Why do I put an article about public sector unions having bankrupted taxpayers in the Information War section? If more people knew how much legalized theft was going on due to the power of those public sector unions, they’d be demanding action. Here is Lewis M. Andrews writing at The Federalist:
The cumulative debt for all public pension systems is at $5.599 trillion, or $46,884 per household. Most is for teachers, whose unions have for years resisted improvements for kids.
With every headline about underfunded state and local public pensions, voters are coming to regret the overly generous retirement deals their representatives have negotiated with government unions. Dr. Joe Nation of the Stanford Institute for Policy Research puts the cumulative debt for all public pension systems at $5.599 trillion, or $46,884 per household.
But amid the growing concern about how state legislatures and city councils have failed to adequately fund retiree pensions, we must not forget that public workers have a performance issue of their own. Voters might question compensation packages for police, firefighters, and many other public employees, but at least the contracted services were provided.
The same cannot be said of primary and secondary educators who, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, comprise 99 percent of all local public employees and more than a third of all government workers.
Our Education Monopoly Strangled Quality
To appreciate the extent to which the teaching profession has consistently shortchanged taxpayers, we must go back more than half a century to October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union put the world’s first satellite into orbit. Literally overnight, there was a nationwide clamor for higher academic standards, especially in math and science.
A very contemporary education reform—school vouchers—was already on the table. Two years earlier, the late economist Milton Friedman had published a seminal article on “The Role of Government in Education,” which argued for allowing parents to direct the public funding for their children to schools of their choice.
Read more: The Federalist
Image credit: www.thefederalist.com.
