Saturday, December 15, 2012

Natural Consequences

The fact is that in the right-to-work states, unemployment is 6.9%. And in the other stays the non-right-to-work, it's 8.7. So you can choose to have fewer workers who enjoy higher, inflated, unnatural, if you like, wages, uncompetitive wages. Or you can have competitive wages and more people employed, more people with the dignity of a job and less unemployment, more taxation and more activity. I think it's it the right choice but I understand how it's a wrenching choice.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/12/11/krauthammer_right-to-work_an_adjustment_to_reality_.html

Who knows whether the "right to work" part makes it easier to have employment, or not; there are any number of other correlates that go with "RTW" states that may also be part of those states' relative superiority for employment opportunity. But what is not debatable is that RTW is not "bad" for workers - it just means that a union cannot require that you fork over money in order to be employed with a company which has a union. That means to earn your financial support, the union must behave in a way that you support. What could be more natural?

Unions offer the façade of "helping the worker", while in fact, they simply protect some workers at the expense of others. Unions help the workers in a union by preventing those on the outside from competing for a job based on their willingness to work for a lower wage or less costly benefits. The multiple unintended negative consequences of the Federal Government's coercive support of labor unions has hurt far more workers than it has helped.

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