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One hand clapping

Peter Meyer
2.24.2011

In an essay about the fracas in Wisconsin Jonah Goldberg argues in the L.A. Times that ?Public unions have been a 50-year mistake?.

A crucial distinction has been lost in the debate over [Gov. Scott] Walker's proposals: Government unions are not the same thing as private sector unions.

It is a point well-worth making.? While private sector unions came from the ?bloody adversarial relationship? between management and labor, says Goldberg, public unions are ?rankly political? animals. They deliver money to legislators who, not surprisingly, vote them nice salaries and benefits. Public sector unions are simply ?the party of government.?? It's like bargaining with yourself.?

--Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow

Tags: Wisconsin

Peter Meyer is an adjunct fellow with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Meyer is also a former News Editor of Life magazine and the author of numerous nonfiction books, including the critically acclaimed The Yale Murder (Empire Books, 1982; Berkley Books, 1983) and Death of Innocence (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985; Berkley Books, 1986). Over the course of his three-decade journalism career Meyer, who…

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