Larry Beinhart’s Body Politic: November 2011

How to Profit in Today’s Economic Environment

by Larry Beinhart and photographs by Dion Ogust, October 26, 2011

How would you like to earn an extra $5,000 a year? Not just this year. Every year.

For how long? For life, the rest of your working life.

Think about your retirement. Do you want a pension? Would you like the money that you worked for to actually be there when the time comes?

What about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? You’ve been paying in, you have a right to have those investments pay off.

It’s a whole lot simpler and easier than you might expect. You want to know how easy? Just live in a state where there are unions.

You don’t have to belong to one. You don’t have to support them. All you have to do is have union members as your neighbors. When you do, the median income in your state—which presumably means your income, plus or minus—will be $5,000 more a year, every year, than someone who lives in one of those Rip Me Off States. (Yes, in common parlance they’re called Right to Work States, but like so much of our casual rhetoric, that’s sadly misleading. You have a right to work in every state. If you work for a company that has a union contract in a don’t-rip-me-off state, you have to pay union dues. That is, you have to pay for the services they perform. In a rip-me-off state you’re free to be a freeloader. Which, since you’re making $5,000 less than you should be making, you might need to do.)

It’s not just your pay scale and your personal benefits. The whole social contract takes a hit when unions are weak. In Rip Me Off States, an additional 21 percent don’t have health care, primary and secondary schools get about $1,700 less per student, and the poverty rate is 2.3 percent higher.

When unions go away, people die. Infant mortality is 17 percent higher. The rate of workplace deaths is 51 percent higher.

Most readers of this column already live in don’t-rip-me-off states. So you might think this issue doesn’t matter to you. Plus, you’re pissed at me because I didn’t show you how to make another five grand a year over and above the five grand a year more that you’re already making because of the unions.
If I’ve failed you on the greed side, let me hit you with fear!