“(Expletive) you and your right to work (expletive),” wrote someone identifying himself as “a union bricklayer,” in an email to yours truly regarding the commentary based on this institute’s policy brief (Vol. 16, No. 55) issued last week.
“RTW drives wages down for the working people,” the bricklayer continued. “It doesn’t save taxpayers money, it just increases wealth for the top 1 percent.”
“Look at the states that have RTW laws,” he continued. “They are the poorest in the country.”
Au contraire, my expletive-lobbing correspondent.
Some of those states might indeed be “poor,” but it’s not because of right-to-work laws.
As the National Right to Work Foundation Legal Defense Fund notes, five of the six states with the highest job growth in 2014 were RTW states. And according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-sector payroll employment in right-to-work states grew by 9.9 percent from 2004 to 2014.
“That’s roughly double the overall increase of 5.1 percent experienced in forced-unionism states,” the foundation reminds.
The only people that should be hurling expletives are residents of non-right-to-work states who pay a penalty for government-sanctioned cartelism.
The hand-wringing has begun amid reports that Pennsylvania, because of population loss, could lose up to two congressional seats following the next Census.
Even some of those who previously have encouraged state government to layer regulation upon regulation, tax upon tax and corporate wealthfare upon corporate wealthfare suddenly appear to have seen the proverbial light.
While it’s likely too late to reverse the bad news that the next Census will bring, it’s never too late to begin enacting sound economic policies that promote real growth and encourage businesses and people to relocate to the Keystone State.
Those geniuses at the Environmental Protection Agency have struck again.
As The New York Times reports, the EPA could be about to declare Fairbanks and the North Pole in Alaska in “serious noncompliance” with clean air standards. Why? Because they have the audacity to use wood to stay warm in the winter.
Wood, by the way, pretty much is the only heating source in such areas.
And as John Daniel Davidson reports in The Federalist:
“The problem is there’s no replacement for wood-burning stoves in Alaska’s interior. Heating oil is too expensive for a lot of people and natural gas isn’t available. … If you don’t keep a fire lit, you die. For people of modest means, and especially for the poor, that means you burn wood in a stove — and you keep that fire lit around the clock.”
Davidson knows of what he speaks; he grew up in Alaska.
As he concludes, “What the EPA doesn’t accept, or even grasp, is man’s place in the universe: in the face of Alaska’s deadly cold interior, there’s only so much we can do. So we build a fire.”
A government that literally threatens life and limb is a government the people must reconsider.
And there’s more from the world of bad policy:
• The Washington Times reports that officials of nearly 280 “sanctuary cities” last year released more than 2,000 illegal aliens back into the populace rather than turn them over to federal authorities. It’s a continuing hit for the rule of law — and for the real meaning of “civil society.”
• This opening paragraph from a Dec. 30 Wall Street Journal editorial says it all: “Democrats opposed to school choice often claim that charter schools and vouchers siphon taxpayer money from traditional public schools. That’s rarely true because choice schools typically spend less per child. And now a study shows that Milwaukee’s landmark voucher program will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.” ‘Nuff said.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
