Michigan voting on "right to work", what is the controversy here?

[spence]

Originally Posted by detbuch

The contractors you speak of are in China and are under the Chinese Communist Party's model of manufacturing, not under the control of Apple.

Apple is free to contract with whomever they choose and under what terms they agree to. Foxconn employees are certainly contractors of Apple.

A telling sentence in the Forbes article: "Today, we see the social detachment, alienation and despair that are the result of an efficient--but ultimately unsustainable--system." Beware America.

Well, perhaps they're just a century or so behind.

Many white collar jobs, especially in the public sector, are unionized.

Any why I qualified Manufacturing jobs.

The positive impact needs to be weighed against the negative. The big concessions had to be made because of previous negative union influence. In large manufacturing situations most of the jobs are routine rather than skilled trades. How this all would have come about if unions did not exist is debatable. Unions have historically had an affect on working conditions and pay, but, historically, it was unions in large corporations, such as the auto industry which was already paying far more for its labor before the unions entered. Rather than unions being the catalyst for success, they were beneficiaries of success.

And haven't shareholders also been beneficiaries of success? Many unionized companies have done quite well...

You may not see the evidence, others do. More jobs is a key. If the pay is somewhat lower, which is debatable that it would be, the spending power may be comparable if not better. Most right to work states have lower living costs. Lower wages, in a market system, lead to lower prices.

I've never seen any real evidence that right to work promotes jobs. Granted, it would be a hard metric to measure considering all the other variables that impact a state economy.

The idea that lower wages lead to lower prices sure doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I could see lower prices via lower quality perhaps, but not because of reduced spending power prompting sellers to charge less for items that have many fixed costs.

A broader lower income base would spend more as a % on living expenses which are lower margin commodity items.

Yes, investors invest, whether in unionized corporations or non-unionized. And foreign investment is not a bad thing, is it? Don't Americans also invest in foreign business. Does your portfolio include any foreign investment?

Foreign investment may not be a good thing when the result is wealth being transferred abroad.

I have some money in emerging markets, but not a huge % overall.

-spence