Obviously Michigan is a heavily unionized state, so why would it be going Right To Work?
There's enormous downward pressure on American wages coming from companies all over the world that can make things cheaper elsewhere than they can here. Our wages are uncompetitive in a lot of ways. So in effect what people in Michigan have to decide is do you want fewer jobs at higher wages or more jobs at lower wages?
What you see in this is they're saying 'we want more jobs and we're willing to take lower wages to get them.'
Private equity financier Rattner reveals exactly what America's financial and political elite think about the future of the American people. Notice what he said: "our wages are uncompetitive." You'll notice this is the exact opposite of what these same elites say when it comes to executive pay. For them, it is absolutely necessary to pay executives massive mountains of money because otherwise American companies won't be able to recruit the best talent and therefore won't succeed.
(Never mind that they still get a golden parachute even if they run the business into the ground.) Your $25-an-hour talent is making this country uncompetitive. But a CEO's talent in making 10,000 times that is absolutely central to our competitiveness. We'd have zero percent unemployment if only we could get wages down to say, Bengali levels. What America needs is a healthy dollop of serfdom!
I don't even know what to make of the people who run this country these days. It is like I've been teleported back to pre-Revolution France without the noblesse oblige. Our financial and political masters don't appear to have ... for lack of a better term ... basic patriotism. It is like they view this country and its people as some sort of massive excercise in soul crushing. You want too much retirement. You want too much health care. You want too much pay. Germany is a large country that has lots of jobs at high wages with plenty of benefits effected by laws. But such things are too much to ask of her conquerors. So say our meritocratic betters.
It is enough to make me want to jump off a fiscal cliff.