Out of Sacramento  -- home of faulty economics:

Want a real economic stimulus package for California? Make it easier for workers to join labor unions, supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act said at a rally Thursday on the federal courthouse steps in Sacramento. Wages paid to union workers in California from 2004 and 2007 were, on average, 12.7 percent higher than their non-union counterparts, according to a study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C.

Unionization rates have declined for several decades. It was 25.9 percent in California in 1983, the first year that state-specific rates became available. By 2008, the figure had dropped to 19.5 percent.  If the rate was the same now as it was then, union workers in California would earn an estimated $3.7 billion more in wages and salaries per year, the study concludes. And non-union workers would benefit because employers would likely raise wages to the union rate to stave off union organizing.

"Talk about a stimulus package?" posed Chris Benner, professor of regional economic development at UC Davis. "This is close to $4 billion of added spending power in California!"

Absolutely, that $3.7 billion just appears out of the ether Professor.

Oh wait it doesn't. Nothing is added, it is just spent differently. Which may be great in the short-term for one group of workers, but reduced investment and improvement will reduce growth -- you know, the actual way the pie gets larger. As the article, after much gushing, does note at the end with a quote from our whitepaper on the subject:

"Organized labor’s claims that unionization is a ticket to the middle class cannot be squared with data showing that increased unionization decreases competitiveness and leads to slower job growth."