>>I would not want to go back to a brawn-based economy, but we do need to figure out how to improve our education system so that Americans are well trained for the jobs of the future.
We spend more than twice as much per student as Germany and Japan, so money ain't the reason.
>>I would be curious to know more about your feelings on unions.
In a nutshell, unions shift income to one group from another, away from the politically less powerful. If unions are able to exact wages increases in excess of the growth in their productivity, then their industry will decline. Ex: steel and autos.
Unions are economically justifiable only when there is a company town situation where alternative employers cannot bid for labor.
One of the great things Reagan did was fire the air traffic controllers. Former union president Reagan, who lead the most important strike in the history of SAG, knew that he could not allow public employees the right to strike against public safety.
Remember the controllers had supported him in the recent election and they thought they had a "deal". Too bad no one told Ron. His advisers wanted him to cave even though it would have wrecked his drive to control spending.
The Soviets were mightily impressed and more than somewhat concerned that the U.S. had a president with backbone, willing to go against popular opinion for what he thought was right.
To this day Europeans realize that much of the advantage the U.S. economy has is due to the mobility of labor and the relative weakness of industry destroying unions. Another ex: Socialist France has double digit unemployment while Thatcherite Britain is booming.
Btw, the recent presidential election confirmed how unions have corrupted our politics. The teamster scandal is closely linked to Clinton.
This June Californians are expected to pass an initiative that more or less codifies Beck and will require unions to get the annual consent of members to use their dues for political purposes. A similar initiative passed in WA state a couple years ago and something 80% of members declined.
The most important election this year
By George Will
(Published February 8, 1998)
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--The most important voting this election
year will not occur in November and will not award any office to
anyone. It will happen June 2, when Californians vote on the
Campaign Reform Initiative that would bar unions from spending any portion
of any member's dues on political activity without the member's written
consent, renewed annually. If passed, CRI almost certainly will radically
reduce unions' political muscle, thereby substantially altering politics in the state
that can be decisive in presidential elections.
National labor leaders disparage CRI as "payback" for the $35 million that
unions spent in 1996, which bought issue advocacy for Democrats and helped
shave nine seats off the Republicans' House majority. But CRI actually began,
in part, as payback for labor's intervention in the Saddleback Unified School
Board election near here.
Frank Ury, member of a group promoting school-choice voucher systems and
back-to-basics curricula, lost a school board election when the teachers' union
spent $70,000 against him. (Five thousand dollars is a normal expenditure in
such races.) When he heard from teachers who voted for him and resented
being forced to fund opposition to him, Ury plucked up a pen. Brandishing a
Jefferson maxim ("To compel a man to furnish contributions for the
propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and
tyrannical"), he and two others wrote CRI.
In 1992 in Washington state, voters overwhelmingly (by 72 percent) passed
something similar to CRI, and within a year the number of teachers' union
members contributing $1 a month to political funds shrank from 48,000 to
8,000. Unions rightly fear freedom of choice regarding political spending for
the same reason teachers' unions fear school choice: They know what people
will choose.
About 40 percent of union households vote Republican. Seven of the top 10
contributors in the 1995-96 election cycle were unions, which gave 97 percent
of their money to Democrats. An October Washington Post/ABC poll found
82 percent support for a federal version of CRI, called a "Payroll Protection
Act."
Mark Bucher, another CRI co-author, was provoked by the $12.5 million the
teachers' union alone spent to defeat a 1993 school-choice initiative. He says
that when recent polling about CRI revealed an astonishing 82 percent
support, a "push-down question" was included in polling to provoke hostile
responses. Before those questioned gave their opinions on CRI, they were
told:
"Your local school teachers' association opposes this initiative and says it will
result in less money for our public schools. The teachers say this initiative will
reduce their ability to make needed changes in Sacramento, such as class size
reduction."
This drove support down, but only to 72 percent, including 66 percent of
Democrats, with union and nonunion voters equally supportive. However, the
public's healthy inattention to politics, and its healthy conservatism, meaning
skepticism, about ballot measures, means that there usually is a 10 percent to
20 percent reflexive "no" vote against initiatives.
Still, the desperation of CRI's opponents can be gauged by their Orwellian
rhetoric. Unions may spend more than $20 million to disseminate the idea that
attempts to give union members a voice regarding political uses of their money
amounts to "an employee gag order" and "silencing workers."
Opponents of CRI say "fairness" would require corporations to get prior
permission from shareholders for political spending. But owning shares, unlike
joining a union, is always optional.
Opponents say it would be unfair to limit union leaders' rights to spend
members' money while, say, the National Rifle Association remains free to
spend members' money without seeking special permission. But people join
the NRA largely for political leverage, whereas the Supreme Court has held
that under existing law the primary function of unions is to deal with employers
on labor-management issues, and workers have a right to refunds of the
portion of their dues not spent thereon.
One of President Clinton's first acts countermanded President Bush's order
requiring government contractors to notify employees of this refund right. A
survey indicates that 78 percent of workers do not know they can choose a
refund. Today's "pro-choice" president likes that. The "pro-choice" party
depends on that.
CRI's opponents made a hollow threat to sponsor retaliatory initiatives ending
$10 billion of tax breaks for corporations. The peculiar threat was: Stop CRI
or we will shrink the profits that provide our members' pay.
By opposing CRI, union leaders reveal their real--and you would think
embarrassing--estimate of their ability to elicit members' voluntary participation
in the leaders' politics. But embarrassment is nothing next to unions' fear of
CRI's power to shift the balance of power in California and, as an infectious
idea, elsewhere.
sacbee.com
Don't you just love democracy?
Please read Friedman or go to the library and rent PBS's Free to Choose. |
