Krauthammer on WI
Rubicon: A river in Wisconsin
Once established, unions become a deeply conservative force. It's part of an idea deep in the intellectual germ plasm of the left: The idea that people and society are perfectible, and when that perfection is at last achieved, history will come to an end. Groups favored by the current set-up naturally want to end history right now.
(Marx, for example, believed that historical change is driven by by class struggle, an idea that found great resonance with the labor movement. Because classes would no longer exist in Marx's vision of the Communist utopia, history would culminate and end in that perfect, classless society. A glorious vision, but without the slightest contact with reality; Marxist economics are, to put it gently, an incoherent mess.)
It's ironic that the only reliable driver of change turns out to be the capitalist free market, which organized labor views as a threat to their status quo. They are right about that, of course -- change is always a threat to the status quo, by definition. It's a threat to everybody's status quo. Big corporations don't like free market capitalism any more than big labor does. But if particular groups were granted the power to stop economic development when it happens to favor them, economic development would have been stopped a long time ago, and we'd still be living in huts, scratching a primitive living out of the dirt.
Byron
In the private sector, the capitalist knows that when he negotiates with the union, if he gives away the store, he loses his shirt. In the public sector, the politicians who approve any deal have none of their own money at stake. On the contrary, the more favorably they dispose of union demands, the more likely they are to be the beneficiary of union largess in the next election. It's the perfect cozy setup.
The Democratic Party is pouring money and fury into the fight. Fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers are unionized. The Democrats' strength lies in government workers, who now constitute a majority of union members and provide massive support to the party. For them, Wisconsin represents a dangerous contagion.
Obama's Democrats have become the party of no. Real cuts to the federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell, no.
Once established, unions become a deeply conservative force. It's part of an idea deep in the intellectual germ plasm of the left: The idea that people and society are perfectible, and when that perfection is at last achieved, history will come to an end. Groups favored by the current set-up naturally want to end history right now.
(Marx, for example, believed that historical change is driven by by class struggle, an idea that found great resonance with the labor movement. Because classes would no longer exist in Marx's vision of the Communist utopia, history would culminate and end in that perfect, classless society. A glorious vision, but without the slightest contact with reality; Marxist economics are, to put it gently, an incoherent mess.)
It's ironic that the only reliable driver of change turns out to be the capitalist free market, which organized labor views as a threat to their status quo. They are right about that, of course -- change is always a threat to the status quo, by definition. It's a threat to everybody's status quo. Big corporations don't like free market capitalism any more than big labor does. But if particular groups were granted the power to stop economic development when it happens to favor them, economic development would have been stopped a long time ago, and we'd still be living in huts, scratching a primitive living out of the dirt.
Byron
posted by Byron | Friday, February 25, 2011
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