Cross posted from Examiner.com
Over the last few months, anyone with a political inclination has been handed a rifle and filed into their respective trenches. We’ve passed talking about the issue a long, long time ago and now we’re left with the most violent of bloodless politics. While everyone talks about “the budget”, it’s not the budget that started the war: entrenched special interest did.
Budget cutting will always step on toes, but it wasn’t until the reforms started to outlaw public-sector unions that the hornets’ nest was truly stirred. That should be the first hint as to what lies at the heart of this conflict.
As far as special interests are concerned, unions are ten-ton gorillas, public unions even more so. Membership in Wisconsin is mandatory and so is the paying of dues. These dues are used to bend the political machine in their favor. Overtime pay is a great example of this. Instead of hiring more people or simply scheduling their employees properly, state institutions (especially prisons) will regularly shell out heavily for overtime pay. In 2010, overtime pay in the state reached $52.8 million. Lists are regularly published of employees who make over twice their base annual salary in overtime pay alone; simple guards and nurses making six-figure incomes. This is fiscal irresponsibility that can only be found in the public sector. This is a great reason why I’m not very broken up about the loss of collective bargaining rights for public employees.
The extreme backlash provoked by the disfranchisement of privlaged is exactly what Mancur Olson described in “The Rise and Decline of Nations”. Olson talks about how democracies slowly decline over time as they become more encrusted with special interest draining wealth and energy from taxpayers for their own personal benefit. As time goes on, these interests become so deeply rooted in the nation that it becomes impossible to root them out. Even if the reforms don’t stick over time, picking a fight with the public unions will be the last political act of Governor Walker. It’s the kind of political despair that only a student of Public Choice theory can truly appreciate.
Unions may be onerous leaches on the democratic political system, but Ross Kenyon writes that the issue of collective bargaining is more ambiguous then it seems. While the balance of power between the state and public unions may be a bit off, outlawing the unions overnight shifts the balance of power dangerously in the opposite direction.
There certainly are larger budgetary issues at stake (remember this is about the budget?) and there is no guarantee that the state won’t be heavy-handed towards its employees, but I find it hard to muster pity for their loss. These changes mostly affect workers in health and detention fields, both of which could do with a large dose of market competition. Instead of debating the proper way to regulate state monopolies, why don’t we question their existence in the first place?
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