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ENCOUNTER BROADSIDES:
a new series of critical pamphlets from Encounter Books. Uniting an 18th-century sense of political urgency and rhetorical wit (think The Federalist Papers, Common Sense) with 21st-century technology and channels of distribution, Encounter Broadsides offer indispensable ammunition for intelligent debate on the critical issues of our time. Written with passion by some of our most authoritative authors, Encounter Broadsides make the case for liberty and the institutions of democratic capitalism at a time when they are under siege from the resurgence of collectivist sentiment. Read them in a sitting and come away knowing the best we can hope for and the worst we must fear.
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The principal function of unions is to represent their members’ interests. Therefore, those in the public sector have interpreted the reform proposals of Christie, Walker, and Kasich as a serious threat. Defenders of public-employee unions, like former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, have charged that humble public workers are being targeted as “scapegoats” for the Great Recession. They argue that most government employees live modest lives and aren’t paid better than workers in the private sector. Criticizing public servants, they say, only serves to divert attention from the corporate executives who perpetrated today’s economic crisis. The unions help sustain a professional public service and preserve a segment of the hard-pressed middle class that would otherwise be thrust into a cruel race to the bottom. The arguments of the unions and their defenders have some merit. But ultimately, they are unpersuasive.
Attention to government unions has revealed two pressing problems: First, the unions exercise considerable political clout in a partially acknowledged symbiosis with the Democratic Party, and second, the economic consequences of that alliance are fiscally unsustainable promises and inflexible government. These two interrelated problems were present before the financial crisis, but when it took the economic tide out, the strain on government finances and taxpayer wallets was readily apparent. In the wake of the Great Recession, it has become clear across the country that the road to genuine reform runs straight through these unions. How to deal with them and their Democratic allies presents state and local officials with a huge challenge that is likely to occupy them for years. But deal with them they must: Business as usual with public-sector unions has produced staggering government obligations. The stakes in these battles are high. They involve the long-term fiscal health of the nation, the balance of power between the nation’s two political parties, and the government’s efficiency and effectiveness. Ultimately, insofar as the fiscal health of the country is at stake, we are confronted with a threat to the power and prestige of the United States on the world stage.
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