had changed its certification standards for teachers and would no longer certify those with only a Bachelors in Education, but there were a lot of grandfathered Ed Majors who were trying to get in under the wire and this Logic class counted as a non-lab science class that they needed. 38 people, mostly Ed Majors, signed up for that class, eight took the final, and five passed it. It was the only class in my second college sojourn in which I actually studied and the only one in which I got a “B.” He did it the old-fashioned way; a semester of lectures and a final exam. His idea of a final for a 200 class was a couple thousand word passage from Cherokee Nation v. Georgia which you were to distill into standard form from John Marshall’s baroque 19th Century legal English, identify all the syllogisms, and analyze all those syllogisms for logical validity. And when you were done with that, you had to analyze another 50 sylogisms, and for extra credit, he had another John Marshall passage you could take on – I passed on the extra credit and took my B. He’s not teaching young skulls full of mush anymore but remains a friend. It was college like the ’60s again when my Freshman English professor in the only time I ever saw him strode the stage of the lecture hall and announced that educated people didn’t believe that freshmen in college had anything to say that educated people would be interested in reading, so we were going to be graded on how we said things: you wrote in fountain pen on unlined paper, a sentence fragment or comma fault was an F, a misspelled word was a letter grade. You could strike through, single strike only, if you dared, but you didn’t so you started over. I’m still paranoid as Hell about grammar and punctuation, though in today’s world, WTFC (Who The F&*k Cares for the literate).
I had a couple of profs like that. The first one, after lecturing on the properties of hydrogen and other gases for a couple of lectures, announced that we now knew enough to design a simple x-ray machine, then left the room after declaring “That’s your assignment. I’ll pick up your papers at the end of class.” That semester was a series of ever more complex challenges.
Another one was a poly-sci prof who would ask you a question, then argue the opposite side of whatever answer you gave, no matter what it was. He could take the liberal or conservative side of any argument and do just as well either way.
I have nothing but good memories of both of them. Too bad they’re an endangered species nowadays.
Had similar experiences in my college a decade later.
Most first-year courses were fondly described as Freshman Flunkout classes, since that was the goal: eliminate as many hapless underperformers as possible. One prof’s strategy: For every 2 errors (spelling or punctuation), you lost a full grade. As and Bs were hard won, since the best argument or analysis was F-worthy if it was riddled with errors.
Ahh, good times.
This will identify me as an old timer. The situation that you refer to was prevalent back in pre-historic times (1ate 1950′s) when I attended (and graduated) from college. (I won’t say which one. Hint: it is the alma mater of the first man to arrive on the moon.) For example, I took the legitimate courses in the basic chemistry subjects (inorganic and organic…with organic being the most difficult because it is mostly memorization and boring as hell) while the Ed majors took “survey courses” of those subjects. Want an easy degree. Name your discipline and add “Ed“ on the end. That was advice, and standing joke, given even back then.
and insurance? what about charity? when I needed a great deal of help and was working poor, I threw myself onto the mercy of the catholic hospital in town. I was treated the same (maybe even better) than when I had insurance, later, and the same condition. It’s liberals who are trying to isolate, bankrupt and humiliate catholic charities. I’m not even Catholic, but they helped me at a low point in time. And, they are consistent. Some of my husband’s relatives have always been poor. Each of their children was born at a catholic charity hospital. that was every decade of last century, a spin through the charity birthing ward.
Insurance at a hospital that is incompetent, stressed to near bankruptcy, insolvent? Why is that better than insurance for some, charity for others, private insurance for others. Complexity in a system keeps it from crashing. How are your patients faring under this system? When I read of a heartless, incompetent, racist, classist unfeeling jerk, I’m reading something from the Northeast. How are your poor people doing? How are your patients doing? How are your poor victims doing? What do the “customers” think?
And, frankly, ya’ll just plain fail at getting women to live births. We have whole charities dedicated to helping women keep their babies alive. While ya’ll have the highest abortion rates in the developed world. That’s nothing to be proud of- killing off your poverty-stricken, before they have a chance to be born, and possibly grow up and make the disruptive technology that finishes off your old trustafarian industries. Steve Jobs was an adopted infant. MIT can’t stand up to Silicon Valley.
I have some links to votes in the house and senate so everybody can see if they are voting for freedom or federal tyranny!
H.R.1540: To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2012 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes. http://www.opencongress.org/vote/2011/h/932
House Voting Record for final version of 2012 NDAA http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll932.xml
Senate Voting Record for final version of 2012 NDAA http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_l…
Patriot Act Without Reforms Passes House (Roll Call Included)
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2010…
And Indiana is about to join the list.
What you have nicely documented, Mr. Blumer, is the “race to the bottom” that is occurring and has been occurring now for the past 30 – 40 years in the U.S. American jobs are paying less and less and the middle class is sinking into poverty. Lots of reasons for that put I’d but decline of unions and globalization (outsourcing of U.S. jobs) as the main driver. And much of the damage has been done by the shift of income to the highest earners who have made fortunes while the middle class has stagnated. Thank Republican “trickle down” economics (or Voodoo Economics as George H.W. Bush called it) for that.
Your jobs numbers would mean a whole lot more if they came with some indication of how well they pay. The red states with right-to-work (for less) laws that undermine unions are the ones with the lowest wages. So, your analysis is pretty much useless except to show that low-paying jobs are more abundant in red states. I guess America has fallen so low that we should all be grateful for a chance to have one or two low-paying jobs with no benefits or retirement.
You might make note in your next red state/blue state analysis that blue states are net EXPORTERS of their tax dollars to red states. So, your “high-flying economies” in red states with all their low-paying jobs end up sucking up tax dollars to subsidize themselves from their blue state neighbors.
Not very impressive. Not very impressive at all.
If you really want impressive – and a much better comparison of good vs. bad economics – take a look at Germany where unions are strong, the economy is flying high, education is solid, workers have vacations and maternity leave and universal health care, and they’re way ahead of us in building a green economy – the economy of the future that will guarantee future generations a clean environment and prosperity. Compared to them we’re in the dark ages of reich-wing ignorance.
Oh, wait, they’re SOCIALISTS, aren’t they? (Or, at least they’re EUROPEAN so that’s must be bad, right?)
P.S. I’m not now nor ever have been a union member nor am I a knee-jerk supporter of unions. I do recognize how helpful they’ve been to help workers gain better wages and safer work places.
Re your “point” about income — What about “Oklahoma’s per capita personal income, which trailed Indiana’s by 9% in 2001 (when Oklahoma went right-to-work), exceeded it by 4% just nine years later” did you not understand?
And while Germany has done OK:
a) Merkel is center-right, and was elected in ’05 or ’06 after replacing a failing left-leaner.
b) They’re starting to pay dearly for getting brainwashed into doing the “green jobs” thing.
“Not everyting that counts can be counted.
Not everything that can be counted counts.”
- Albert Einstein
Tom, I didn’t notice the Oklahoma/Indiana comparison in your article. To have any opinion on that I would have to look at more information.
My basic complaint with your article is that you’ve got a clear partisan agenda and then you support it with shallow, facile data that you then want to pound into proof of your thesis. Others have noted in the comments that there’s lots more to consider than the unemployment rate. What price do the communities pay as a result of the “race to the bottom” mentality. There’s lot’s more to the question of what is good economics. That’s why I posted the Einstein quote.
I agree that some union excesses need to be reined in but the meat-axe approach I’m seeing from the conservatives is uncalled for and counter-productive. Union workers are being asked to repair the damages done by the casino-economy that the banks used to get rich and which led to the collapse of the economy. What has resulted is a serious collapse of the revenues of states and municipalities.
Why try and repair the damage on the backs of the workers or dismantle the already-weak safety net? Why not do something about the extreme skew of wealth by making those that have benefited over the past 30 years pay their fair share? Why let corporations like GE and Wells Fargo pay no taxes at all and in some cases actually get a check from the government? Why not put a stop to subsidies for Big Oil at a time when they are awash in cash? Why not do something about rich people off-shoring their money to avoid paying taxes?
Wow. When you have something specific beyond really, really, really facile platitudes and campaign slogans, let us all know.
Seemed pretty specific to me. Just seemed like you didn’t have any answers.
Really, Don R? Name one specific detail OJK cited.
“Tom, I didn’t notice the Oklahoma/Indiana comparison in your article. To have any opinion on that I would have to look at more information. ”
That was only a MAJOR part of this post. If Obi missed it, it tells me that he either has the reading comprehension skills of a third grader, or he just read the headline, and decided to comment based on that.
Obi, sorry to say it, but you won’t find anyone gullible enough to swallow your talking points here. Try the local union hall.
Tom I don’t want to insult your intelligence because I know you do understand but in making my illustration I have to keep it kindergarten simple because there are so many ways to get off track. There is a reason right to work means more prosperity. Work rules being one of the major reasons. That the labor unions are helping the employee is on the same order as “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” That is propaganda, pure and simple.
Something I came up with recently from trigonometry is the right triangle as it applies to selling price. The hypotenuse of this triangle in the market price of your product. It is the market that that sets the price price perimeter of that circle rather than the business. The auction sale illustrates this quite well. At a cattle auction the auctioneer is paid by commission so the higher the sale the more he makes. The highest bidder is also the buyer of a single item offered for sale. So each cow is sold one at a time or a batch at a time.
A tool auction, on the other hand, is different. The auctioneer needs to sell the most items at the highest price that will move them. When the last bid is in he may ask who else and get one or two responses at the most so he drops the price back a notch and a dozen hands go up but he thinks there are more buyers out there so he makes another cut and gets several more hands. A third cut would not improve his profit so that is the market price for that tool at that auction. How many economists miss this simple truth of the market setting the selling price?
Now lets break this down into the triangle which has three elements, base, height and hypotenuse. We can let the base represent gross expense which includes any and all taxes, subsidies, grants, etc. as well as labor and material cost that goes into the salable product. The height would then be profit which I am taking as net profit. The hypotenuse becomes the diameter of the market price of footprint on the product. It consists of two elements, one that is set and over which the business has very little control which is the expense and the profit is what he has left. A healthy profit requires a certain portion, of that diameter, otherwise it becomes weak and anemic. The market won’t let the selling price get out of hand because it can appraise value. When the product gets priced out of the market sales stop.
However the more wealthy can and will buy at the top of the market but they leave the crumbs for those of us that pasture further down on the hog.
I think you are on solid ground and have seen some very interesting posts as well as some you wonder what the writer really thinks since he can hardly believe what he has written
. I prefer to keep my email private but you should have access to it and if you would like to go further in this conversation contact me.
I’ve done a lot of salary surveys both within my state and between states. Nominal dollar wage/salary data is absolutely meaningless without accurate leveling for cost of living and taxation differences. $50 – $75K is a pretty nice living in The South and much of the rural Plains and Intermountain West. It is barely get by money in the unionized and urbanized states and not get by at all money in the high cost states of the Left Coast or the urban Northeast. Even within states or metropolitan areas there can be dramatic differences. A decent wage here in Anchorage would have you scrimping in Juneau and starving in Western or Arctic Alaska. The Left Coast states are the same way; west of the mountains the Left Coast is very, very expensive but east of the mountains they’re more typical of the Plains and Intermountain region, though somewhat more expensive than The South outside the cities with professional sports teams. In fact, the presence of professional sports is a pretty reliable indicator of a very high cost area.
Obi-Dumb, you’re a typical mind-numbed lefty hurling talking points. Nominal dollar wage data are meaningless without levelling for cost of living and taxation. Not so long ago whenever I went to pretty much anywhere in the Lower 48 I felt like I’d gone to a Third World country things were so cheap relatively. The whole Ecotopia, Left Coast west of the mountains is like that today; prices are astounding in SEA, SFO, LAX and everyone who lives and works there either makes wages that reflect those costs, commutes from somewhere they can afford to live, or is on welfare. The same is true of the East Coast megaopolis and to a lesser extent for the urban centers in the rest of the Country.
You lefties like to rail about Blue States exporting tax dollars to the Red States. Well, we in the Red States export commodities and natural resources to the Blue States. We could also export a lot of Democrat-voting Blacks, Hispanics, and Indians then you wouldn’t be exporting tax dollars to support them, you could pay for them right at home. There is also the fact that the US owns a lot of real estate in the Red States and has a lot of military presence in them as well. While my state definitely derives a secondary benefit from all the federal land here and from the huge military presence here, the “Blue State money” being spent on it isn’t being spent on or because of my state; that’s stuff the US wants to do.
I’ve been all over the US and is sure seems like there is a lot of middle class out there. The kind of middle class that isn’t out there anymore is the middle class lifestyle, or what passed for it at the time, that you could have with a HS Diploma or GED and go to the same plant every day putting the lug nuts on the right rear wheel, after thirty years of which you could retire and move to FL. You have to have more skills, you have to be willing to change your skill set, and you have to be willing to move. If you go to college for five years to get a four year degree in Angry People Studies and borrow $75K to do it, you’re probably going to be a very poor and unhappy person for a long time. I’ve had young lawyers working for me in $70-$80K jobs who didn’t have anything like the social and physical amenities of much lower paid employees because they were so burdened with student loans.
If you want to make a decent living and not spend the first ten or fifteen years of your working life eating Top Ramen, you don’t go to college, you go into the trades; there’s still plenty of work out there for people who can fix things. And if you really want to go to college to earn a skill other than Angry People Studies, you can go into the military first, serve a couple of active duty hitches, and come out with savings and a paid for education. Oh, I forgot, Comrade Obama is scaling back the military. If the angry little punks of OWS really wanted a decent job, they’d pack up and move to the gas fields in PA or OH or the oil fields in the Dakotas or Alaska, all of which are screaming for help. But that would require giving up their urban lifestyle and expose them to harsh conditions and hard work.
I’m not one of the flatly anti-union Republicans. I am anti-unions in politics and support strict limits on the scope of bargaining and political activity of public sector unions. Frankly, if I can get what I want in a labor agreement, I’d give the union a union security clause and dues checkoff to keep them off my property slithering around trying to get people to join and pay dues and stirring up grievances to make them seem more important. Good management will do anything legal to avoid being organized but if despite your best efforts you are organized, then good management will do everything it can to give the union as little as possible to do.
Today, private sector unions exist only in the legacy industries that rely on government funding, government barriers to entry, or heavy government regulation. In those places the union and the management can “partner” to screw the shareholders and taxpayers with impunity. In the public sector, unions are basically in a partnership with the Democrats to screw the taxpayers and the only way the unions can long survive that game is, with Comrade Obama’s help, have more public employees than taxpayers. Once they get to the tipping point where there are more people with their hooves in the trough than putting food in the trough, the union grip is cemented but the result is that all spiral down into equal misery and tyranny.
17 states have growing economies. 33 states don’t. That was WFBuckley, way back when. I don’t know the breakdown now, but I suspect it’s similar.
The federal system was supposed to guarantee fifty different laboratories for experimenting for success. When one small area succeeded, it was to trumpet this success, and other states would study and adapt. It’s how it’s supposed to work. This article is in that tradition, which has been with us since the founding of the country.
The innovative states have always been in conflict with the established east coast government. Third World country economists come here to see how “hinterlands” negotiate successfully with the “capital.” Notice how shockingly odd “hinterlands” describes America? It’s b/c the “hinterlands” succeeded, while the capital is something of a bloated, revolting tick.
and, Germany can’t convince women to have kids. That might be a cool environment right now- but, as Mark Steyn points out- women vote with their fetuses. And they are saying this is not a good childrearing environment.
As a soon to be new right to work state resident I am amazed at the unions vicious attacks and they cite examples that this is anti-working people. The decline of Anderson, Muncie (thank goodness for Ball State) and Gary are prime examples of a union mentality demanding the highest wages with the most non-productive work rules. I have worked for a union company for 5 years and it was progressively worse each year. I left before the parent company closed it. The people I work with now could go union but 95%, maybe 99% hate unions and the atmosphere is friendly and each of us are treated as individuals and with respect. My experience with California companies is the workers are not that strong a union personality as the old automotive plants. But one thing is for sure, the state makes it impossible to manufacture there. They have a very high sales tax 10% I think, and direct manufacturing investment pays this tax. Anywhere else in the USA, the states exempt sales tax if you are buying equipment to hire people–but not in the Peoples Republic of California.
You’ve gone color-dyslexic. It’s the leftist/Democratics who are Reds, and the GOP who are true-blue.
The Reds/leftists are anti-liberal and regressive, doing everything they can do to reverse the great progress achieved by the USA’s founding fathers… well, at least the founding fathers who lived outside of Boston and Manhattan.
yeah a right to work for less
In areas where Unions have less influence, non-union jobs tend to pay more, due to the fact that artificially high union wages causes a saturation of the non-union labor market, since those unionized companies usually have to lay off workers to make up the difference. Due to the law of supply and demand, when the labor market becomes saturated, it becomes of less value and the merchant (worker) who sells his commodity (labor) makes less profit per unit (lower wage). Conversely, where the unions have little control, the market is normalized and non-union jobs tend to have wages competitive with union jobs.
Now that is a good point. Not sure its universally appicable but in certain labor markets it makes sense.
Rep. Allen West for President!
It was bad enough that Rep. Allen West had to resign his Army commission because he valued the lives of soldiers under his command over an Iraqi jihadist. He should have known that political correctness reigns supreme in America’s military today.
It was bad enough that West went on to become the first black GOP congressman elected in Florida in 134 years. He should have known that African-Americans have no business being Republicans.
It was bad enough that West is a patriotic, conservative American aware of the Islamic terrorist threat and fed up with leftist politics but now he has really gone off the deep end, telling liberals where to go, and it isn’t to Bimini or to any of their other retreats where libs go to dust off their constituents’ detritus.
In a Saturday address at the Palm Beach County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner, West told Washington’s Democrat liberals to go to hell with their liberalism.
As he bluntly said, ”Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.”
Unlike most politicians who pull their punches, West specifically named the Democrats who he thinks should vacate the premises: President Barack Hussein Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
He added that he will not allow Barack Hussein Obama to destroy the nation he, his family and friends have served and if his words meant he will be targeted by the Democrat Party, “Bring it on, baby.”
See and hear a clip of West’s remarks here http://bit.ly/wRON1e.
He could easily have included dozens of other Democrats who should “get the hell out” as well as the entire Occupy movement which, like their political counterparts, is less involved in working to correcting America’s flaws than in destroying, disrupting, and dismantling our country.
Unfortunately, the chances of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and other leftists complying with West’s order are minimal but we can always hope. Unfortunately, too, Republican presidential hopefuls are currently too immersed in fratricidal warfare to recognize that their divisive bickering will only insure the nation will go to hell when Obama is re-elected in November.
Allen West has indicated he would not be averse to running for the vice presidency. I wonder if he would consider the presidency?
(http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12353)
I believe median income could be a far better number to look at when comparing how states are doing to each other. When one looks at that the only states with right to work who trickle over the middle (#25) are Utah (#14), Arizona (#22), Georgia (#23), Kansas (#25), Nevada (#15), Virginia (8) which should be an exception because of all the unionized Federal Employees in the North which is unaffected by right to work, Wyoming (#19). So we have 7 of the top 25 in right to work states where median income vs other states is above average and what does that tell us? Nothing as cost of living varies from state to state but still better number than yours. A more telling number is below and these numbers are before the financial meltdown so I suspect they are much worse now.
However when one also looks at state ranking of the population below poverty levels it may give one a better outlook. Here we see a different story of states with right to work laws: Alabama (9), Arizona (13), Arkansas (2), Florida (22), Georgia (13), Idaho (24), Kentucky (2), Louisiana (2), Mississippi (1), N. Carolina (15), Oklahoma (7), S Carolina (9), Tennessee (11), and Texas (8). Where 14 of those states have higher rates of people in poverty. Not a pretty site so I suspect right to work maybe isn’t the panacea you make it out to be. I have a feeling people in poverty tend to take jobs out of desperation just for a pay check as any of us would do. I also suspect many are vastly underpaid – which maybe to you is a good thing. They should be grateful they just have a job.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/ranks/rank34.html
First, few, if any, federal employees can bargain wages; they’re set in statute by a combination of surveys and politics. Not nearly all federal employees are unionized and most that are are in open shops where membership is not compelled. The US also uses “locality pay” factors to adjust federal wages for local cost of living. The US very much likes to impose on others things it doesn’t impose on itself. Comrade Obama could get his panties all in a wad over MN’s removal of benefits and some aspects of wages from its public employees, but federal employees bargain neither. Federal employees, in fact, have a very, very limited scope of bargaining rights, so basically they’re unionized in order to provide a dues stream from those who volunteer or who can be coerced to pay to the Democrats.
Second, median or any other nominal dollare wage data is meaningless unless normed for cost of living and taxation as I’ve explained elsewhere in the thread.
And, third, if you norm the wages and poverty rates for the Democrat constituencies that there tend to be lots of in the RTW states, you get a rather different picture of their relative wage position.
That the top job producing states are huge oil extraction states during a boom time in that sector never entered the calculation, did it? No, that would have inconvenienced the RTW position.
Indiana did remarkably well considering it has a vey large manufaturing component where manufacturing has taken a beating nationwide in the last decade and a half. A RTW law wasn’t part of Indiana’s successes and neither was participating in an energy boom. Daniels deserves credit for outmaneuvering his state’s disadvantages.
I read this very morning that private employer union membership has slipped to 6.7% of the workforce. And you’re going to tell me that this 6.7% is a determinate factor in the top six job producing state over oil extraction or nationwide? Some ‘splainin’ is needed.
If you were honest you would have shortened your piece. Say, ” I hate unions and they are the cause of everything from plugged toilets to Martian invasions.” It would be less confusing and more accurate.
Nice try, no sale:
- RTW states excluding the six noted still had a higher percentage job growth than non-RTW states. Take away RTW but Dem-governed North Carolina, and the difference widens considerably.
- RTW affects the public and private sector.
- As noted, Indiana did well for four years under Daniels but had a rough 2010 and 2011. Proactive governors like Daniels see a problem and do something about that. He has.
- Also as noted, for an example of a non-RTW state which does everything the left wants and is heading into the toilet, just look next door at Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois.
Poor Tom you use figures as if they have some meaning. It’s like the shaman throwing bones on the ground and telling the unwashed what it means. Try discussing things that really matter instead of trying to fit you limited thinking into your rigid ideology.
What has had more impact on employment in all the states? Was any of the increases due to the stimulus spending? Was any increase due to the Automobile investment? Was any increase due to increases in our military? Now discussing those might pour cold water on your inability to discuss employment that has been positively affected in all states.
Maybe your next post should read “Why is manufacturing increasing and why is private sector job increasing when Republicans have done shXt to help anywhere”
You know, Flaming Idiot, you never answer anything substantively, you just puke up lefty useful idiot talking points. Nothing the communist SOB you worship has done has actually worked to produce jobs for anyone other than Junta cronies and support unionized public employees. The Communist in Chief and all his sycophants who spout crap about saving teachers and cops are either lying or too dumb to live. If you’re laying off teachers for any reason other than reduced enrollment, you’re doing it as a political ploy because any SD in the Country has plenty of infrastructure and support staff they could lay off before actual class room teachers. Likewise cops and firemen; if they’re threatening to lay off cops for any reason other than a change in jurisdictional area or a dramatic reduction in population, e.g., evah so Blue Detroit, they’re lying and doing it for political purposes. ANY government could reduce its budget by 20 – 25% without the slightest effect that would be apparent to the public or actual consumers of the government’s services. I’m not saying there’d be no effect, but there wouldn’t be an effect that was apparent to the public in the near term. Cuts greater than 10-15% really should involve elimination of programs rather than just incremental reduction, but a government can absorb a 20-25% decrement without a noticable effect on public services.
And just what are the House Republicans to do when the communists, looters, moochers in the Senate and WH won’t do anything. Some of us have seen the lefty union movie script that these traitors use: You make a wildly unreasonable proposal that your sycophants will just love but which no sane person will accept and for which there is not money. Then when the opposition won’t agree to your insane proposal, you let loose your war dogs in the media and you assume that your opposition will start bargaining with themselves to try to come up with some part of your s*(t sandwich they can live with and to try to get the Democrats to accept their own stupid idea coming back from them, which, of course, they won’t. Then in the election you try to once again get the 52% that have already proven that they’re idiots to buy your crap and blame your looting of the Treasury and spreading it around to your cronies on the Republicans. See, some of us understand you worthless pieces of crap.
But other than that, didn’t you think it was a pretty good post?
It is insane that “business” stays the same – generation after generation and decade after decade. Liberals move to “better places” – only to start all over
again with the same old ideas. Only they talk a lot -and talk- and leave it up to the media and entertainment industry to be able to have them handy to use as an example for what they believe is “best for all of us”. After all, they have
played a lot of these parts in movies/tv and have done due diligence in seeking the truth. Of course, they all get paid handsomely for their “job”. Yes, the unions!! Started out to correct serious problems – and now they are the serious problem – and they know this and since they own the elected citizens – they fear no one. They do not care – for them it is self-preservation at its finest. I would have liked to be in a position – like union and elected citizens – does not matter what I do – my job or not – nothing will happen to me at all. In fact, by not doing my job – they will demand that another be hired since it is too much work for one person. Lets don’t even talk about the elected citizens – need mind numbing wine for that stress.
Before you pass judgement on me – my family members were in a union. It always looked as tho they were afraid at times to speak up – and this progressed into a fearful alliance with those in charge as the power base increased. Never met anyone in my life who could not resist the opportunity to abuse power.
Especially when you have people “under you” and you hold the $$$$$$ – sign of power – always has been – always will be – we people, being of sound mind, feel the need to feed and clothe ourselves – and that takes $$$$$$$. Who is controlling your life?