About eight minutes into his interview on Frank Beckmann's show yesterday, Cato fellow and Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore expounded on the need for a Michigan right-to-work law:

I do a report every year with Arthur Laffer, the famous Reagan economist, called "Rich States, Poor States," where we rank the states from the most competitive to the least competitive. And Michigan was always, at best, in the middle of the pack. I think this will raise Michigan's competitiveness. You know, before you did this reform, as you know, Frank, Michigan had some of the highest taxes on small businesses of any state in the country, and I think this will make it a much more equitable system, much more pro-growth and will bring jobs.

But I will add one thing, and I know that I talk a lot about this, but I feel so passionately about it. Michigan will never have a strong and robust recovery until it gets rid of its forced union law. You have to move to be a right-to-work state if you want to bring new jobs into your state. That is the single most important thing for a state in terms of their economic development.

Our Right-to-Work Dashboard backs Moore up; states where workers cannot be forced to pay union dues and agency fees have an edge in just about every measurement of economic health.

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