Race to the Bottom, Michigan Edition

by evanmcmurry

For a guy who didn’t want to pursue Right To Work, Rick Snyder sure does seem awfully happy about it:

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says state development officials are already hearing from manufacturers interested in relocating, just 10 days after he signed new right-to-work legislation into law. 
 

“The phone’s already been ringing at the MEDC (Michigan Economic Development Corporation) since we passed that legislation,” Snyder told reporters today, according to the Detroit News. “People are starting to look at Michigan.”

This is, of course, what’s called “race to the bottom,” in which states compete to see who can gut their own standard of living the most to offer best tax breaks to corporations, all to steal businesses from just across state lines, a constant downward march of declining wages and disappearing benefits in which one state’s gain made on the backs of workers is another’s depleted economy. But hey, “People are starting to look at Michigan.”

Naturally, though:

Snyder told the paper it was “premature” to name interested companies.

Michigan will just have to take his word for it, just as they did when he said, multiple times, that he wouldn’t pursue RTW.