"Whadda'ya mean youse support Senate Bill 5?"
Eric Odom's blog has put out a disturbing description by TEA Party activist Tom Zawistowski of the union thuggery on display in Columbus, Ohio during a recent state legislature session on Senate Bill 5, which would eliminate collective bargaining for state government unions.
http://activistsandairplanes.com/2011/03/02/saul-alinsky-visits-ohio-for-senate-bill-5/
And this involved police and fire unions? How mortifying.
This is what we are up against, folks. The current administration and the Democrats in Congress are solidly on the side of these union thugs.
Thank God for the "union thugs." They are the only people defending American freedom and democracy.
ReplyDelete"Good news mein Fuehrer, Scott Walker applied the Reichstag fire script most impressively."
"Thank God for the union thugs."
ReplyDeleteBunch of brownshirts if you ask me.
Looks to me that all the union thugs are defending is their place at the trough. Is it that they are supposed to be "free" to gouge the taxpayers out of every dime they can until the state goes bankrupt? Is that what is meant by "defending American freedom"? Is it democracy to riot and bully your way into state houses after you've LOST an election?
ReplyDeleteThese kind of tactics are contrary to the way our democracy is supposed to work.
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Miggie, what exactly do you mean by "trough"?
ReplyDeletePublic employees WORK for a living. They are not wards of the state being supported in comfort as an act of charity.
Some do better jobs than others -- as you might imagine, I am quite firm about taking appeals to government departments when local public services do not deliver to citizens and taxpayers what we have a right to expect. But if we want people to do a good job, we need to pay them accordingly.
Between any manager running any enterprise or department, public or private, capitalist or socialist, and those who keep the wheels of the enterprise turning, there is a natural tension between the manager's imperative to keep costs down, and the workers' imperative to get a good wage for their labor, to better support their families.
When the ultimate source of funds is tax revenue, rather than business profits, there is an additional tension.
If times are tight, everyone sacrifices. (In real life, that is, except for the executives of financial firms, who must be paid millions of dollars in bonuses to "attract top talent"). Public service unions have shown considerable willingness to accept significant financial concessions (with the possible exception of California, although I take Gary's rants on his home state with a grain of salt). They do want to retain their ability to bargain, and have some reasonable procedures for redress.
Blatant tyranny always calls people into the street. It did in Boston in 1773-1775, in Tien an Men Square in 1989, and in Madison in 2011. It would be better to go back to an orderly process of collective bargaining.
"At the trough" means taking public money. I agree that they put in time and some work, but the point is that they have an economic value. To the extent that public employees get more than their economic value (which is determined in the marketplace in private industry) they are at the trough. They get there because they pay off politicians with union funds and get sweetheart deals for pay and benefits. They get closed shops, compelled open voting, mandatory collection of union dues directly from paycheck, seniority rules and other benefits that cost the taxpayers money and that they would never get in a free marketplace.
ReplyDeleteSome employees, like say, Oprah, Kobe Bryant, etc. command huge salaries, many times more than the executives at financial firms, because they are worth it. They produce profits, they earn their salaries. If financial firms decide who may be a rain maker for them, how is it the government's or anyone else's place to second guess them?
The more free markets we have, the less government regulations and other interference we have from the government, the better all of us will be.
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Every study I've read finds that public sector workers are paid significantly less than their private sector counterparts, those doing similar work, with similar credentials, in jobs the public workers could get if they left public service.
ReplyDeleteSo much for the trough.
I question whether either Bryant or Winfrey "earn" their money. Paul Allen observed with unusual honesty that nobody "earns" the kind of money he made from Microsoft. I'd say anything over $1 million a year is gravy, the product of distortions in, or absence of, a truly free market.
That used to be true, Siarlys-certainly when I worked for the Feds. In california that is not the case. The public sector is doing much better than the private sector.
ReplyDeleteSend us Governor Moonbeam, and we'll send you Scott Walker. We have the kind of sensible people who can keep Moonbeam on a short leash, and California will eat Walker alive. The biggest budget drain in California is the prison guards union. Walker would be just the man to take them on, except he would exempt them from everything he tries to do.
ReplyDeleteHere are a few studies that show public employees get more than private employees doing comparable work.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.qando.net/?p=10471
and http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N.htm
and http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm
Ask the owner of the Lakers or Oprah's network owner whether they earn their money. Paul Allen was instrumental in creating one of the greatest corporations in the world and I don't see him returning everything he earned over a million dollars.
The socialist wants to say how much pay everyone should get and what is too much. The people who put up the capital and take the risks are better judges than the people who spout opinions without ever having built a business or had to make a profit or a payroll.
The marketplace and the free society relies on meritocracy. To the extent you pay people more than their economic value, you steal from some other producers of wealth to make up that difference.
I usually send links to articles and materials in support of my views. I rarely see them from Siarlys. I'd like to see the evidence that "The biggest budget drain in California is the prison guards union."
That is not contributing to or unreasonable demands, I want to see precisely the evidence that says that the prison guards union is the BIGGEST budget drain in California.
I'm amazed at some of the unsupported ridiculous statements you make. You must be accustomed to some environment that just accepts this nonsense without question.
If I were you I'd stick to obscure historical oddities rather than economics as you clearly don't know what you are talking about.
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Miggie, who has "a Ph.D from USA Today" and rarely has more than an internet link to sustain his convenient opinions, wants to give advice on who knows what. At least he admits that he's ignorant of history, and now offers himself as an expert on economics, a field whose more honest practitioners admit that it is as much as art as a science.
ReplyDeletePaul Allen did not "give back" his money directly, but he did make the statement in the context of explaining why he feels responsible to use most of it for the benefit of his entire community. For instance, he bought Seattle and Portland sports franchises so they could never be moved away by the vagaries of "the free market."
The Green Bay Packers are defended against the free market by the large number of co-owners in the local area. They were (undoubtedly without their knowledge) commended for this by Gus Hall once in 1998 or so.
Miggie, you are correct that I do NOT accept that "what the market will bear" defines what a person's work is worth, or what they should be paid. In my seldom humble opinion, the people who collect garbage, clean bathrooms, and do other essential work none of us really want as our first choice occupation in life, should be paid very well for it, and even allowed a relatively early retirement, say at 50 or 55. "The free market" values them as trash or slightly better, except where they have successfully unionized.
I have no objection to people earning a milllion dollars or so a year. But beyond that, it is all gravy. As for asking the owners, you ask the owners of the NFL teams if they think the players are worth all they are asking for... OOPS, your allegory just bit you in the rear end.
What we have in sports is a vicious circle, where poorly paid players notice owners making money, and ask for more, then owners use the "greedy players" as an excuse to double ticket prices, and then when owners are REALLY starting to make big money, the players want a big share (naturally), so ticket prices double again... If I had a free hand, I would reset that players make a maximum of one million a year, start at no more than $100,000 until they've proved themselves in the big leagues, and ticket prices will be no more than required to pay for the stadiums, pay the players those salaries, and give the owners a 5-15 % return on investment. We could find ways to tweak that, but that's my basic model.
Oh dear, I've come up with SO MUCH in the way of sources that Google says its too long for one comment. To complete answering your questions then:
ReplyDeleteNow, you want to trade web links?
Unlike you, who cherry pick occasional sources that sustain your prejudices, I will start with a well balanced article from that well-known left-wing rag, the Kansas City Star.
It cites one recent report which sounds good for your side, but also parses the many factors which were not considered in those statistics, and need to be. It points out specific states where what I said is true.
Here is a pretty good analysis by a Minnesota city administrator:
http://egfwestwing.areavoices.com/2011/02/28/public-sector-compensation-part-4/
Note that the greatest difference is among the lowest-skilled mass of workers, where, frankly, the unions should be massively targeting private sector employers and sharply increasing wages. But there is no reason public sector workers shouldn't be paid a bit over minimum wage and provided with medical benefits. (I speak has someone who has had medical insurance for all of three years in my entire life -- from a private sector employer, under union contract, and operating as a privately contracted agent of a public agency).
Bottom line, a realistic and reliable analysis should compare comparable job for comparable job, in terms of skills, hours, not lump sum total averages.
Prison guard unions? Start with this:
http://www.economist.com/node/15580530
Then feast on an entire book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Xc28Zq9EKcoC&pg=PA245&dq=California+prison+guards+union&hl=en&ei=dZeLTYrHD_Sw0QHNuaj_DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=California%20prison%20guards%20union&f=false
Now, you can argue, if you wish, that this or that source I've offered you is not, in your never-humble opinion, anything you care to believe. But don't expect to be taken seriously questioning whether I can offer published sources. I've beaten you on THAT score every time you resort to that played-out rant, which is worthy of CAIR in its method of evasion.