Harrell Tweets On Right To Work (revisited) - Granite Grok

Harrell Tweets On Right To Work (revisited)

With the Union Leader reporting again that New Hampshire has the lowest poverty rate in the nation and is the only state under 10%, this seemed like a good time to revisit a post from mid-September; I expect the left will be regurgitating this meme so we should be prepared to rebut their nonsense.

 

Harrell Tweets On Right To Work

HKirstein%20RTW.JPGSo here we have New Hampshire Democrat Party Propaganda Minister Harrell Kirstein sharing some cherry picked wisdom.

"7 of 10 poorest states are RTW4Less states…blah blah blah."

My first thought is, define poor? (…without getting into this and this.)

Poor, like rich, is an elastic concept which our friend Harrell and the Demolition party stretch to fit their narrative.   It looks at wages but ignores things like cost of living, tax burden and relies entirely on total annual income as an arbitrary line drawn on a national chart, to define poverty, irrelevant of any other factor.  But it is these factors that affect wages and as it turns out, states without Right to Work are exponentially more expensive places to live.  So even if you are working for less income, you’re spending exponentially less of it on things you need to live a comfortable life.  And here’s one very critical example of that. 


Kirstein’s source indicates that Hawaii is one of the top ten richest states based on annual income and that Alabama is one of the poorest.  But in Hawaii the median price of a home is over 800% the yearly wage while in Alabama it is just over 200%.  So someone only making $60K in the islands is 4 times as likely to be house-poor than in Alabama.    Hawaii is tied with California for having the highest cost of living in the nation and happens to be in the top ten "richest states" based on annual income. And It affects your lifestyle when most of your income is tied to paying to put a roof over their head, even if you are not technically living in poverty.

If Hawaii is too remote perhaps we should consider Colorado, Massachusetts or New Jersey?  These are all well to do places on the Kirstein list, but in NJ a home is 652% of your annual income, in MA it is 850%.  Not much sense using some cherry picked number to make a point when your point might just be that mandatory unionization makes getting by exponentially more expensive.

This pattern follows consistently across the list of so-called poor states based purely on annual wages.  Harrell’s so called non-right to work rich states are significantly more expensive as a group to live in, which the slightly higher wages fail miserably to compensate for.  And that begs a question Harrell does not want you to consider, let alone answer.   How does earning 30% more in a "Rich State" make your life better when everything costs several hundred percent more at the same time?

How about we look at this conundrum in a more balanced context, as if tweeting bromides like propagandist Harrell Kirstein…

17 of the top 20 states with the best economic outlook are Right to Work states.

The 10 states with the highest Tax burden do not have Right to Work laws.

7 of the 10 worst states for future economic outlook do not allow Right to Work either.

Of the top 10 most expensive states to live in none of them are Right to Work States

We can do this all day.

Residents tend to retain more of their own income in RTW states and have more purchasing power and economic freedom.  They certainly have more rights because no one is forcing them to donate a portion of their wages for the privilege of employment.

So we can see how Kirstein’s vacuum packed cherry pickings have no meaning in the real world because in the real world States that have Right To Work tend to cost a lot less to live in, have a lower tax burden, a less expensive regulatory climate, and a brighter economic future.  

In places like that people who make only $36,000.00 per year can get significantly more from every dollar  than someone making $60k in a forced union state.  Harrell’s argument–which happens to be the one the unions pay him to promote–is not just biased and incoherent.  It has no bearing on us up here in the Granite State. 

New Hampshire’s cost of living climate is regional.  Given the density of states, passing Right to work will not change the cost of living because a business that moves here will still have to compete with a vast multi-state commuting labor pool.  Wages and benefits will continue to be driven by cost of living trends in the region, and the number of numbers in the paycheck.  Housing prices, availability of labor resources, and factors like the tax and regulatory burden across New England will still impact rates of pay, but one thing will change–Businesses can choose to redirect the costs associated with unnecessary union meddling into more jobs, wages, and other compensation.

When New Hampshire passes Right to Work, employers can choose to set up shop in the Granite State, and tap the same regional labor pool, in the only state in the region that will provide job creators and job seekers the choice of working with or without a union.  No other state for hundreds of miles will be able to offer that distinct advantage.  No one else will offer real choice.

But Democrats want you to think that this will somehow drive down wages when in fact it will decrease operating costs instead.  And it is here that we answer his Tweet questions.  What does @NHGOP want with RTW?

Instead of spending money on unions, they will be able to spend it on growth, job creation, workers, and on New Hampshire.  As the only RTW work state in the Northeast, our other advantages will be amplified, making us even more attractive for job creators and investors. 

Instead of wanting a captive donor pool to launder taxpayer money into the democrat campaign coffers the NHGOP wants workers free to choose from an ever growing pool of employers who will have to compete for that labor at prevailing New England rates.  They want freedom, job creation, and opportunity.

Harrell and the Demolition Party want campaign contributions from forced arrangements where you have to give money to a third party for the privilege of a wage.  The mob calls it protection money and it is illegal.  Democrats call them workers’ rights but they are anything but.  And just like the
MOB, scare tactics and intimidation are part of the package.

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