Politics Found Me

It all started with a blog post from the Economist. I try to avoid long political debates on Facebook. It's not why I use the site since the 'Book is so diligent about telling everyone I know exactly what I'm doing. Eventually, the constant posts on politics will drown out the rest of the personal stuff that people come for. I don't want to do that to all the apolitical folk who friended me because we did Summer Theatre together.

I do love politics, though. This is a blog; it was inevitable that politics would find it's way here. Posting a news item about a topic like the Wisconsin union situation was bound to draw a response and draw one it did. An old friend took issue with it almost immediately. I'll just reproduce his post (adding some of his own edits) and my response here to save some time:

• Peter: What this article pretty much ignores is the fact that government jobs = fat pensions that you don't get in the private sector. That's one of the primary perks of getting a government job.
  
  The author dismisses said pensions by arguing that they'll be underfunded, but in doing so destroys the rest of his argument. Clearly then, the government is out of money and cuts have to come somewhere, but he provides no solutions.
  
• Erin: Hey, Peter! It's been quite a long time, hasn't it? Funny, I remember arguing quite a lot about politics as a rabblerouser in high school. It's almost like fifteen years hasn't gone by.
  
  Anyway, the author's argument here doesn't really deal with strategies for fixing the deficit (though the Economist in general is consistently on the side of pension reform, though not union busting). It's about the new idea that public sector workers are a lot better off than private sector workers. I would argue that even with the pension benefits, it's impossible to believe that public workers (meaning teachers, lawyers, administrators, accountants, firemen, policemen, etc) are paid wildly out of line with the work that they do. I also think he is right to point out that given the current economic climate, it is quite likely that even that one supposedly gold-plated benefit will vanish before most of the workers get their shot at it. Ultimately, I don't think there is any reason for the blogger to try to provide a particular solution to the deficit problem, since that isn't his purpose (though the Economist's editors consistently stand behind the need for meaningful deficit reduction through pension and health care reform, as well as other sensible tax reform to increase tax revenue and diversify the tax base away from an over-reliance on the income tax).
  
  The only point that I wish the author had made was that public sector benefits haven't fallen to the same levels as private sector benefits because governments are just plain slower at reacting to economic changes and because it responds to political as well as economic pressure (unlike, say GE or IBM). Even the Wisconsin union acknowledges the need for pension and health funding reform, though, a point that doesn't get enough emphasis, I think.
  
• Peter: It has been a while since we set up the ol' chess board and discussed life, politics and whatever else we deemed important. That said, I don't disagree with you, I guess I just don't get the point of the article. While it may be true that the pensions end up not fully-funded, isn't the fact that public employees have such fat pensions and sweet health-care plans that make it difficult to hire/retain/give raises to current employees? Moreover, though a direct comparison is difficult, I think that many public sector employees do make more than their private sector counterparts.
  
  At the end of the day, I'm all for paying a good wage to teachers, but I'd kill the unions too as they've long been against any kind of merit-based pay and make it darn near impossible to fire teachers.

I hope Peter has dropped by so that we can continue this discussion (sorry about the roundabout way to do that, Peter!), though I will gladly debate these points if anyone is interested.

I disagree that public sector pensions are outrageously high or that their health care plans are significantly better than many private plans (my parents will certainly debate that point and my father has worked for the federal government for his entire career). I would love to take issue with the comparison and there is a wealth of empirical data out there, but I'm just not going to out and find it (though if someone wants to hire me to spend the time to do that, they are welcome to send that interest along). It's just overall strange to me that in the past couple of years it has become an article of faith that the private sector workers are getting screwed and people look longingly at public sector compensation and benefits, something that would have been laughable even five years ago.

I definitely agree that teacher's unions have not been amenable to some obvious solutions to the clear problem of teacher quality (though it could be because of the confrontational way that these ideas have been presented by people who would happily do away with the union - not a recipe for dialogue).

As I said, I'm all about the discussion. Chime in if the spirit moves you!