THEM!

Like hundreds of giant ants, campus progressives are swarming amongst us yet again. The following leaflet has started to appear on a wall near you:

Okay, okay, that’s not really it. The reality is much more horrifying:

Among other things, the pamphlet declares if New Hampshire’s recently introduced anti-union law passes, it “would grant employers the unprecedented power to slash salaries and benefits at will.” To avoid taking too much of everybody’s time analyzing everything wrong with this flier, I’ll instead focus on just this sentence, which is so wrong on every level it could only be produced by overzealous college students.

-First of all, New Hampshire’s proposed measure applies only to state employees, so using the plural “employers” is by itself rather inaccurate.

-Second, the ability to slash salaries and benefits is not “unprecedented.” Among other things, the state had this power before public sector unions became widespread, which only happened about 50 years ago.

-As anybody who paid attention in ECON 1 could tell you, employers never have the ability to cut pay “at will.” Labor exists in a market and employers must pay enough to get the worker quality that they desire. One would hope that Dartmouth students would realize that their much-sought-after jobs as doctors, bankers, and lawyers are not unionized and yet somehow pay more than minimum wage.

-Even if workers do have their benefits cut, it’s not like this is something that is automatically terrible. Money doesn’t fall out of the sky; it has to come from somewhere. If public employees use collective bargaining to obtain higher pay, they’re essentially just taking more money from taxpayers which if spent in the private sector could have created more jobs. 

Of course, there’s plenty of other nonsense in the flier, such as complaints about the College’s effort to reduce administrative bloat and avoid shedding millions from the endowment while hiking tuition 5% annually, or calling collective bargaining a “fundamental right” as though meddling with the labor market is as important as freedom of speech.

But, if all that is not enough for you, you can stop by their rally at 4 PM next Tuesday to get plenty more. Or, if you have better things to worry about, you can let us do it for you. Stay tuned next week for Review coverage of the event, either here or in the dead tree edition.

–Blake Neff