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It's easy to blame privitization, but large public sector unions can be just as influential. As a politican I'd be much more afraid of angering, say, the AFT t
by pmcginn 16y ago
It's easy to blame privitization, but large public sector unions can be just as influential. As a politican I'd be much more afraid of angering, say, the AFT than I would be of any single private company.
Just because someone you don't like is clamoring for more money doesn't mean no one was clamoring for money before.
- chadmalik 16y agoYou think the teachers' union is more powerful than any single company? that is a joke. If teachers had the power of the top dogs in the finance, pharma, defense or energy industries (to take a few obvious examples) have they'd all make 7 figures.
- jfarmer 16y agoNobody is talking about teachers. But in California the Prison Guard Union holds immense sway.
- gruseom 16y agoThere was a superb NPR investigative piece on that maybe a year ago. I remember being shocked at the guards' union's role in creating the problem. And to think that California prisons just a generation ago were so good -- recidivism so low -- that other countries were sending delegations to find out how they did it.
- anamax 16y ago> You think the teachers' union is more powerful than any single company? that is a joke. If teachers had the power of the top dogs in the finance, pharma, defense or energy industries (to take a few obvious examples) have they'd all make 7 figures. Half of CA's budget goes to education, by constitutional amendment. What industry approaches that?
- scrod 16y agoFor some reason it's recently become trendy to paint teachers' unions as the root of all evil on Hacker News. Who knows which think tank master-minded this particular tidbit of right-wing propaganda, but it's a story line that rings increasingly hollow the more I see it haphazardly inserted into every imaginable public policy debate. I guess the rating of your comment reflects the result of pointing this out.