Public employee unions should be criminalized.
We read the article. The above quote is by Profs Siegal and DiSalvo on the economic/tax complication of public sector unions.
We certainly sympathize with their expose. But the above paragraph does not do their analysis justice.
First of all, we're not sure if "client politics" is the generally accepted term for what they mean, but there should certainly be such a term, to mean: "an interest group's concentrated efforts to secure rewards by imposing diffused costs on the mass of unorganized taxpayers."
That concept (and let's concede "client politics") certainly applies to public sector unions, but it also applies to unions across the board. Does it not? That is it simply comes down to what side, the "union" side, or the paying side, is more organized and concentrated, whether in the public or private sector. No?
And incidentally this is the very strategy that politics uses across the board to pass private agenda's, i.e. putting on a concentrated effort to impose diffused costs on unorganized taxpayers. Like maybe ObamaCare? Federal Bailouts? any socialistic scheme?
Secondly and related, public sector unions do indeed have a natural adversary, we voting taxpayers. Ask yourself, why is "the company" a natural adversary to its union members, after all the directors (management) will still pay themselves salary. But of course it is to keep costs down so "the company" can survive and stay profitable against competition; therefore the directors become the "organized" adversary. Similarly the voting taxpayer wants to survive and stay profitable against the competition of the tax financed bureaucracy; and therefore the directors, we taxpayers, need to be the "organized" adversary. Which of course is what the Tea Party is all about.
And that scares the bejesus out of the organized and concentrated LEFT, the federal government across the board (and for God knows what reason, the Media).
Johnny Suntrade