Is That a Union Endorsement in your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

I guess the only thing that surprises me about this headline (link)

Most U.S. Union Members Are Working for the Government, New Data Shows
...is that it didn't happen years ago. Surely it has been obvious to anyone looking that private-sector unions are tending to disappear while those in the public sector maintain themselves or flourish. I assume we can anticipate a new eruption of bile from websites of a certain sort about the evils of the teachers, the TSA employees and others of that sort--and of their corrupt alliance with the Democrats--but the issue is a good deal more general that. Those who want to holler about the teachers' unions--you don't usually see them telling us that we need to stand up to the prison guards or that part of our problem is lush pensions for police and firemen.

It's a dreadful problem all round, but it exists for one good non-insidious reason: positional advantage. Unions worldwide do well in things like rail and trucking--the historic core of the Teamsters Union--because they've got geography on their side: you can't leave home without them. Same with a good many public employee unions: when the day comes that the Meter Maid can pound her beat with Google goggles from Bangla Desh, I'm sure there will be somebody trying to make it happen. Meanwhile, we are more or less stuck with real cops on real beats, looking for real bennies and real pensions.

Positional, plus the grandfather effect. While the cop is tooling around in his cruiser all night, he has plenty of time to think about his situation--and think, and think, and think, until he has come up with 20 more ways to leverage some extra dollars out of the public fisc. Surely some of those 20 include ways of strengthening his relationship with the running dogs of the protected market system who are in the position to help keep him comfy and secure.

The virus, then, is quite general, and I don't see any immediate or obvious cure--the kind of thing that tends to grow in any stable society as it ages and becomes more entrenched. Meanwhile, we welcome the new Senator from Massachusetts, who arrives in Washington with the endorsement, inter alia, of her opponent's husband's own union.