---

Unintended consequences in Wisconsin
...Think about it: When education unions succeed in wringing every concession they can out of their particular piece of a school system, the squeeze is felt mainly by people who have to rely on the whole of that school system: Goodbye, gym class; hello, parents' paying out of pocket for all kinds of "extras" — and these are not, by and large, parents who can just throw their hands up and say, “That's it, he's going to Buckley!” When transit workers' demands shut down services or drive up fares, it barely registers with the rich who ferry themselves in taxis and towncars from one gilded district to another. It hurts those who can't get to their jobs without a bus or subway — and who need to count every cent that commute costs them. When a city's police force receives so much in salary and benefits that the city is then unable to hire enough cops on the beat, who is going to feel it more? The professional who must ask the cabdriver to idle in front of the building until the doorman appears, or the woman who cleans that professional's office, and has to hustle up a dark street before letting herself in? In short, when any government is forced to starve one set of programs in order to feed another, it affects the people who most need those programs — people who are rarely found at the yacht club.

Remember, too, that the people who most need public services also number among the people who are forced to fund them. When it is pointed out that public-sector workers generally earn more than their private-sector counterparts, the unions typically retort that this is only true among lower-level workers. Higher-up public employees tend to be both better educated and less remunerated. But this observation only complicates the social-justice credentials of the whole exercise, for it means that lower down on the ladder, we have public-sector workers deriving benefits from taxpayers who make less than they do. ...