Last week, we discussed the kissing cousins of the affordability crisis, woke Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America. Now it is time to talk about their common grandparent: the union movement in America, which comprises some of the most economically illiterate people in America.
How so?
Because too many union leaders consistently attack and undermine the source of their own salaries and pensions.
Do you remember the “Occupy Wall Street” movement? That was created by the Service Employees International Union or SEIU. SEIU was supposedly protesting the “1%”. However, these morons and the media glossed over the fact that nearly every union pension fund in America is invested in, and dependent upon, returns on investments on Wall Street! Furthermore, SEIU is now the primary sponsor of Proposition 40, the tax on the assets (billionaires are already paying taxes on their income) of billionaires and their trusts in CA. Again, you can’t fix this type of stupid. Billionaires are the primary source of the taxes that pay the wages of SEIU employees working in state and local government, some 750,000 of them.
According to Professor Jeffrey Sklansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago, “On May 1, 1886, unions of skilled workers, organized by their crafts or trades, led a nationwide general strike for the eight-hour day. They were joined by radical socialists, militant anarchists, and many members of the Knights of Labor. More than 100,000 workers took part across the country.”
Sklansky continues, “The most dramatic demonstrations happened in Chicago, which had become the second-largest city in the U.S. after years of swift growth. Nearly 40,000 striking Chicago workers shut down much of that burgeoning industrial, agricultural, and commercial hub. Three days later, a bomb thrown at a rally in Haymarket Square killed seven police officers, sparking a sweeping nationwide crackdown on labor activism.”
Sklansky writes, “In 1889, socialist trade unions and workers’ parties, meeting in Paris for the first congress of a new Socialist International, proclaimed May 1 an international workers’ holiday. They were partly following the lead of the new American Federation of Labor, which had called for renewed strikes on the anniversary of the 1886 action.”
Even though we celebrate Labor Day in America in September, forever and a day, unions across America also continue to celebrate May Day because they are tied to a socialist type of political ideology root and branch.
The left is selling socialism to young people as the cure to the affordability crisis as they blame the crisis on capitalism. But little do they know that labor unions in America have been incubating socialist-type policies that, by increasing the size and scope of government, have hindered the ability of capitalism to thrive and help make things affordable. For more details, read “Atlas Shrugged”!
Of course, the truth is socialism doesn’t make things more affordable, and it certainly doesn’t magically make things free. To solve the affordability crisis we need less government, not more. Yet, nearly half of all union members in America are employed by the public sector and their future is intertwined with more government that they exploit to their own inurement. See. Transparent California for the gory details!
When Jerry Brown was governor the first time in the 1970s, his mantra was “less is more.”
What did that mean? By way of erecting barriers to development of all kinds, including all the things Gen X, Y, and Z are complaining about today, government policies have stifled the creation of affordable housing and everything else a community needs to support the same, namely, roads, highways, freeways, water, and sewers. Jerry’s policies began a trend that ended in much less investment in infrastructure but more investment in growing government by way of allowing government employees to unionize.
Meanwhile, our roads, bridges, dams, and schools are literally falling apart while public sector pay, benefits, and pension obligations, consume a significant and growing portion of government budgets. In Santa Barbara County, more than half the budget (over $800 million) goes to employee pay and benefits while our own maintenance deficit of roads, parks, and buildings, has soared to over $500 million.
To continue to pay inflated salaries and benefits to government employees, we have turned to debt financing for most infrastructure needs. Our state and local governments, including cities, counties, and schools have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars in bond indebtedness, all of which must be paid back with interest. And now, our federal debt has hit $40 trillion. These government borrowing trends drive inflation, but again, young people have never been taught basic economics, so they blame capitalism.
The Hoover Institution reports that during the 1960s, four spending categories— health care, pensions, welfare, and interest on debt—took up about 34 percent of the CA budget. Today, the budget share of those four categories has nearly doubled to about 66 percent, leaving only a small piece of the pie for other budget areas, such as infrastructure. In the 1960s, California spent 20% of every dollar on infrastructure. Now, we spend less than 3%.
Of course, if there is a limit to what voters are willing to borrow, perhaps we can get them to steal. That is, Prop. 40 proposes to tax the accumulated assets of billionaires and trusts. We used to call that “asset seizure.” Regardless, it is plain to see that SEIU is selfish, greedy, and stupid for jeopardizing the tax revenue that billionaires pay in income taxes, as they are moving out of the state, leaving the rest of the upper and middle class holding the bag forever and a day for government largesse.
In conclusion, while the costs to employ “public servants” has exploded, look at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ report card on the associated decline having to do with California’s infrastructure. It reads like the report card of our public-school children. Here is a snapshot:
See this report here:
https://infrastructurereportcard.org/state-item/california/
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I take exception to capitalism in unregulated form is good. The US has the most unregulated capitalism in the world and the wealth inequality is unbelievable. I am also offended that anyone who disagrees with your viewpoint is the pejorative, "woke". I suggest for your readers to get another view on the state of affairs;
read Heather Cox Richardson, Adam Kinzinger, Richard Wolf, & Democracy Now!
When I was offered the "opportunity" to lead the negotiating team for the Administration of the Courts (AOC) for California the existing team shared their frustrations at having no leverage to bargain with since the unions knew that the courts can't close or move out of state or do anything except pay whatever the union demanded. That is the problem that arose with the unionization of public employees.