There’s nothing to win you over to the side of a candidate like hearing them say something you already think. In an interview with Howard Dean, Chris Suellentrop learned Dean’s theory on building economies in the developing world:

Dean’s theory in a nutshell: The structure of wealth in the United States before labor unions resembled that in Third World countries today, so in order to create middle classes in the developing world, we need to bring labor unions to them.

I have been saying this literally for years. My further thought on this, though, is that once you teach people that they can assert their rights in relation to their employers, it’s a short leap to realizing that they can assert their rights in relation to their government. Needless to say, plenty of developing countries don’t want their people to figure that out, and so are not really big on labor rights. That said, I think the best thing US labor unions can do right now is send liaisons to other countries and give them primers on organizing. Not only will it improve the labor standards and quality of life in those countries, but raising their wages will enable them to afford more things that are produced in America. This has always seemed so obvious to me but I rarely hear people talk about it.