Colorado Proposition 103: A Democratic Party fund-raiser

The Denver Post has published my op-ed in opposition to Colorado Proposition 103. It begins:

Do you want government to throw even more of your tax dollars at Colorado teachers unions and their pet politicians, or do you actually want better education for children in Colorado?

Proposition 103 is about throwing money. Sponsored by Rep. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, and endorsed by Colorado’s largest teachers union, the initiative would increase income tax rates by 8 percent and sales tax rates by 3.4 percent — both for five years.

But decades of increasing school funding has not increased student test scores. It has created jobs for teachers and revenue for their unions that almost exclusively support Democratic politicians. These politicians sustain tax-funded schools as a monopolistic cartel that squashes competition and limits choice for parents and taxpayers.

Read the rest of the article at the Denver Post: Proposition 103 is about more money for the teachers union.

Thanks to Ben Degrow for pointing me to data sources, and to Ari Armstrong for suggesting key revisions.

For some of the references in the article, see this post: Colorado Proposition 103: More tax dollars for schools does not improve kids’ education.

 

 

Public-sector unions: Two wolves & a sheep vote on what’s for lunch

“Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” James Bovard’s critique of democracy also applies to public-sector unions. Unions and union-backed politicians are the wolves. Taxpayers are the sheep.

Public-sector union representatives “will often be on both sides of the collective bargaining table,” explains law professor Stephen Bainbridge. Union leaders are on one side; their “bought and paid for politicians” are on the other.  Unions fund politicians’ campaigns, and the politicians reciprocate by facilitating extravagant union wages, benefits, and protections.

The “process of collective bargaining … cannot be transplanted into the public service.” warned the pro-union Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Time columnist Joe Klein adds: “Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed…of the public?”

Public-sector unions are organized against the tax-paying public. A unionized private-sector firm risks losing customers if its union successfully strikes, protects lazy workers, resists labor-saving technologies, abuses pension policies, secures excessive job security, or demands exorbitant compensation. Not so with public-sector unions. Taxpayers are stuck paying for expensive government services.

How expensive? Wages for unionized local and state government employees exceed their nonunion counterparts by more than 11%, concludes labor economist James Sherk.  They are also more likely to receive pensions and have their employers pay all of their medical insurance premiums. It’s no surprise that highly unionized governments burden taxpayers with more debt, as Cato Institute policy analyst Chris Edwards notes.

With public-sector unions, taxpayers just get fleeced.

The Boulder Daily Camera published this article on February 26, 2011.

See also:

• Chris Edwards, Public-Sector Unions,” Cato Tax & Budget Bulletin, March 2010. (3 pages, good place to start, many good references to follow.)
• Chris Edwards, “Public Sector Unions and the Rising Costs of Employee Compensation,” Cato Journal, Winter 2010. (29 pages)
• Rand Simberg, Who’s Been Overreaching, Again? (many great points & links), via his article in Pajamas Media.

 

Amendment 49 | The Ivory Tower Explanation

Jon Caldera explains the proposed Amendment 49 to the Colorado constitution.

From EthicalStandardsNow.org:

Government should not be the bagman for special interests. Amendment 49 will prohibit governments from bundling money from public employees’ paychecks and delivering the cash to special interests who use it to lobby politicians. Government should be using our tax dollars to provide crucial public services, not to funnel money to political organizations. Amendment 49 keeps lobbyists in line.

Here are its endorsements.

Subsidize consumers, not producers (if you must subsidize)

People who think government has a role in making sure everyone has access to health care or education often conclude the the only way to do this is to force taxpayers to fund government-controlled insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP) and government schools.  But this does not follow from their stated concern.

It only follows if, say, the person either

• wants government to define what education and health care are,
• wants to make sure friends of politicians get government jobs managing the programs that control health care and education.
• wants to empower teachers unions that contract with government schools and donate to the political party that generally opposes school choice measures.  (For example, see here.)

But it does not follow if you care about children getting educated and people having access to health care.

What follows is to subsidize consumers rather than producers, and hence maintain a competitive marketplace for the production of the good.  Food is also important, but government doesn’t run grocery stores.  It taxes people to pay for food vouchers, or food stamps.

As Milton Friedman said:

If you want to subsidize the production of a product, there are two ways you can do it. You can subsidize the producer or you can subsidize the consumer. In education, we subsidize the producer—the school. If you subsidize the student instead—the consumer—you will have competition. The student could choose the school he attends and that would force schools to improve and to meet the demands of their students.

…education ought to be a parental matter. The responsibility for educating children is with parents. But in order to make it a parental matter, we must have a situation in which parents are Free to Choose the schools their children attend. They aren’t free to do that now. Today the schools pick the children. Children are assigned to schools by geography—by where they live. By contrast, I would argue that if the government is going to spend money on education, the money ought to travel with the children. The objective of such an expenditure ought to be educate children, not beautiful buildings. The way to accomplish this is to have a universal voucher.

The only point I’d disagree with him on is that a tax credit would be better.   With a voucher, there are strings attached to the government check, which will empower government to controls schools.