Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The bright side of Democrats running things.....

....here in Minnesota is that we are going to see just how quickly the costs can accumulate, from our homage to the Crystal Cathedral (new ViQueens stadium) to a bill allowing daycare providers to unionize.

Now as the former neighbor of a daycare provider here, I can understand some of the rationale for this, as a large portion of daycare costs are paid by the state.  When Governor Dayton Messinger shut down the state a year or so back, it was eerily quiet--the checks from the state weren't coming, and our neighbor's business was hurting badly.  So in this case, we do have a major player calling the shots in a bit of market monopoly, which is one of the few cases where a union makes sense.

That said, the bill sets up the possibility of a "closed shop" where providers are required to pay dues to the union, and also creates the likelihood of the "unholy alliance" between unions and the state to make daycare even more expensive than it already is--Minnesota is one of the top states for the cost of daycare already.

So what's the bright side of this?  Well, everyone earning over about half the median income is going to see that (a) sending your kid to daycare may not make sense after all, and (b) voting for Democrats is really, really, really expensive.  With a bit of luck, Minnesota could become a right to work state.

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