Many states and local governments are considering right-to-work laws. These laws make union dues voluntary. Without them, union contracts make paying dues a condition of employment.

While most Americans support the concept of right-to-work, unions argue strenuously against them. However, most of the arguments against right-to-work have little basis in fact.

While all of their myths are valuable for you to learn about so that you can refute media sophistries, I thought the last one they dealt with is especially important.

Myth: Right-to-work laws lower wages.

Fact: Workers have the same or higher buying power in right-to-work states. Opponents often deride voluntary dues as “right-to-work for less.” Average wages in right-to-work states are indeed slightly lower than in non-right-to-work states. This occurs because almost every Southern state has a right-to-work law, and the South has a lower cost of living. Studies that control for differences in costs of living find workers in states with voluntary dues have no lower – and possibly slightly higher – real wages than workers in states with compulsory dues.

But such wages will not reflect any increase in economic efficiency or productivity. All such wages will do is produce even more price inflation. In other words, the cost of living will go even higher and wages will still be “stagnant” relative to the cost of living. Letting people negotiate wages freely, however, without the government intervening in such prices, makes everyone more efficient. This efficiency means that the cost of living sinks for everyone. The relative wages rise.

This should not surprise us. Do you really want to believe that prosperity comes from the barrel of the gun? After all, governments that force companies to deal with “unions” rather than with free workers are adding nothing but coercion into the bargaining process. It is absurd to claim that such coercion can create more wealth than free people will create among themselves.

When God commanded, “Thou shalt not steal,” he was not trying to reduce the standard of living of the working man. He was liberating them.