"The lesson is that high taxes and strong public employee unions tend to stifle growth and produce a two-tier society like coastal California's... The 16 states where collective bargaining with public employees is not required grew 15 percent in the last decade. The other states grew 7 percent." - Michael Baronehttp://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42546
This is by their own account, a conservative publication. Certainly correlation does not equal causation, etc. etc. but facts are facts...