Mood:
caffeinatedTopic: "The Union Label"(6)
With appropriate apologies, when Frodo was the smallest of Hobbits, he asked his father about what he might someday become. His father told him that if he "worked for the government," that he would always be assured of a job, but he should expect to make less than those who worked for a "private company." By the same token, he said, working for a company means that in a "Depression" you are at much greater risk.
Frodo thought a lot about that, and studied a great deal about the very nature of bureaucracy in a capitalist society. What he came to believe was that, during the Great Depression, federal and local bureaucrats for the most part retained their jobs, although, on the average, their compensation was reduced by about one-fourth. In the private sector, of course, about twenty-five percent of all workers lost their jobs. Once the world recovered from the worst downturn in modern history, the private sector grew back exponentially, and the bureaucracy settled into an accepted level of "lower pay" but "greater security."
With the advent of collective bargaining into the bureaucracy, first benefits and subsequently wages faced upward pressure. The political ramifications of the "creep up" in benefits and wages was not off-set by increased risk for public employees at least on an equitable level. Thus was borne the political footfall that has culminated in the strategic stupidity of the Governor of the State with the highest rate of public employee wages and benefits. By including in his effort to, justifiably, bring spending down without adding to the tax burden, he concomitantly opened the collective bargaining issue into the battle. It is as if he wittingly or otherwise, felt it necessary to dig a modern-day "Maginot Line" and to entertain trench warfare for what will seem like years, with no progress on either side.
It is not a difficult issue. It does require a lowering of the decibel levels, and it requires that Wisconsin's politician-in-charge immediately acknowledge his opponents and sit down to bargain. Collective bargaining is a part of our society, and to "take it away" from a single segment of the society is wrong-headed.
Right now, we need somebody to tell this guy he is "the worst person in the world."
