I Still Don't Understand Why Progressives Blindly Support Public Employee Unions
I have asked this question before:
Taking the government's current size and tax base as a given, is there a segment of the progressive community that gets uncomfortable with the proportion of these resources that are channeled into government employee hands rather than into actual services for the public?
I don't think this is an unfair question. People ask lots of unfair questions in politics that try to impose the questioner's assumptions and worldview on the respondent (You want open immigration? Don't you care about terrorism? You don't want a $15 minimum wage? Don't you care about the poor?) But I am honestly trying to ask this of Progressives from the Progressive worldview -- Increasingly privileged government workers, who typically make more in pay in benefits for less work than the rest of us, are claiming for themselves so many of the resources of the government that services and programs Progressives favor are being cut back. In the Progressive oppressor-oppressed model, how does $100,000 pensions for government workers get prioritized over homeless shelters?
We have written frequently over the past couple of weeks about the disastrous public pension funds in Kentucky that are anywhere from $42 - $84 billion underfunded, depending on which discount rate you feel inclined to use. As we've argued before, these pensions, like the ones in Illinois and other states, are so hopelessly underfunded that they haven't a prayer of ever again being made whole.
That said, logic and math have never before stopped pissed off teachers and/or clueless legislators from throwing good money after bad in an effort to 'kick the can down the road' on their pension crises. As such, it should come as no surprise at all that the Lexington Herald Leader reported today that Kentucky's 365,000 teachers and other public employees are now demanding that taxpayers contribute a staggering $5.4 billion to their insolvent ponzi schemes over the next two years alone. To put that number in perspective, $5.4 billion is roughly $3,200 for each household in the state of Kentucky and 25% of the state's entire budget over a two-year period.
