Ezra Klein is completely correct. The union-blaming has to stop because they did not cause the recession. If the Democrats weren't so reluctant to lay blame where it should be - Wall Street - and implement real policies that would tame the beast, it would be a lot easier to combat such ridiculous attacks by the GOP. The Republicans have blamed everyone from the poor, minorities, Freddie/Fannie and the stimulus for the bad economy but everyone with open eyes knows that the recession and current bad economy had everything to do with excessive gambling by Wall Street.
Let’s be clear: Whatever fiscal problems Wisconsin is -- or is not -- facing at the moment, they’re not caused by labor unions. That’s also true for New Jersey, for Ohio and for the other states. There was no sharp rise in public workers’ wages in 2006 and 2007, no major reforms of the country’s labor laws, no dramatic change in how unions organize. And yet state budgets collapsed. Revenues plummeted. Taxes had to go up, and spending had to go down, all across the country.
Blame the banks. Blame global capital flows. Blame lax regulation of Wall Street. Blame home buyers, or home sellers. But don’t blame the unions. Not for this recession.
Of course, the fact that public employee pensions didn’t cause a meltdown at Lehman Brothers doesn’t mean they’re not stressing state budgets. But the buildup of global capital that overheated the American housing sector and got packaged into seemingly riskless financial products that then brought down Wall Street, paralyzing the economy, throwing millions out of work, and destroying state revenues even as state residents needed more social services? The answer to that is not to end collective bargaining for public employees. A plus B plus C does not equal what Gov. Scott Walker is attempting in Wisconsin.
