Republic Window settlement and more

[sauronsfinger]

There was lots of publicity last week about the end to the sit-in at the Chicago based Republic Door & Window company. There have been additional developments that have not garnered as much publicity. Since many people here talked about the situation, here is an update. The article also has many links you can go to if you want further information.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/556

[solicitr]

So I was correct- another union cuts its own throat. Jobs relocate to locality with a better labor climate.

When will these folks learn not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

But never fear, SF- with card check, we'll all be unionized. At least those of us who prefer intact kneecaps.

[sauronsfinger]

Solicitr ... did you ever read the theory that the South and these right-to-work states are simply cutting off their nose to spite their face? You are an educated man, a smart man. You must realize that these issues are not isolated all by themselves and they have much broader impact.

Southern right to work states have been at the top of the list of federal tax recipeient status for year after year. A state like Mississippi pays in one dollar in tax to the federal government and gets $2.02 cents back. There are many charts on the net which show you this but I assume you probably know it since it is hardly a secret.

And which states are the donor states that contribute a dollar and get far less back because it goes to the South? Unionized North east and midwest states with higher incomes and unionized workers make up the bulk of those donor states.

Of course, when Southern state senators stand proudly in the halls of Congress and advocate punitive measures to destroy the unions, they also gladly vote for a system which rewards their own low wage states at the expense of others who they are attempting to weaken.

Be careful what you wish for because you just may get it.

[solicitr]

And which states are gaining jobs, and which losing them? They don't call it the "Rust Belt" for nothing. Michigan's unemployment rate is what? 9% now?

I'm happy to let Michiganites keep their tax dollars at home. Redistributing wealth is the Other Side's game, not mine.

(Since you brought it up, though, Michigan's median income is identical to Georgia's. Virginians are richer by 16%, or 13 spots in the state rankings. Right to Work hasn't hurt us too much).

[sauronsfinger]

Sadly, other Southern citizens do not share your more communitarian views of their brothers and sisters up North. Instead they have been more than happy to strip the North and East of their tax dollars and spend it in their own states for themselves.

Redistributing wealth, as you call it, has been a fixture of the Southern states for a very long time now and the end is nowhere in sight.

Recently we had that Justice Department study of state corruption and it was very noticable how many soutern states ranked so high in state corruption. I wonder if part of that problem is all the federal tax largesse that the region enjoys? Maybe they see this money as "free money" and do not accord it the respect of proper spending that it might otherwise accord?

Here is a tremendous wealth of data on the issue. Senator Patrick Moynahan also did an annual study on this issue for many years and documented it well and beyond doubt.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/taubmancente ... les_99.pdf

My point was a simple one: one cannot be a welfare reciepient unless there are others making much more money to pay that welfare to you. You might think that the South as a region, and individual states contained in that region would look at these figures and quickly realize that they are the winners in this arrangement. But for some other reasons, they seem intent on making everyone share the bottom of the barrel with them.

[solicitr]

You're rather missing the point: who is growing, and who collapsing?

I love your "bottom of the barrel" comment. As mentioned above, we here are considerably higher up in the barrel than Michigan. I suspect your stereotypes are showing, the old Yankee view of the 'impoverished' South. That's over. Meanwhile your economy is dying: thank the AFL-CIO for it.

[sauronsfinger]

You're rather missing the point: who is growing, and who collapsing?

But you see, that is not the point at all. Stats on yearly growth only give a temporary snapshot in time and fluctuate from year to year and state to state. States that rank high in growth one year can find themselves near the bottom in a year or two because they experienced a temporary spurt which is simply not sustainable over the long run.

I am talking about a documented trend of far more than forty or more years that stands the test of itme.

The point is a simple one.

Which area of the country pays the least in taxes and gets the most for their dollar?

And which area of the country pays the most in taxes and gets the least in return for their dollar?

Nobody can deny that the states which absorb the most while paying the least are mostly found in the South and a few in the West. On the other hand the states which pay the most and get the least in return are in the East and midwest.

This creates a system of federal state welfare that rewards low wage states and punishes high wage states. Since the low wage states are also right to work states, it is obvious that this state welfare redistribution system greatly benefits many southern states at the expense of Northern states.

[solicitr]

Why are you arguing with me as if I support LBJ's worthless welfare programs? I don't. I agree with you. Scrap them.

The real documented long-term trend is the closure of industrial plants across the Northeast and Upper Midwest, and the growth of the Sun Belt. That is the reality, my friend. Stop changing the subject to 'welfare'. We're talking about jobs moving away from closed union shop states- which they are. Don't pretend they aren't.

Your thesis is that somehow forced unionization is good for people. It isn't. It benefits the few at the expense of everybody, in the form of higher consumer prices. But even that operates only in the short term, as in the longer term employers relocate to other states, or other countries, or else foreign companies not burdened with unions take their markets.

[sauronsfinger]

Solicitr - somehow, someway we are having a conversation but there is no merging of one idea. I would very much like there to be so we can really discuss this on the same ground. Can we do that?

You misstate my point that i made in my first post.

High wages in unionized states in the North and Midwest have generated vast amounts of tax dollars for the Federal Government.

When the Federal Government spends this money back in the 50 states, there are winners and there are losers. Some states get back far less than they pay into the government while other states get back far more than they pay into the government.

For the last forty years, the area of the country that has benefitted the most from this situation are many Southern states.

My point is a simple one: how much longer can this last if the goal is to break the unions, drive wages down in unionized states (just like the announced plans of Senator Corker and others last week) and generally reduce the rest of the nation to the low wage status of the South?

Do the politicians and people of the Southern states even recognize this disparity in tax dollars?

Do the politicians and people of the Southern states realize how much they have benefited for a very long time from this tax redistributionist situation?

Do the politicians and people of the Southern states realize that when there are no longer any rich unionized states with higher incomes, there will be no more redistribution of income to benefit them?

Or is all this just too unpleasant, or long term and something that is never really addressed in southern political circles?

[solicitr]

Then there will be more tax dollars to go around, as the economy recovers from the debilitating union tapeworm. Cost of living will decrease (or increase more slowly) for everyone.

You, I think, are trying to console yourself, as you survey your devastated Third World landscape of shuttered and rusting factories, by convincing yourself that you are somehow subsidizing poor spongers down in Dixie who are even worse off.

What a crock.

Net Fed spending covers many, many things besides welfare. Virginia is high on the list because we have some of the largest military bases in the country, one of the two naval shipyards, and lots of Federal offices and contractors on our side of the Potomac. That isn't 'welfare.'

When talking about food stamps and housing subsidies and other Monies Given to Poor People, I suspect Michigan, with its massive unemployment and inner-city hellholes, collects rather a lot.

Your basic premise, "rich unionized states with higher incomes", is bunk. I'm sure you read it in the union propaganda rags, but it's simply a lie. Unions lower incomes by driving jobs away. Unions have impoverished the Rust Belt. Again, whose economies have grown, and whose shrunk? When Toyota and Honda build auto plants they build them in Tennessee and Alabama. Jobs for us, no jobs for the poor slobs who bought into the Unions Are Good For You con.

[sauronsfinger]

You get those those foreign companies to locate in the South because you do not have unions while the North does.

What do you think then happens - if you get your way - and there are no union plants? That will cause you to lose the one big advantage you have. Why would you want to do that since it clearly would not be in your own states economic self interest?

[solicitr]

Then maybe Michigan could get some of its lost jobs back.

You see, I don't have any particular desire to take jobs from Michigan or Ohio or Illinois. I'm just pointing out the folly which has led them to their present state.

[sauronsfinger]

Forget about Michigan. We will act in our own best interest. And I would normally expect every other state to do that as well. Except for the southern states on this matter. And that surprises me.

If unions are crushed and put out of business as you so desire and as your state politicians advocate, why would your area of the country give up its one advantage which got them the factories and jobs in the first place?

It seems very shortsighted to me to do that.

[solicitr]

You're talking as if this were some sort of winner-take-all competition. It's not. It's called the Social Laboratory of fifty quasi-sovereign States. Ideally, when one or more states finds a better way other states emulate them. I am inviting the Rust Belt to change to a better policy, one which doesn't destroy jobs. That benefits all Americans.

Besides, down here we have other advantages. Like tolerable winter weather.

[sauronsfinger]

Solicitr - I will be frank with you. It looks to me like the South is cutting off its nose to spite its face. Complete and obsessive hatred of the labor union movement is overriding the economic interest of the South.

Your states completely and totally benefit from tax redistribution at the expense of the unionized states. And if you get your way, your one advantage will be lost to you in getting plants and factories.

But the all important imperative of political idealogy overrules solid economic sense.

I find that simply staggering. And we in Michigan are finding out that it is silly to approach this issue talking about economics or productivity or tax incentives or educated workforce or anything else because we have found out that none of that means anything next to the desire to kill unionism.

What do you think will be the response of the people of the unionized Blue states the next time some expensive natural disaster hits one of your Southern states? Do you think this is good for America as one nation - one people?
Or is that a falsehood on its face that we should just accept as reality?

[solicitr]

You've gotta be kidding. Heavy unionization is "solid economic sense????"

Unions have wrought total economic destruction on your home state, and you're in complete denial! And then you comfort yourself by concocting the silly notion that we in the (stereotypically impoverished) free labor states just couldn't get by without Michigan's taxes!

Priceless.


"Complete and obsessive hatred of the labor union movement" is overriding economics? My dear sir! Economics is precisely the beginning and the end of free-labor policy. It's not about "hatred," just dollars and sense. In fact, *everybody*- including Uncle Sam- would have more money if the unions went the way of the railroad trusts they so much resemble. Monopolies benefit nobody. Michigan would be vastly better off if it enacted a right-to-work law- but ideology, politics and complete and obsessive hatred of the "capitalist classes" is overriding the economic interest of the Rust Belt.

We're doing just fine down here. Much better than hag-ridden Detroit, certainly. Half the unemployment, higher incomes, significantly higher growth. Did it ever occur to you that we are more prosperous than you because we're doing something right? Fix your own state's crumbling economy and then lecture us about ours.

EDIT: Just looked it up. Virginia per capita sends 16% *more* in tax dollars to Washington than does Michigan. Not only do we not need your charity, it isn't there!)

[sauronsfinger]

Solicitr - am saying that it is in the interest of the south to stay non-union while the North stays union. That preserves your bigget economic advantage in the labor market place.

Are we clear on that?

[solicitr]

Fine with me. But why would the North put up with it?

[sauronsfinger]

Solicitr
earlier in this thread I posted a link to the Harvard study on the differential between what a state pays in Federal taxes compared to what they get back and where the state ranks compared to the other states in both categories.

Did you look at that? Do you understand what those numbers represent?

There are states which rank very high on paying federal taxes.
There are states which rank very low in getting back federal spending.
Those are called DONOR STATES.

There are states which rank very low on paying federal taxes.
There are states which rank very high in getting back federal spending.
Those are called RECEIVER STATES.

It matters not any statistic saying that people in Virginia pay more taxes than people in Michigan.

The key element is a comparison of the two figures - where you rank on paying IN to the system and where you rank on what you get OUT of the system. Only then do we see what states and what area of the country is manily a DONOR state or area and what states and what area of the country are mostly RECEIVERS.

Earlier you said this

Just looked it up. Virginia per capita sends 16% *more* in tax dollars to Washington than does Michigan. Not only do we not need your charity, it isn't there!)

Not only is it there, your state of Virginia ranks as the number ONE state that gets more federal spending than anyone and the number THREE as the worst when you compare the two figures together. The charity from the rest of the nation is there and it is undeniable from the numbers and facts.
Here are the figures for the South that should grab your attention and underline my point:

Alabama taxes paid - #38 Govt spending #9
Arkansas taxes paid - 44 Govt spending #19
Louisiana taxes paid - 40 Govt spending 17
Mississippi taxes paid #50 Govt spending 10
Missouri taxes paid 22 Govt spending 11
S. Carolina taxes paid 37 Govt spending 22
Tennessee taxes paid 28 Govt spending 16
Virginia taxes paid 15 Govt spending #1
West Virginia taxes paid 49 Govt spending 8

Southern states not listed do not have this situation.

If you want to compare that to Michigan, here it is
taxes paid 16 Govt spending 44

The nine Southern states I listed are all cleary heavy RECEIVER STATES . Your state of Virginia is among the worst of all in that it is #1 in terms of goverenment spending while only ranking 15 out of 50 states in terms of taxes paid in.

[Primula Baggins]

A general reminder: Please watch the sarcasm. Also, please don't post as if other people were idiots.