Click here for an easy and free way to help feed the hungry at The Hunger Site! Non-profit ad by Voyager
VoyForums

Support VoyForums by visiting our sponsor, www.PainEase.com.

[ VoyUser Login optional ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, [5], 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 06:46:31 05/14/12 Mon
Author: john k
Subject: How public-sector unions broke California

A lesson to be learned here.

The state’s public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation’s and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination—high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes—has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion. The story starts half a century ago, when California public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect their own bosses—that is, sympathetic politicians who would grant them outsize pay and benefits in exchange for their support. Over time, the unions have turned the state’s politics completely in their favor. The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpayers finally confronting the unionized masters of California’s unsustainable government.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_california-unions.html

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 2.94, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2012 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.