On 5/25/2010 7:42 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
wrote in message
...
On May 25, 8:28 pm, "Ed wrote:

What it means is that the "top" states squeeze incomes to the bottom
levels
in the country. Texas'd household income is $4,000 below the national
median; North Carolina is $7,000 below; Tennessee is $10,000 below;
Virginia
is 'way over the median because of all of those government jobs in the
northernmost part of the state.

If you don't have unions, you can pay **** wages. And you don't have to
pay
many benefits.The CEOs, of course, love that.

--
Ed Huntress

I do notice that New Jersey had a 10.2 % drop in median income and
Texas had a 2.6 % gain. You also need to adjust the incomes by the
cost of living.

You're looking at 2-year averages, Dan. Texas is still $20,000 behind New
Jersey in terms of household income (Census 2008 data, $50,000 versus
$70,000). Texas, relatively speaking, is in the dumpster in terms of wages.

And you have COL backwards. COL reflects incomes; where people make more,
things cost more.

Tech jobs as Engineering tend to pay about the same regardless of
where they are in the country. So when you consider the taxes and
cost of living, an engineer in Texas probably has a higher standard of
living than an engineer in New Jersey.

Dan

Tech jobs in engineering are not driving wages. If you want to see some
manufacturing-wage breakdowns, you'll find them on that Census site, or at
the BLS. At Census, look for "Annual Survey of Manufacturers."

The relevent fact is, the "RTW" states are the pits, in terms of incomes and
much else. We've been over this before. And it's exactly what you would
expect, because the entire reason that businesses lobby for and coerce RTW
laws is so they can pay their workers less, demand more, and threaten that
they'll move offshore without suffering any consequences. That's how it all
works.



What they really mean when they say friendly to business is that they
are unfriendly to workers. In states like Texas the state intervenes on
behalf of management and owners and against the workers. Workers in
these states, as Ed pointed out, are worse off in every way you want to
measure. How could it be otherwise when everything is slanted to help
the business owner and manager? Everything from lax environmental
standards, to low wages, to unsafe working conditions, to not paying for
overtime, or hiring illegal aliens, are done to make it so the owners
can make more money. This is always done at the expense of the people
who work for these businesses. It's always been that way. The fact is
when the government doesn't try to help out workers the owners take
advantage of them every time. Just like when BP took all kinds of
shortcuts to save money on the oil rig that blew in the Gulf, that is
what business does to its employees when it's a business "friendly"
state. If I was a worker I wouldn't want a job there but if I was the
owner of a business that's where I'd want to be. In other words, Texas
is America's version of China. Bad jobs for the workers, bad
environment, good profits for the business and high pay for management.
George W. Bush's and the republican's goal for America.

Hawke