There will be blood...
Public sector employees that are unionized have largely been able to sit out the recession and remain unaffected. They're out of touch with their employers, the unorganized taxpayer, having forgotten they work for the public and taxpayers and not the other way around. They are in the same privileged class as the bankers bailed out by those same taxpayers. As we move into structural unemployment along with high underemployment, with the remaining taxpayers footing the bill for overpaid public sector union employees, the likelihood of civil unrest between these two groups will become greater than we've already seen.
http://youtu.be/5CxP5clZf_g
I fear there will be violence. Many School districts will be laying off this summer, some communities will be hit pretty hard, that might be the first test.
ReplyDeleteWhat gets me is, the beautification of our schools. This constant expansion and beautification of our schools hasn't helped education in this country at all. If you bring it up, you are quickly attacked and silenced. I stopped going to town meetings, I don't cherish being bullied. And that's exactly what happens to you if you question all the spending.
In our town, when the stimulus money came in a couple of years ago, I kid you not, they spent it on a bridge to nowhere. They created a whopping 1 and 1/2 jobs restoring a historic bridge that went halfway across the river. I'm still fuming over this, 2 years later. lol
Let's hope society doesn't break down and resort to violence. That being said, I'm not sure we can avoid it at this point.
In my work, I administer and proctor testing for certification for credentialing for just about any trade or profession you could name including teachers and graduate students. We also do doctors and all medical fields, financial people from stock brokers to real estate and mortgage brokers along with social workers, electricians, mortuary people, you name it. Across the board, I can tell age before I even look at ID not by looks but by attitudes and seeming lack of basic education.
ReplyDeleteIt appalls me we are turning out so called professionals who may have managed to get a skill in one field but whose education in other areas are lacking too much to make me feel confident in them generally. It's obvious to me from the so called "lower end" certifications like pharmacy technicians, dental assistants and nurses that they lack so much education that they should have gotten before they even entered post-secondary education.
I took a class at a community college this spring. By the end of it the few of us who were, as they say "later in life" had already graduated from college and taking the class, were shocked at how little the other students had progressed. Or more accurately, how much the instructor let them "slide by" on very basic things. We kept asking each other "where is our tax money going for these public schools and community colleges?" As you note in your area, the campus was beautifully rebuilt from when we had all gone there in the 70s and it was quaintly called a "junior college," where we got a very solid basic education, in plain old standard functional and solid buildings.
After decades at Ma Bell I became annoyed by unions (I wasn't in one) but as the video states, it was the private sector and different. The police and fire unions even in right to work Arizona have gotten out of hand, they're just now getting layoffs but some are "double dipping" and getting rehired. They're all taking tests now also and have the worst case of "you owe me." It's causing a big hue and cry here and policy being revisited since the state employees have taken such a hard hit but city and county workers have not, so those would seem like their natural allies, laid off state workers, are now their biggest opponents. Odd twist of fate.
Personally I think there will be some civil unrest with contained violence but it will be in limited areas. Where unionism is the most embedded, such as big eastern and midwestern cities, it will get a little rough. In New Hampshire and Arizona there may be a dew squabbles but nothing major. I think the majority of people are really closing in and focusing on economic survival and basics like food, clothing and shelter and not going to tolerate foolishness. If you are paying few or no taxes due to low or no wages, who is going to pay these unionists anyway? "We ain't got no money" is a hard thing to riot over.
Especially since Bernanke has wisely decided to stop printing money before we over-inflate.