Retaining Minnesota Workers

03/20/2007

Paul Munnis

There is something going on between our States that smells to high heaven. It works like this:

• Set up a no-personal income taxes state and lure people to it with a promise of low taxes.
  
  
• Run substandard schools that produce lousy workers and insufficient skills to meet state demand in areas like nursing.
  
  
• When there is a shortage of skilled workers, go to other states and lure their workers to your state in one of two ways:
  
  
  
  • Attract their company to your state with a promise of lower taxes, thus getting many of their skilled workers in the bargain; or,
    
    
  • Offer bonus and relocation expenses to skilled workers from other states thus getting the skilled workers at a low cost.
    

This is just not right and states like Minnesota need to start demanding compensation from workers who move out of our state for the education subsidy that they got while residents of Minnesota.

We need to keep people whom we invested in and not lose them to the cheap-skate states.