why the meme "Right to work states are poorer" is a lefty lie

2aguy

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Jul 19, 2014
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This author tracks right to work states over time...and finds that non right to work states are actually poorer than right to work states.....

Blog Are the poorest states really Right To Work

Something that people often forget when making state-to-state comparisons of income is that the cost of living varies widely by state, but the federal poverty line doesn’t account for this. For example, Texas has a higher poverty rate than California when comparing nominal incomes, but once the cost of living is adjusted for, California has a higher poverty rate than Texas.

The website “Compare 50” has an archive of the cost of living-adjusted poverty rates among all 50 states and Washington, D.C. until 2011. If we rank states by poverty in a given year, a state that’s in the poorest 10 could easily not be in the poorest 10 the next year, so it didn’t seem fair to just compare states for a given year. Instead, I looked at the COL-adjusted poverty rates from 2007-2011 and averaged them together.

Overall, of the right-to-work states had a COL-adjusted poverty rate of 13.6774, which was 0.7208 percentage points lower than the 14.3982% poverty rate in the non-RTW states. Excluding D.C. (which ranks #1)
 
Anyone with the slightest amount of self respect should be proud of what they accomplished on their own merit, rather than on what union thug chiseled out of an employer on their behalf.

I don`t need anyone speak or bargain for me. I am proud to stand on my own feet, even if the pay I negotiated for myself I less than the pay given to unionists, because I know that every penny I earned I EARNED rather than the pay check given to union drones who would be perfectly happy to strike themselves out of a job, just because.

I knew fully well the first time my union stabbed me in the back, that hard work eventually would distinguish me from the union drones and the company would see that and the rewards would not be far behind. I am proud to have crossed many idiotic picket lines, faced down taunts of ``scab``, replacing slashed tires, worked 16 hour days during strikes and see a happy and proud face in the mirror in the morning.

Unions are an atavistic and anachronistic relics of the past.
 
I was in a union once because I had to be when I still lived in Boston. Those guys were a bunch of whining, spoiled bitches who had no clue what a hard day's work truly was.

The reality is that Right to Work states are generally thriving economically while compulsory union states are generally struggling and rusting away, hence the term, the Rust Belt. The jobs are moving south to better economic climates and the people are moving with them. Yes, the average wages tend to be higher in non Right to Work states, but the cost of living can also be astronomical compared to Right to Work states. Despite making a good salary, I didn't buy my first home until I left Boston and moved to South Carolina. I could never afford to buy a home anywhere in the Boston metro area because they were ridiculously expensive in even modest neighborhoods. When I moved to South Carolina I bought a pretty nice place in a nice area for a fraction of what I would have had to pay for something like that in Boston.

It's the same reason I moved to Las Vegas instead of Los Angeles when my company transferred me out west despite us having more offices in California than Nevada. I wasn't going to throw away half a million dollars on a 1200 sq foot home in LA when I was able to buy one twice that size for less than $350k in the suburbs of Vegas, not to mention Nevada has no income tax while California's is over 10%. I just drive out to LA a few times a month for a couple days here and there and it's no big deal.
 
NW Ark is a right to work state...But their taxes are high as is the cost of living...I live in SW Missouri, it's a prevailing wage state, yet the cost of living is low as are the taxes...
 
NW Ark is a right to work state...But their taxes are high as is the cost of living...I live in SW Missouri, it's a prevailing wage state, yet the cost of living is low as are the taxes...

Until 2013 Arkansas was controlled by the Democratic Party going back to Reconstruction so that is no surprise.
 
Unions/Democrat party has no problem with misleading the citizens in this country. I worked for a Union years ago. That was a real eye opener. There are 25 states that has right to work. don't believe everything a Unions spews is all I can say
 
What's the point? Anybody who thinks we should credit labor unions for the alleged "wealth" of states is a freaking fool. Look it it rationally. Labor unions don't increase the GDP. Labor unions are like parasites preying on wealthy municipalities and ultimately reducing them to the poverty scale of Detroit. Municipal unions are the most insidious parasites of all. They can actually kill viable cities so that union leaders retire with golden parachutes at taxpayer expense.
 
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NW Ark is a right to work state...But their taxes are high as is the cost of living...I live in SW Missouri, it's a prevailing wage state, yet the cost of living is low as are the taxes...

Until 2013 Arkansas was controlled by the Democratic Party going back to Reconstruction so that is no surprise.
Not NW Ark, it's very GOP, as is the county I live in...
 

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