The Unions of Detroit: Wisdom from Mark Etterling

Below is a guest article from Mark Etterling.  For more about Mark, CLICK HERE.

I was listening to the news today as they discussed the Right to Work legislation currently pending before the Michigan State House.  As is usually the case there was the obligatory union boss pontificating about how passage of such legislation would automatically doom any and all future labor to an abyss of virtual corporate slavery.  As is also the usual, the person holding the microphone never even bothered to ask the most basic of follow-up questions like “Can you elaborate on that statement?”.  Since the modern-day media is obviously nothing more than a sorry bunch of ideological hacks I thought I would do their job for them by asking the question myself.
 
Hey Union Boss!  Explain in to me.  You make such asinine statements, but the facts don’t agree.  There are currently 23 states that have already passed RTW laws and from an overall economic standpoint those states are doing just fine without the need to force employees to accept union membership as a condition of employment.  To the contrary, union laden cities like Detroit, Flint,Toledo, and Cleveland are collapsing in on themselves as the former jobs of those cities are being migrated to the more friendly confines of the southern RTW states.  After having passed RTW last year Indiana picked up over 13,000 new manufacturing jobs.  In that same time span Michigan has lost over 8,000 with their current “closed shop” attitude.
 
If you listen to the union battle cry they will chant sophomoric rhyming slogans about how it’s all about workers rights.  Okay, great, now explain that as well.  Exactly how is it an invasion of someone’s rights to simply give them the freedom of choice about joining a union versus being forced to do so?  There is nothing in the pending Michigan legislation (or RTW in general) that prevents union membership.  In fact, Taft-Hartley guarantees the right of employees to unionize.  Therefore, no one’s rights are being threatened in the least by RTW legislation.  So explain your statement, because quite frankly it doesn’t pass the smell test.
 
If you ask a hardened union member they will tout all of the good things that unions do for their members.  Great!  If that’s really true than the unions shouldn’t feel the least bit threatened simply by giving people the option.  It’s like taking vitamins.  If I see a real benefit from taking them I’ll gladly pay for them.  I’ll use them freely where I don’t need someone to force me to do so.  However, if I don’t see a real benefit than why bother?  We shouldn’t be forcing people to join unions any more than we should be forcing them to take vitamins.  If unions are as great as advertised than keeping up membership up without force should be a piece of cake.  However, as Wisconsin and many other states have recently proven, that’s not the case.
 
So what’s this really all about?  Well, as is usually the case, it’s not rocket science.  As I mentioned above, in the first year after Wisconsin passed RTW the public employee union membership dropped by 56% as all those employees with a new-found freedom exercised that freedom.  56% fewer members translate into 56% less dues.  So in reality this is all about union membership dues and the political power that those dues represent and has nothing to do with anyone’s “rights”.  When fully 95% of union political contributions go to a single party it’s pretty obvious that party can’t live without the unions anymore than the unions can live without that party.  It’s a marriage of convenience to say the least.
 
The Democrats tried unsuccessfully to get card check passed in order to enhance union membership by forcing open ballot voting.  It didn’t work simply because the Democrats couldn’t come up with a single legitimate argument as to why it was necessary to permit such a coercive act without any justification.  When it comes to losing all these states to RTW they keep losing that debate as well for the very same reason.  The unions can hold all the statehouse rallies their little hearts desire, but what they can’t do is justify their own actions.  In the mean time they have become a caricature of what a democracy is supposed to look like simply because the exercising of the freedoms democracy offers should at least have a purpose, and this debate has none.
Mark Etterling

Rich Hoffman

Understanding The Laffer Curve: Why tax increases of any kind won’t work

Before any intelligent discussion can be made about taxes and how much a society should contribute to them, the general economic theory of the Laffer Curve must be explored. For those who have no idea what the Laffer Curve is, the video below will teach you in a very concise way. Understanding the Laffer Curve is paramount to grappling the most compelling arguments of modern politics.

Many people who work in and around government without question are the type of people who are willing to contribute 50% to 70% of their incomes to paying taxes—after all, all the money they make comes from the community treasuries, so anything they receive is more than they would have had to earn on their own merits. This is also why government work tends to pay so well, because they are expected to support extra costs like union dues and excessive taxation without protest. The Laffer Curve for government workers who lean in the direction of socialism is statistically over 50%. However, for a person like me, my Laffer Curve is around 10%. Anything more than 10% of my income I consider to be a waste of money on government services I don’t want, need, or philosophically support. For a person like me, it is not worth opening a new restaurant, opening a new coal mine, or even building a rocket to explore space because the taxes on my earned income exceeds my personal Laffer Curve.

I may be willing to lend myself to other businesses as a “hired gun” to help them deal with their business troubles even if my income is taxed above 30% because I can negotiate in my loss to the government in my fee. It doesn’t matter to me so long as I get my money, and the purchaser of my services gets what they are hiring me for. But to carry all the responsibility of opening, operating, and maintaining a business when the taxation rate exceeds 10% for me is just not worth it. So I will not contribute to the economy in this fashion because the Laffer Curve is too radically on the wrong side of the chart for me. The people who think like I do are what the American economy might consider “underutilized capital.” We tend to tinker in our garages and write books instead of doing other things America might consider more economically productive because the Laffer Curve on our taxable income is too high. It is these kinds of people who pull the statistical Laffer Curve chart hump to the 33% mark. Government types support a Laffer Curve of 50% to 70%–and people like me support a Laffer Curve of 10%. That is how 33% is reached as an average.

When Obama and the minions of communist oriented government insist on higher taxes on the “rich” they are essentially pushing the Laffer Curve too far to the right statistically causing more of the productive to take their bags of money and quit, joining me in the garages of life playing with their Craftsman tools, building cars, working on motorcycles, and thumbing their noses at government. Obama assumes that the “rich” will be just as motivated to deal with all the headaches of business ownership if their personal Laffer Curves are moved to percentages increasingly over the 50% mark, and that is where the failures occur. Many will not and proportionally the higher the percentage of taxable income moves higher on the Laffer Curve, the more people will drop off the chart, cut their losses, and not participate economically.

Obama doesn’t understand this kind of thing because he was trained to be a communist by his mentors, he never tried to operate a business prior to his political career, and he is currently a public parasite—meaning he lives off tax money as a government employee. He is not a value added citizen—meaning his existence does not contribute positive dollars to any economy, he simply takes by the essence of his life. Obama learned in college that the Laffer Curve is way out there at the 70% mark, and he believes it to this day. He looks at people like me who reside at the 10% mark and get angry with us. He signs Executive Orders by the stacks fantasizing that if he strong arms enough, that my type of people will decide for our own health and well-being that we will move our Laffer Curve up to 30% to 50%. But he is wrong and foolishly naive. In response, my type of people will simply go “pirate” and find other ways to shield our assets from the government trolls who wish to steal our property, starting with our money. Instead of complying with the government we will seek ways to undermine it, and gain back the values lost to looters like Barack Obama and his tax grabs.

It is because of the Laffer Curve that Obama’s “tax the rich” scam won’t work. The radical activists whom serve his private council are people like Richard Trumka, Van Jones, and other radical progressive/communist supporters and their Laffer Curves are well above the 50% range, because they are not the type of productive people who make anything. So anything that comes their way is more than they would have obtained if they just sat on their couches at home and watched TV. So they clearly support higher taxation on the Laffer Curve since they directly benefit with very little investment on their part. What their vision does is destroy the incentive for people who reside with a Laffer Curve of 10% to 20% to stay home and not play the game—which means less wealth is created, and the economy will recede instead of expand.

Many CEO types, many of the rich, many of the movers and shakers of the American economy attempt to stay on the good side of government with charity work, political contributions, and celebrity appeasement. Even the “rich” like Warren Buffet who supports the higher taxes on Obama’s Laffer Curve cozy up to people like Obama to keep the government from stealing too much of his wealth while he uses new federal laws he helped to fashion to crush his competition—which is why he supports Obama’s tax increases. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE. CEO’s try to play the game of politics to keep the Laffer Curve from moving too high up the graph. The closer to 0% the better, and when the Laffer Curve gets up over 40% the value of the efforts given to operate any kind of economic endeavor diminishes considerably—and retiring to a fishing village in Florida becomes much more preferable.

Government cannot change human nature, and they will never achieve acceptance of higher percentages on the Laffer Curve no matter what effort they employee, whether it be attempted force, or political maneuvers. Every human being has their cut-off point, and the further up the Laffer Curve the taxes go, the fewer people there are to contribute to a thriving economy. It is that simple. The foolish assumption by communists and political utopia builders is that financial producers will feel compelled to contribute equally to a world vision created by half-baked politicians and academic theorists—but producers won’t, because the value of those government fools is flushed out in the real world by what they contribute economically–which is very little. That is why the economy is tanking under Barack Obama, because he does not understand the Laffer Curve and like every pinhead dim-wit in the academic halls of universities, they have allowed their naive world vision to corrupt their logic and deny them the understanding of how the world works—and for them this is reflected on their personal Laffer Curves that are far up the ladder. The higher the tax rates on personal income Americans will decide with increasing frequency to withdrawal from economic creation and join me turning wrenches in their garages and simply watching football games all day on a Saturday afternoon and to say to hell with business and the government that loots off its back. That is what the Laffer Curve is and what it means to society.

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com