The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal informs us that for the first time, the number of unionized government workers outnumbers unionized private sector workers. Undisciplined by competition, government unions have contributed mightily to the fiscal abyss facing states like California New York and New Jersey. They’re no small part of the mess facing the federal government since the momentum for ever-larger federal spending comes to some degree from the public unions. The more the government grows, the more jobs open up for people who will have to join and pay dues. Public union officials are rent-seekers par excellence.
I have to wonder if they have ever entertained something akin to a Laffer Curve realization — that at some point, adding another government worker does more to depress the societal output from which compensation can be paid than it does to increase the haul of union dues? Probably not. Union officials seem to be stuck in what Thomas Sowell calls “stage one” thinking.
