There Will Be Blood: Public Employee Unions

These public-sector unions are flush with cash, politically connected, and unabashedly self-interested. They are an active and growing conspiracy against the public fisc. The states where they are most powerful — California and New York — lumber toward insolvency. The federal government follows not far behind, on the kind of diet geese enjoy prior to becoming foie gras.

Public-employee unions can effectively occupy both sides of a negotiating table. They donate to and elect the politicians who bargain with them at contract time. Understandably, union-backed politicians forget which side they’re on. _RichLowry

Taxpayers are beginning to get tired of being reamed up the a posteriori by politically connected public sector employees' unions. It is too early to determine what type of payback will be planned and executed against the current anti-taxpayer public enemy number one, but now would not be a good time for top level public employee union officials -- at any level -- to let down his guard.

Public-sector unionism is a very different animal from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive. Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits — and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund.

The results are plain to see. States like New York, New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities. In such states, the public sector has become a parasite sucking the life out of the private-sector economy. Not surprisingly, Americans have been steadily migrating out of such states and into states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower.

Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly president since Lyndon Johnson. He has obviously been unable to stop the decline of private-sector unionism. But he is doing his best to increase the power — and dues income — of public-sector unions. _MichaelBarone

Most union members in the US are now working for the government. In some parts of the country, union wages and benefits are skyrocketing at the same time that their private sector neighbors are being laid off and losing jobs due to companies closing their doors.

The fact that government workers were getting better jobs at a time when everyone else was losing theirs does not bode well for labour politically.....From a Hayekian standpoint, public sector unions are the worst kind because they represent rent-seeking in its purest form. If you don't like unions, you can refuse to buy a Chevrolet, but you can't refuse to pay taxes. _Guardian

The US private sector continues hemorrhaging jobs at the same time as public sector employment continues growing -- and keeps getting more onerously expensive for taxpayers.   It should be obvious to residents of failing states such as California, Michigan, Illinois, and New Jersey that a huge part of their budget problems are due to the enormous political power of public sector unions.   More taxpayers in these failing jurisdictions are beginning to wonder what they have to do to cut these exploding union expenses.

The answer is, of course, nothing.  Taxpayers are virtually powerless to stop the government-enabled vampires and zombies who are feeding on their flesh.  The unions are too powerful, they have worked their way too far into the seats of power -- particularly in Democratic Party jurisdictions.

Too often it seems clear that the ultimate goal of today's Democratic Party is to make every citizen totally beholden to one or more government entities.  Perhaps they did not start out on the road to totalitarianism and designed poverty -- not intentionally -- but that is the path too many of them are taking.

Are we heading toward a "great peasant revolt of 2010?"  The US Tea Party movement is just getting organised.   The US Democratic Party will deride, disparage, and seek to ignore that movement at their deadly peril.  The numbers are against the public sector -- even when one includes all the citizens who receive government checks of one type of another.  Why?  Because without the private sector, the public sector has no funds to cover all the generous checks it is writing.

The federal government can pretend that it has the funds -- by borrowing and printing money -- but the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down much sooner than  the current crop of congressional incompetents ever thought possible.  

There will be blood.  The question is:  Whose blood will it be?