Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

News last week of Greece needing a bailout from the EU reinforces what may happen in our country in the future. It is already happening in our cities (see Detroit in the previous comment) and our states (right here in Calif.). If we keep running our national deficit higher and higher, someday we will be like Greece. The big problem in Greece is that the politicians handed out jobs and benefits way beyond their means. Now one out of six is a government job and attempts to cut them are met with riots from the unions. Sound familiar, Mayor Bing and Gov. Arnold?

I had an argument with my wife the other day. She said that unions are always bad. Everyone should be paid according to his worth, not because unions negotiate higher wages for him. My feeling is that if there was no unions we would still be living like back in the industrial revolution days when a few barons became very rich on the back of laborers who barely survived. No big middle class would have developed. So I don't have trouble with private unions. They don't hold a gun to the head of corporations to give them a contract. If the auto companies gave too much to the UAW in the past, that is their own fault. The lobbying by the unions in government is offset by the lobbying by the corporations. If the company is not doing well, unions have to give up some of the wages or benefits or they will go down with the company.

Unions for government employees, however, is another story. Their employer is the government which means they negotiate with politicians. The politicians are not using their own money to pay the workers. They cannot go bankrupt, like a company. The unions also contribute to the politicians and so politicians are beholden to them. So if people like Bing tries to save taxpayer money, you can bet the unions will try to get him out the next election. There are no corporate lobbyists going against the union lobbyists. So to me government employees should not be allowed to have unions. The wage and benefits should be set by an independent agency. If you don't like it, find a job in the private sector! Or go to Greece.