My Open Question to Progressives Is Still Open
July 31, 2017, 12:11 pm
A while back I asked progressives:
Taking the government's current size and tax base as a given, is there a segment of the progressive community that gets uncomfortable with the proportion of these resources that are channeled into government employee hands rather than into actual services for the public?
No response to date. This is not a rhetorical question. I am honestly curious if progressives worry about the percentage of government budgets that go to government workers, or if there is a progressive argument for this (despite the fact that it seems to be starving the actual programs progressives support).
I was reminded of this when I read this article from Steven Greenhut: ( hat tip maggies farm and their links roundup)
Municipal governments exist to provide essential services, such as law enforcement, firefighting, parks and recreation, street repairs and programs for the poor and homeless. But as pension, health-care and other compensation costs soar for workers and retirees alike, local governments are struggling to fulfill these basic functions.
There's even a term to describe that situation. "Service insolvency" is when localities have enough money to pay their bills, but not enough left over to provide adequate public service. These governments are not insolvent per se, but there's little they can afford beyond paying the salaries and benefits of their workers.
As a city manager quoted in a newspaper article once quipped, California cities have become pension providers that offer a few public services on the side. It's a sad state of affairs when local governments exist to do little more than pay the people who work for them.
Not surprisingly, the union-dominated California state legislature has been of little help to local officials dealing with such fiscal troubles. The state pension systems have run up unfunded liabilities, or debts, ranging from $374 billion to $1 trillion (depending on the financial assumptions one makes). But legislators have ignored meaningful pension reform. This has forced local governments to cut back services or raise taxes to meet their ever-increasing payments to California's pension funds.
It's one thing to ignore the plight of hard-pressed cities and counties, but now legislators are trying to make the problem a lot worse. Assembly Bill 1250 would essentially stop county governments from outsourcing personal services (financial, economic, accounting, engineering, legal, etc.), which is a prime way counties make ends meet these days.
3 comments
joe • 17 hours ago
I see two problems with progressives recognizing the problem
1) As several have noted on multiple occassions, progressives know their votes come from the public sector unions and therefore have a strong incentive to ignore the obvious, along with the power it entails;
2) Secondly, A lot of progressives have been blinded by the "paul Krugman Mentality" which is that all government spending is good - it has a multiplier effect which perpetually juices the economy, etc , etc. The Paul Krugman Mentality is results in a complete disconnect between reality/ Basic math/ basic logic and a religious belief system.
I dont mean to pick on Krugman, except that he exhibits the progressive symptons to the nth degree
Conqueror of All Foes Cheese • 17 hours ago
Most large city public school systems apparently became mechanisms for funneling tax dollars into the members of public unions decades ago. The supposed resultant education is much harder to see. Living next door to Detroit may have warped my vision though.
SamWah • 14 hours ago
Government employee unions have an incestuous relationship with those they negotiate their contracts with.
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