Hat Tip to Kevin Drum for his piece on Unions and Growth. Not only does he take a crack at the WSJ pravda that unions are bad for growth,
Well, guess what? Holmes concluded that if moving a few miles across a state border allows a manufacturing business to reside in a right-to-work state with low taxes, no unions, and lax environmental policies, lots of manufacturing businesses will jump at the chance. It's good to see some rigorous confirmation of this, I suppose, but let's face it: It's hardly a surprise, is it? It would be pretty shocking if it weren't true.
He follows it up by linking to an Ed Kilgore article that's a must-read. It lays out exactly what the Republicans are trying to do to America - make it all like the south. (more)
Anyone who thinks what Governor Walker is trying to do in Wisconsin is just union-busting isn't seeing the whole picture, not as Kilgore lays it out. It is nothing more or less than a program to turn all of America into the south: anti-labor, anti- government, anti-tax, anti-everything the least bit progressive. In effect, the Republicans want to make states like Mississippi the standard for everyone.
Walker also has an economic vision for his state—one which is common currency in the Republican Party today, but hitherto alien in a historically progressive, unionist Midwestern state like Wisconsin. It is based on a theory of economic growth that is not only anti-statist but aggressively pro-corporate: relentlessly focused on breaking the backs of unions; slashing worker compensation and benefits; and subsidizing businesses in order to attract capital from elsewhere and avoid its flight to even more benighted locales. Students of economic development will recognize it as the “smokestack-chasing” model of growth adopted by desperate developing countries around the world, which have attempted to use their low costs and poor living conditions as leverage in the global economy. And students of American economic history will recognize it as the “Moonlight and Magnolias” model of development, which is native to the Deep South.
emphasis added
Go read the whole thing - and then use it to explain to friends and family why they had better be billionaires if they are going to vote for Republicans. Otherwise, they should plan for a descent into a third world life style for them and their children. Race to the bottom doesn't begin to cover it.
The problem with this Southern theory of growth is that it won’t work: Economic development experts usually deride “Moonlight and Magnolias” approaches to job creation, noting that they track the outmoded first and second “waves” of basic economic development theory—which emphasized crude economic races to the bottom—as opposed to third and fourth “waves” that focus on worker skills, quality of life, public-private partnerships, innovation, and sustainability. If Wisconsin and other states—not to mention the country as a whole—end up adopting these atavistic economic ideals, they will simply begin to resemble the dysfunctional Old South societies that spawned them in the first place.
emphasis added
Again, read the whole thing. It's the simplest explanation I've seen yet of why the Republican party is doing its best to destroy the middle class and the American way of life.