Of course, The New York Times is deeply worried by the US Supreme Court's decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, et al. It significantly reduces public sector union power by allowing government employees to opt out of paying union dues.
Now, the Supreme Court's conservative majority justifies their decision of the First Amendment rights of government employees: they shouldn't have to pay for political action they disagree with. But Justice Kagan said this was baloney. This was just an attack on labor unions.
Actually, I agree with the dissent. Let's face it, government employee unions deploy their finances to support politicians that will pour money into the pockets of government employees, with salaries, benefits, and pensions and tenure that would be complete fantasy for almost any worker in the private sector. So any government employee objecting to paying for this is living in fantasyland, and merely wants to be a freeloader, benefiting from the union's political power without having to pay for it.
And let's face it, from the point of view of the average government employee, the government worker unions have been a stunning success.
So really, what the conservative wing of the Court is doing is finding a convenient way to scupper the government worker unions. And hey, why not the First Amendment, on which liberals have hung a bunch of their big-government goodies over the years!
But the irony is not lost on me. The whole point of the welfare state, what I call neo-feudalism, is free-riding. The legislature passes a law to give benefits to e.g., senior citizens for end-of-life health care, and senior citizens like me get to free-ride on the benefits forever. Until the whole country goes Venezuela.
And the whole point of the labor union movement is to free-ride on the wealth created by business corporations. Back in the early 19th century the courts held that labor unions were conspiracies in restraint of trade, like business price-fixing cartels. But then the courts started to bend to popular opinion and decide that, hey, da workers got their rights!
Well, yes. We all want to be able to defy the market and its prices when it benefits us.
But then there is the long term. In business a labor union can end up bankrupting it, as the business commits to pensions 30 years out that no corporation can responsibly agree to. Hello Detroit auto companies.
And in government a labor union can get politicians to legislate pensions in the great hereafter that can crowd out basic expenditures on services and bankrupt the government. And in fact in many blue states in the US the states are well on the way to bankruptcy and are cutting services. Because, you see, it's in the state constitution. Pensions cannot be reduced. Because justice.
So the Supreme Court's decision on Janus is piled high with irony. Here we have a decision based on First Amendment absolutism, just like liberals used to do. And it enshrines the right of a union member to freeload, just as liberals insist on everything else. Naturally, the dissent is outraged at this monstrous injustice.
Actually, I happen to think that no government employee should be allowed to join a union. Period. But I believe that anyone in the private sector should be allowed to belong to a union. But for one thing. No defined benefit pensions, not guarantees about the future. At. All. If you wanna have a pension, then it is a defined contribution pension, with absolutely no guarantees about the future. When you retire, you get the capital sum, or an annuity, based on your contributions and your employer's contributions and their increase over the years due to the magic of compound interest. Nobody gets to defer their contributions: not the employee, not the employee. Because reality.
The interesting thing to me is the utter decline of labor unions in the private sector, presently down to 6.7 percent. Why is this?
I suspect it is because, willy nilly, people now accept that it is their job to become and to stay employable. And no labor union can protect you from that.
But 35 percent of employees in the public sector are union members. Of course, because labor unions have produced amazing gains for their members. That's because government is not governed by the prices of the private sector. The only cloud on the horizon is the bankruptcy of the government in question, and how can that ever occur, given the state's power to compel taxes from the people to pay its supporters?
Now, the Supreme Court's conservative majority justifies their decision of the First Amendment rights of government employees: they shouldn't have to pay for political action they disagree with. But Justice Kagan said this was baloney. This was just an attack on labor unions.
Actually, I agree with the dissent. Let's face it, government employee unions deploy their finances to support politicians that will pour money into the pockets of government employees, with salaries, benefits, and pensions and tenure that would be complete fantasy for almost any worker in the private sector. So any government employee objecting to paying for this is living in fantasyland, and merely wants to be a freeloader, benefiting from the union's political power without having to pay for it.
And let's face it, from the point of view of the average government employee, the government worker unions have been a stunning success.
So really, what the conservative wing of the Court is doing is finding a convenient way to scupper the government worker unions. And hey, why not the First Amendment, on which liberals have hung a bunch of their big-government goodies over the years!
But the irony is not lost on me. The whole point of the welfare state, what I call neo-feudalism, is free-riding. The legislature passes a law to give benefits to e.g., senior citizens for end-of-life health care, and senior citizens like me get to free-ride on the benefits forever. Until the whole country goes Venezuela.
And the whole point of the labor union movement is to free-ride on the wealth created by business corporations. Back in the early 19th century the courts held that labor unions were conspiracies in restraint of trade, like business price-fixing cartels. But then the courts started to bend to popular opinion and decide that, hey, da workers got their rights!
Well, yes. We all want to be able to defy the market and its prices when it benefits us.
But then there is the long term. In business a labor union can end up bankrupting it, as the business commits to pensions 30 years out that no corporation can responsibly agree to. Hello Detroit auto companies.
And in government a labor union can get politicians to legislate pensions in the great hereafter that can crowd out basic expenditures on services and bankrupt the government. And in fact in many blue states in the US the states are well on the way to bankruptcy and are cutting services. Because, you see, it's in the state constitution. Pensions cannot be reduced. Because justice.
So the Supreme Court's decision on Janus is piled high with irony. Here we have a decision based on First Amendment absolutism, just like liberals used to do. And it enshrines the right of a union member to freeload, just as liberals insist on everything else. Naturally, the dissent is outraged at this monstrous injustice.
Actually, I happen to think that no government employee should be allowed to join a union. Period. But I believe that anyone in the private sector should be allowed to belong to a union. But for one thing. No defined benefit pensions, not guarantees about the future. At. All. If you wanna have a pension, then it is a defined contribution pension, with absolutely no guarantees about the future. When you retire, you get the capital sum, or an annuity, based on your contributions and your employer's contributions and their increase over the years due to the magic of compound interest. Nobody gets to defer their contributions: not the employee, not the employee. Because reality.
The interesting thing to me is the utter decline of labor unions in the private sector, presently down to 6.7 percent. Why is this?
I suspect it is because, willy nilly, people now accept that it is their job to become and to stay employable. And no labor union can protect you from that.
But 35 percent of employees in the public sector are union members. Of course, because labor unions have produced amazing gains for their members. That's because government is not governed by the prices of the private sector. The only cloud on the horizon is the bankruptcy of the government in question, and how can that ever occur, given the state's power to compel taxes from the people to pay its supporters?
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