Category Archives: jobs

Banning Workers’ Freedom

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That’s what two Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates want to do.  Here’s Kamala Harris, who’s doubling as a California Senator:

The barriers to organized labor being able to organize and strike are something that have grown over a period of time[.] … It has to be about, for example, banning right-to-work laws[.]

Here’s Social Democrat Bernie Sanders, doubling as an Independent Senator from Vermont while, once again, masquerading himself as a Progressive-Democratic Party member for this campaign, calling for:

a federal ban on so-called right-to-work laws in a Monday [1 Apr] speech.
Speaking to the International Association of Machinists at the union’s conference in Las Vegas, Sanders said as president he would push legislation in Congress to prohibit the laws.

And

…the trade union movement must be in the middle of all of those discussions.

Aside from blatant attacks on all workers’ 1st Amendment right of freedom of assembly, these are obvious and petty attempts at pandering for the votes of blue collar workers.

The attempts also are dishonest in their cynically deliberate distortions of the situation.  Right to work laws guarantee workers’ right to work without paying dues to unions to which they do not belong and their right to work without being forced against their will to join unions.

Those right-to-work laws do not bar workers from joining unions; on the contrary, they explicitly allow them to—that 1st Amendment bit, again.  Instead, the laws simply enable workers to support their families without having to join a union as a precondition for doing so.

Oh, and it’s all about the Benjamins, too.  Unions fund the political campaigns—and other expenses—of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.  Those forced dues that freed workers no longer have to pay were a significant fraction of the funds used to pay those politicians; and those politicians are desperate to recover the money.

Economic Performance

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…and one Progressive-Democrat’s tax proposal.  Although, the fact is that these effects aren’t unique to Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, NM): the trend of effects are the outcomes of all the Progressive-Democratic Party’s proposals, differing only in detail.

Warren’s particular proposal is to tax business profits above $100 million at 7%.  Here are some outcomes of such a thing, according to the Tax Foundation, with the FoxBusiness cited.  A tax like this would

  • reduce incentives to invest, so GDP would shrink by ~1.9% over the long-term
  • reduce a firm’s capital by 3.3%
  • reduce wages by about 1.5%
  • eliminate as many as 454,000 full-time jobs
  • reduce after-tax income across the entire economy by 0.93%, with the biggest reductions on the top 1% of taxpayers
  • considering that shrinkage of our economy, after-tax income reduction could be an even larger 2.16%

But, hey, it gets after that hated 1%, so it’s all good.

This is of a piece with all Progressive-Democrat tax ideas, based as they so much are on their belief that the money really isn’t the business’ money, anyway.  They didn’t earn that.  They had (Government) help.

Regulating State Tax Incentives

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There Ought to be a Law was the title of an old Reader’s Digest humor column: every little pet peeve came in for a jokingly recommended law barring it.  Because More Government is always the solution.

Barton Swaim, in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, actually takes that seriously, and he wants to apply it to the idea of States and cities offering businesses tax incentives to get them to build in those jurisdictions.  He wants the Federal government to…regulate…what those State and local jurisdictions can do to entice businesses.

He’s even holding up the European Union as a paragon in this venue.

The European Union imposes significant restrictions on how much member states or regional governments can offer companies to entice them to expand or relocate.

This is the same EU, keep in mind, that is constantly trying to bully low-tax member nations to charge more and higher taxes, rather than encouraging high-tax member nations to lower and lessen theirs.

Never mind that, though.

Why couldn’t Congress impose a simplified version of this principle on state and local governments?

It’s true enough that many of those incentive deals the States and locals turn out to be lousy from the States’ and locals’ perspective.  Why, then, shouldn’t the Federal government dictate to the States and local governments what those bodies should do with their own citizens’ and residents’ money? For their own good, you see.  Besides, isn’t it the Federal government’s money, anyway, and not those citizens’ and residents’?

Be more like Europe, and be more infested with central diktats than we already are. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Because, after all, States (and the local jurisdictions within them), to paraphrase John Jay, have the same relationship to the Federal government that counties have to the States: mere political jurisdictions set up to facilitate enforcement of Federal laws.

Federal republic be damned.

Sure.

Control

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants the Federal government to pay a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries.

What a terrible idea.

The Federal government paying a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries means Federal government control of our public schools. Those schools are in enough trouble; we don’t need the Feds getting in the way, also.

Aside from that, this is just another Progressive-Democratic Party attempt to grab our money, this time to deny it to our heirs.  Again.

Apart from both of those, this is another example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contributing to the erosion of our families, illustrated by this claim of Harris’:

Our country’s success is a product of the two groups who raise our children: parents and teachers. We are not paying our teachers their value[.]

Teachers help raise our children? No, that’s the exclusive province of parents; schools are not ex loco parentis child care centers, and teachers must stop being babysitters and do the only thing they’re hired to do: teach.

Work…Works

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Sam Adolphsen, Foundation for Government Accountability’s Vice President of Executive Affairs, writing for Fox Business, commented on that in a piece about Medicaid’s work requirement in Arkansas—about which Progressive-Democrats in Congress are in an uproar.

Those Progressive-Democrats have complained that work requirements

“threaten[]” Americans…work [is] a “restrictive condition.”

These politicians of the Left ignore two things. One is the trivial one: no one is forcing anyone to work; the only “restriction” is that, in order to get any of Arkansas’ OPM, recipients must go to work in Arkansas or make a good faith effort to do so.

The other thing is the critical item in the affair.

Since the requirement was implemented, thousands of adults have left the welfare program.
…
…when people go back to work after work requirements are implemented, their incomes double or triple in just a year or two.

And this fallout from that second thing:

Getting these able-bodied adults back to work also frees up resources for the truly needy—the very people that the Medicaid program was designed to help.

It also increases Arkansas’ tax collections that go to the State’s Medicaid program.

Here’s where Adolphsen missed the mark, though.  He wrote

Why are Democrats so against work?
…
It’s an indication of how out of touch these progressive leaders are with everyday Americans.

No, Progressive-Democrats are the smartest kids on the block—just ask them.  They know what they’re doing with their objections to imposing a measure of personal responsibility on welfare recipients, personal responsibility that brings with it personal prosperity.

Those folks getting work and raising their standard of living aren’t actual human beings; they’re just votes spilling out of the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare box.