Suppose you're a doctor running for Senate as a Republican. You know darn well that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act saves money and saves lives, but to get money from Republican donors, you have to ape the expected talking points about repealing ObamaCare. What do you do?

You can sell your soul and pretend to fiercely oppose the PPACA. Or you could adopt truth and integrity as a campaign motto and educate your misunderstanding and over-dramatizing Republican constituents on the merits of ObamaCare.

And you can do it on Republican grounds. Here's how:

1. Remind voters that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act originated with Republicans.
2. Go Jan Brewer (and Kasich, Christie...) and argue that ObamaCare is good for South Dakota's economy.
3. Explain that the PPACA increases economic liberty and entrepreneurship. Eggheads back what I've argued before about job lock: the PPACA will increase entrepreneurship by decoupling insurance from people's jobs. People who are clinging to crappy jobs just because they don't want to lose their health insurance will be more inclined to jump into self-employment knowing that they won't go broke buying their own insurance or get flat-out rejected on the individual insurance market. PPACA's insurance guarantees will create 8,000 more self-employed people in South Dakota and 1.5 million nationwide. More independent entrepreneurs doing the work they love: that's a Republican ideal, isn't it?

The Affordable Care Act is a good idea. It's also largely a Republican idea. Educating Republicans to those facts may be an uphill battle. But it beats lying.

Legislator turned Tower Erector lobbyist Todd Schlekeway stops by the Mall of America to get his picture taken at South Dakota's famous marketing kiosk:

Todd Schlekeway at Dakota Roots kiosk, Mall of America, 2013.06.01, from Twitter

"No Personal Income Tax Means YOU KEEP 7% MORE* of Your Paycheck," reads the kiosk sign behind Schlekeway. I can't quite make out the asterisked footnote, but it appears to say that 7% is based on the state income tax rate for a single middle-income Minnesotan.

Now for the dagger: move from Minnesota, and your paycheck will likely be 25% smaller. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, in 2012 Q3, the average weekly wage in Minnesota was $915, the 15th highest in the nation. The average weekly wage in South Dakota was $683, 50th in the nation, lower than anywhere else but Mississippi. Even after paying 7% to St. Paul, the average Minnesota wage earner has $851 in her pocket for lefse and Twins tickets, 20% more than she would working in South Dakota.

We can pound these figures out on various cost-of-living anvils. This morning, let's compare that BLS data with MIT estimates of the "living wage" in each state. MIT says "living wage" is " a minimum estimate of the cost of living for low wage families. The estimates do not reflect a middle class standard of living." Based on different costs of food, child care, housing, and other regular expenses, how much cushion does an average-wage earner have in each state?

By MIT's count, in Minnesota, a single person with no kids can pay the bills on $9.11 an hour. In South Dakota, it only takes $7.44. Scale up to two-adult, two-child household, and in Minnesota, one wage earner needs to make $19.28, while in South Dakota, one wage earner feeds the family for $16.75. So if your income stays the same, your paycheck goes further in South Dakota.

But your paycheck doesn't stay the same. The average hourly wage drops from $22.88 in Minnesota to $17.08 in South Dakota.

To put those numbers in perspective, let's look at the same data, but with the ratio of the average wage to the living wage. A 1.00 in this chart means the state's average wage pays the basic bills but leaves no cushion for unexpected expenses. Numbers greater than 1 mean you've got cushion; numbers less than 1 mean you're not making ends meet.

Workers come out with a cushion in most places, except for single parents raising two kids. In Minnesota, that cushion is bigger than in South Dakota in each category. For the two-adult, two-child household, one Minnesota wage earner can bring home a 19% cushion; the same wage earner in the same size household in South Dakota brings home a 2% cushion. Single parents making the average wage and caring for two kids are hurting in both states, but in South Dakota, they are 15% behind the living wage, while in Minnesota they are only 9% behind.

Finally, let's rank those ratios: which states give the average-wage earner the biggest cushion proportional to the living wage?

Notice that South Dakota's best ranking is for single workers with no kids, who get the 28th best average wage/living wage cushion. Start adding mouths to feed, and South Dakota sinks. Get married, raise kids, and South Dakota's low wages put you in the bottom ten for the cushion you'll earn on an average wage. For married folks with 0, 1, or 2 children, Minnesota's average wage offers the 16th-best cushion in the nation.

To cap it off, here are MIT's estimates of the typical wages in 22 job fields in Minnesota and South Dakota, plus my calculated differential between the two:

I'll be happy to see all sorts of Minnesotans move to South Dakota to boost our economy. But it's not right to bring them here under false pretenses. Minnesota has higher taxes. Minnesota also offers better wages in 22 major job categories. On average, those higher Minnesota wages give you a bigger cushion for unexpected expenses or that new fishing boat than will South Dakota's wages.

Minnesota friends, if you want to move to South Dakota, Todd and I welcome you. But you'll have to find reasons other than money to do so.

As part of his South Dakota WINS workforce development program, Governor Dennis Daugaard hired ManpowerGroup Inc. last year to recruit 1,000 new workers over three years for high-pay, high-need jobs in South Dakota. One year in, "the world leader in innovative workforce solutions" has placed 83 new workers in South Dakota. That puts Manpower on pace to meet 25% of the Governor's stated goal.

South Dakota Democrats would like to know why we're getting such low return on a five-million-dollar exclusive deal with one Wisconsin company:

“Governor Daugaard dedicated $5 million to employee recruiter Manpower to fill 1000 open jobs within three years. One year later, they’ve filled 83 jobs that we know of,” says Sen. Billie Sutton (D-Burke), a member of the senate appropriations committee. “I hope Governor Daugaard’s administration will help us answer our questions about the program, so we can protect taxpayers and fill open jobs across South Dakota” [South Dakota Democratic Party, press release, 2013.05.29].

Governor Daugaard is responding to Manpower's poor performance by allowing employers to participate in SD WINS while using their own recruiters. In other words, instead of an exclusive deal with one recruiter, we're now subsidizing many recruiters. Whether we should be subsidizing this basic cost of doing business is an open question (isn't the free market supposed to allocate resources most efficiently without government interference?), but removing the favoritism to Manpower is promising:

To qualify for the program, employers must list the job in the state for 30 days. If no suitable candidates emerge, the business can use Manpower at a subsidized rate or hire another recruiter. If someone moves to South Dakota and accepts a job, the state will reimburse the employer $1,500 to $6,000, depending on the salary of the new employee.

Broadening the program is smart, said Ryan Good, co-owner of gpac, a recruiting firm that matched 60 hires in hard-to-fill jobs last month, including many in Sioux Falls [Jodi Schwan, "State Tweaks Recruiting Program," that Sioux Falls paper, 2013.05.22].

Did I read that right: Wisconsin-based Manpower places 83 recruits in one year, and Sioux Falls-based gpac matches 60 hires in one month? Yeah, if I were the guys who gave Manpower an exclusive state contract, I'd try to change the subject, too:

South Dakota Wins has meant increased and even new programs at state institutions like Mitchell Tech, where a welding program was started to deal with a shortage of welders in the state. In an email Thursday, Tony Venhuizen, Director of Policy and Communications for Daugaard’s Office said the plan has also opened up rural areas to medical professionals by creating more training opportunities, and is bringing back former South Dakotans as the administration focuses on the state's existing Dakota Roots program to woo workers back to the state they grew up in.

Governor Daugaard’s Chief of Staff, Dusty Johnson said the successes of the program are undisputed when it comes to South Dakota worker training.

“We have workers but we don't necessarily have them trained in the right things,” he said. “And that has been a big success of the Governor's Workforce Initiative is that it's focused on putting resources into places where we have and need workers trained with that set of skills and that type of education” [Kelly Bartnick, "Daugaard's Office: South Dakota WINS Is Successful," KELOLand.com, 2013.05.30].

The Governor's office is right to focus on the workforce training side of their program. Fostering local talent is the surest route to creating jobs and boosting the local economy. Mary Medema, director of workforce development for the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, affirms a principle I've discussed previously: recruiting from out of state is a crap shoot in which we gamble on the folks least likely to remain committed to our community:

Deciding to hire from out of state should be an individual decision, she said, adding that it brings some risk.

“If it’s a high-demand job, people are going to keep coming after them,” Medema said. “Headhunters are going to keep calling them. And if someone is mobile enough to move to South Dakota and didn’t have any other ties to South Dakota, they’re probably willing to move again” [Schwan, 2013.05.22].

Keep "tweaking" South Dakota WINS, Governor Daugaard. Invest in local recruiters, local talent, and local training, and we Dems won't have to ride your case so hard.

South Dakota's 2006 gay-marriage ban has coincided with a drop our marriage rate and an increase in the rate of births to unwed moms.

Nationally, the recession has coincided with another shift in family values. Pew Research finds that moms viewing full-time work as their ideal situation outnumber moms thinking full-time mom duty is best:

...a Pew Research Center survey conducted in November 2012 found that mothers’ views about whether and how much they would like to work had changed significantly since 2007 (before the recession officially began). The share of mothers saying their ideal situation would be to work full time increased from 20% in 2007 to 32% in 2012. And the share saying they would prefer not to work at all fell from 29% to 20% [Wendy Wang, Kim Parker, and Paul Taylor, "Breadwinner Moms," Pew Research, 2013.05.29].

Pew's April survey on this topic finds that working women are now the sole or primary breadwinners in 40% of American households. But some attitudes about women's work are lagging.

A slim majority (51%) still say kids are better off with Mom at home. But the percentage of folks who say the same about Dad (8%) is almost negligible. I can take the position that kids are better off with one parent at home to raise them through pre-school years and then greet them at the door with cookies when they come home from elementary school. But the overwhelming popular sentiment appears to be that Dad would just burn those cookies.

A strong majority of folks hold to the idea that the growing number of children born to single moms is a "big problem." But that majority has declined through the recession:

Pew also finds some significant splits in attitudes about single moms:

Note the age difference: only 42% of 18- to 29-year-olds see unmarried moms as a big problem, compared with 65% of the 30-49 crowd and 74% of grannies and grampies. It would be interesting to longitudinalize this survey and see if those young people carry that attitude shift into their older years or if becoming parents and grandparents will boost that concern. That higher concern among current old folks could be old-fashioned conservatism... but it could also be the fact that they get stuck babysitting their kids more!

My lucky experience of having both my wife and me home most of the time for our little one for four years while working online provided her with stimulation and stability that made her more ready for school. I'd like everyone in South Dakota to have the freedom to choose that arrangement or to send just one parent out to work while the other stays home to provide their children the best upbringing possible. Alas, with our low wages, most South Dakotans find that arrangement a luxury, not a reasonably practical choice. We need to focus on some serious economic reform first; then maybe we can get around to shifting our attitudes toward more gender equality.

But first, I'd better get my little one some breakfast.

Rep. Kristi Noem is pretending that the "Working Families Flexibility Act" will help workers by allowing employers to offer employees comp time instead of extra pay for overtime. The bill is really about giving management (a.k.a., the corporate cronies who want to save even more money to put into Noem's campaign coffers) one more tool with which they can oppress the working class.

Oh, Rep. Noem will purr, her big business pals would never exploit workers. Workers will be absolutely free to choose whether they want overtime wages now or comp time later. The Working Families Flexibility Act empowers workers, right?

Baloney. Check out the story of Maverick Steak and Cocktails in Aberdeen stiffing its employees of the overtime pay to which current law entitles them:

Kevin Stillman, a former Maverick's employee who has since moved back to Mississippi, said the U.S. Department of Labor investigation was initiated after he contacted the department to report that many employees were not receiving overtime pay.

He disputes Schlaht's statement that the failure to pay overtime was a computer error.

"(Mavericks) had us sign a paper that said if we worked past 40 hours a week, we would not get overtime," he said. "I needed the extra hours. I needed the money, so I signed it."

Schlaht said that he did not have employees sign an overtime waiver.

Stillman, who worked for Mavericks from July 2012 to March, said he typically worked 50 hours a week and never received overtime pay. He calculates that he will likely receive $1,300 to $1,500 in back wages.

"They were wrong not to pay us," Stillman said. "I thought I lived in America and was entitled to my rights. I'm glad me and other employees are going to get our pay."

Allen said the department of labor does not determine intent or the cause of failure to pay overtime. The report does not state whether the failure to pay was related to a computer error, he said.

"What we are concerned with is identifying violations and making sure employers adhere to fair labor standards," he said [Jeff Natalie-Lees, "Mavericks to Pay $26,553 in Back Wages, Fines," Aberdeen American News, 2013.05.24].

The U.S. Department of Labor does not confirm whether Stillman's allegations are true, but Stillman's complaint illustrates the power dynamic that labor laws exist to check. When you need the money, and the boss is signing the check, you don't have a lot of power to challenge the boss. Even when a worker knows the law is on his side, it takes a lot of courage to look a law-breaking employer in the eye and say, "You can't make me do that, now hand me my paycheck."

Noem's fantasy of "flexibility" ignores the real power disadvantage workers face in the workplace. The current very simple system—the boss makes you work overtime, the boss pays you time and a half—offers workers plenty of flexibility... to use the extra pay they get to pay for babysitters, hamburgers, or whatever else the market offers to meet their needs.

Following up on Governor Dennis Daugaard's impending trip to the Twin Cities to steal away the best and brightest of their afternoon mall denizens, I find the South Dakota press is a few days behind the Minnesotans in discussing the big trip. MinnPost.com covered the trip last Thursday with more details on our taxpayer-funded efforts to get Minnesotans to give up the bright lights of the Twin Cities for our farther-flung prairie clime:

The recruitment efforts are happening through Dakota Roots, a worker recruitment initiative that South Dakota launched in 2006. It is currently in the midst of a marketing campaign through which roughly a dozen downtown Minneapolis coffee shops are giving patrons coffee sleeves that feature the Dakota Roots website. And just last week, South Dakota representatives spent a morning at Espresso Royale on Hennepin Avenue, where they gave free coffee to customers willing to stop and discuss job opportunities within the state [Christa Meland, "South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard heads to Minnesota, ups effort to lure job seekers," MinnPost.com, 2013.05.02].

Hi, we're South Dakotans. What would you like with your coffee?

From 1 to 2 p.m. on May 13, South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard will be stationed at a Dakota Roots booth at the Mall of America, where he’ll visit with shoppers, answer questions about career possibilities in the state, and encourage Minnesotans to consider relocating to South Dakota [Meland, 2013.05.02].

The Governor won't be setting out a card table Monday; the State of South Dakota maintains a "Dakota Roots" booth in the Mall of America, right next to the Butterflies, Jewels, and Accessories booth, between Typo, Justice for Girls, Call It Spring, and Hot Topic near the North Garden entrance on Level 1.

According to a three-year-old Entrepreneur.com post, Mall of America rented vendor carts for $2300 a month. ($2,300 x 12 = $27,600/year.) Plus, we've got to be paying someone to man or woman that booth for 77 hours a week... and we aren't getting good representation if we're paying some Twin Cities kid with saggy pants minimum wage. Even if we're getting personnel for $10 an hour, that's $40K in yearly payroll. Add gas money for the Governor and other South Dakota reps to visit the Cities regularly (and hey, the Twins play at home against the White Sox Monday night... and Denny did study in Chicago!), and you can see where a big chunk of the $200,000 our Legislature appropriated to Dakota Roots in 2012 is going.

And hey, do you remember the 3,000 Minnesotans that the South Dakota press was saying have relocated to South Dakota since the Dakota Roots website launched in 2006? Hey, South Dacola! In another example of the difference between what you'll find in the South Dakota press and the Minnesota press, MinnPost's Meland says we got that wrong:

Slightly more than 3,000 Minnesotans registered as job seekers on the Dakota Roots website since it launched in October 2006—534 of whom have relocated to South Dakota. (That compares to 17,224 registrants from all states, 2,790 of whom have found jobs within South Dakota.) [Meland, 2013.05.02]

However many Minnesotans are falling for our propaganda, Governor Daugaard's trip is still an incredibly inefficient use of state resources. Sitting around in a mall waiting for people to walk up to you is about the worst market-targeting you can do. Meland points to Dakota Roots efforts that cost much less per contact:

South Dakota representatives worked with several alumni associations within the state to connect with out-of-state alums who might be interested in returning to the state of their alma mater. Approximately 103,000 South Dakota college alumni received direct mailers containing information about job opportunities (and wildflower seed packets). After that, traffic to Dakota Roots’ website quadrupled and the website has averaged 23 new registrations each day. Dovre said she wasn't sure how many of the 103,000 people are Minnesotans but estimates that a “large majority” are from within the state [Meland, 2013.05.02].

We talk with interested local folks, we get 103,000 potential targets, we send them mail, we get a quick return on our advertising dollar. Governor Daugaard can't be counting on shaking even 1,000 hands in his hour at the mall. The only way his trip boosts web traffic to Dakota Roots, not to mention producing anything close to the number of relocations that the alumni direct mailing might, is through the auxiliary press and online buzz the trip may generate. (You're welcome, Dennis!)

One last problem: Meland notes that Minnesota is regaining jobs lost in the recession faster than South Dakota:

As of earlier this year, however, Minnesota had regained nearly 90 percent of the 160,100 jobs that were shed during the recession. Over the past year, Minnesota has gained 46,400 jobs, representing a growth rate of 1.7 percent, compared with the U.S. rate of 1.5 percent [Meland, 2013.05.02].

South Dakota shed 11,290 jobs from March 2008 to March 2010. As of March 2013, we'd regained 83% of those lost jobs. And from March 2012 to March 2013, South Dakota saw a job growth rate of 0.4%. I would love for Governor Mark Dayton to drop by the Mall of America Monday and ask Governor Daugaard about those numbers.

Governor Dennis Daugaard's South Dakota WINS plan was to spend $5 million on an out-of-state headhunter to bring a thousand new people to South Dakota.

It may have worked: a glance at our Department of Labor data shows that from March 2012 to March 2013, our state labor force grew by 1,250 and jobs grew by 1,755.

But Governor Daugaard is still looking for talent outside the state to come make their fortunes here. He's setting up shop in the Mall of America on Monday, May 13, to spend an hour trying to recruit workers to move South Dakota.

Hmmm... just an hour? It must cost a lot to rent a kiosk next to the sunglasses stand. Maybe the Governor is renting a spot next to the massage booth so he can talk to people while they're relaxed and impressionable.

And if he can only afford an hour in the Mall, why pick an hour when most of the people with talent are at their Twin Cities offices using that talent?

The news about Governor Daugaard's trip to the mall contains a couple of other head-scratchers:

State Labor and Regulation Secretary Pam Roberts says officials are targeting the Twin Cities because more Minnesotans have shown an interest in moving to South Dakota than workers from any other state ["SD Gov Heading to MN to Recruit Workers," AP via KELO, 2013.05.06].

Perhaps Secretary Roberts and I are reviewing different data, but the Census Bureau's data on state-to-state migration in 2011 showed South Dakota making more net gains in Iowans, North Dakotans, and Wyomingians than Minnesotans.

More than 3,000 Minnesotans have relocated to South Dakota since October 2006, when the state launched a website to connect out-of-state workers with in-state careers ["SD Gov..." 2013.05.06].

Not mentioned there is the number of South Dakotans who have relocated to Minnesota, which anyone with recent college graduates in the family knows is quite a few. The Census Bureau shows that over the past few years, the estimates of Minnesotans coming to South Dakota and South Dakotans leaving for Minnesota are roughly identical, within each other's margin of error. That suggests that percentage-wise, South Dakotans are more likely to see Minnesota as a preferable location than Minnesotans are to return the favor.

And why might they have that impression? For the same reason that Governor Daugaard is going to the Mall of America to recruit instead of spending April hanging out at student unions across South Dakota: Minnesota invests more in education to produce more skilled graduates and workers. And really, why bother? Pouring more resources into K-12 and university education only creates a larger, more powerful class of teachers, professors, and critical thinkers who might form a locus of opposition to Republican cronyism and foolishness in South Dakota. It's much cheaper to let Minnesota spend all that money on educating young people, then hop in the state Suburban, hang out at the mall, and pick the low-hanging fruits of their system.

Update 07:25 MDT: Mike Henriksen suggests that South Dakota ex-pats in the Twin Cities drop by the Mall Monday to explain to Governor Daugaard why they left South Dakota. I suggest that Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton drop by to debate Daugaard. Perpich-Janklow II!

D.A. Barber finds that the booming wealth of the Bakken oil fields isn't trickling down to Native American North Dakotans. He also notes that South Dakota is part of a seemingly inverse relationship between good economic stats for us white folks and poverty for our Indian neighbors:

While the national average poverty rate for Indians is 27 percent, South Dakota had the highest poverty rate at 48.3 percent, followed by North Dakota at 41.6 percent. Other states with exceedingly high Indian poverty rates include Minnesota (38.4 percent), Nebraska (38.1 percent), Montana (36.3 percent), Arizona (35.1 percent), and Utah (31.7 percent).

What's interesting is that some of those states with the highest Indian poverty rates also had an equally wide schism in terms of the lowest recent unemployment numbers. While the current national unemployment rate is 7.6 percent, the lowest unemployment rates by state include mostly energy boom states. North Dakota ranked lowest at 3.3 percent, followed by No. 2 Nebraska at 3.8 percent, No. 4 South Dakota (4.3 percent); and No. 5 Utah and Wyoming (4.9 percent). In fact, within the Bakken boom counties, unemployment drops to 1.7 percent.

...The Bureau of Indian Affairs Labor Force Report estimates the real unemployment rate on North Dakota's reservations can be as high as 55 percent, while reaching 83 percent on South Dakota's reservations [D.A. Barber, "The Energy Boom: American Indians Need Not Apply?" Huffington Post, 2013.04.30].

So why doesn't the rising employment tide raise Indian boats in South Dakota? Even if Big Oil can't find lots of engineers on the Dakota reservations (I apologize, Lakota neighbors, if I underestimate the number of underutilized engineering degrees you have), aren't Bakken    and Keystone XL supposed to generate all sorts of economic activity across sectors that benefit every available worker?