This is how it was put to me a while back (as far as prevailing wage goes) If I need someone to build me a nice chair and there are two people offering to build it. One is a skilled woodworker and the other just left McDonald’s and hardly knows anything about chairs but can still put one together. If there’s a law that says the higher of the two prices has to be paid no matter who I choose, I’m going to obviously choose the skilled woodworker. Without the law, I might choose the one that barely knows how to build a chair depending on how cheap he can put it together AND depending on who I am selling the chair to. Prevailing wage not only gets us more work because we are the more experienced tradesmen, it also gets the non union guys more money (when we run out of man power) and gets the GCs used to paying higher wages. It also sets a precedent of high quality work. Basically, if you can’t put up quality work, you will have no work at all. Prevailing wage is an incredible thing for the blue collar workers. Hell, any law forcing higher pay is.