zlacker

It's easy to blame privitization, but large public sector unions can be just as influential. As a politican I'd be much more afraid of angering, say, the AFT than I would be of any single private company.

Just because someone you don't like is clamoring for more money doesn't mean no one was clamoring for money before.

>>pmcgin+(OP)
You think the teachers' union is more powerful than any single company? that is a joke. If teachers had the power of the top dogs in the finance, pharma, defense or energy industries (to take a few obvious examples) have they'd all make 7 figures.

>>chadma+P1
Nobody is talking about teachers. But in California the Prison Guard Union holds immense sway.

>>chadma+P1
> You think the teachers' union is more powerful than any single company? that is a joke. If teachers had the power of the top dogs in the finance, pharma, defense or energy industries (to take a few obvious examples) have they'd all make 7 figures.

Half of CA's budget goes to education, by constitutional amendment.

What industry approaches that?

>>jfarme+53
There was a superb NPR investigative piece on that maybe a year ago. I remember being shocked at the guards' union's role in creating the problem. And to think that California prisons just a generation ago were so good -- recidivism so low -- that other countries were sending delegations to find out how they did it.

>>chadma+P1
For some reason it's recently become trendy to paint teachers' unions as the root of all evil on Hacker News. Who knows which think tank master-minded this particular tidbit of right-wing propaganda, but it's a story line that rings increasingly hollow the more I see it haphazardly inserted into every imaginable public policy debate.

I guess the rating of your comment reflects the result of pointing this out.