While listening to some pundits talk about how most of the southern states are Right to Work (i.e. fuck the unions) I thought about how a lot of these states also offer big tax breaks to poach companies from other states. Because of this the northern states have to offer even bigger tax breaks to keep the companies from going south. Wisconsin just went through something like this with Harley Davidson.
When a company wants to cut workers pay and benefits, they just threaten to leave the state, taking thousands of jobs to Alabama or Mississippi. It's an outrage and adds to our race to the bottom.
We need to amend the Commerce Clause so that states can't undercut other states and poach corporations. The argument on the other side is that it's good old-fashioned competition and if a state has a better offer than companies should go for it. I agree with that premise, but in a different way.
If it was against the law to poach companies with lower taxes and the promise of lower wages then states would have to encourage companies to come to their states for other reasons, like a highly skilled labor force and a sweet infrastructure. States would have to invest in education and roads and rail to make companies want to come to their states.
And what's interesting is in Vermont they are looking into a single payer healthcare plan for every one of its citizens. Wouldn't a corporation want to come to a state where they are assured a quality workforce where they don't have to pay the healthcare costs of their workers? It would be like nirvana.
Of course we don't do this. We try to undercut each other. And while we do this we're undercutting ourselves out of our future.
Les
P.S. I'll get to the Nick Cage article soon. Not that anyone is really reading this. hahaha
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