As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on October 19:

“That discussion has already begun, in letters from California lawmakers to Gov. Jerry Brown, from state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, who said he is 'looking into legislation that could prevent future strikes,' a petition drive by a Democratic Assembly candidate in the East Bay seeking the same, and a piece by editorial page editor John Diaz in Sunday’s Chronicle supporting a Republican proposal that BART unions be made to honor the no-strike clause in their last contract.”

The aforementioned Democratic Assembly candidate is Steve Glazer, a “political strategist, longtime adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown and, most recently, city councilman in the prosperous East Bay suburb of Orinda.” In an October 15 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Glazer described himself as “a progressive Democrat who is fiscally conservative — supportive of public-pension reform and more business-friendly regulations, and willing to take on labor, the biggest special interest in the state.”

Glazer, reportedly among the top money-raisers statewide so far for next year’s Assembly races, went on to say that “Not one drop” of his campaign contributions has come from labor. “I’m redefining what it means to be a Democrat,” Glazer said.

By apparently recognizing that fiscal conservative values require taking on unions like those representing BART workers, Glazer is on to something. But how far will he take it?

Right to strike?

When questioning the right of BART workers to strike, the underlying principle is that workers who hold monopoly power over a vital public service cannot be permitted to withhold that service, holding members of the public hostage, in order to extract concessions from management. This ability has served BART well over the years.

Here, taken from information provided to the California State Controller from their “Raw Export” page (refer to “2011 Special District Data), with analysis from the California Public Policy Center available to download in an Excel spreadsheet, is how much the average full-time BART worker made in 2011:

This is only part of the compensation, however.

Benefits

Here, taken from a BART employment brochure, are the benefits offered BART employees:

Nice work if you can find it. How many veteran workers get six weeks' paid vacation per year, plus 14 paid holidays, a generous pension (“2% at 55” equates to a retirement benefit at least three times better than Social Security) that costs them nothing, and health and dental coverage with an average value of $15,885 per year, for $92 per month? Plus long-term disability insurance, life insurance and a host of other benefits including unlimited free rides on BART?

If BART were a self-supporting, non-monopolistic entity, providing its unionized workforce with this sort of largesse would be a private matter between the employees and their management. But if you review BART’s 2013 Budget, you will see that, of the $672 million of total revenues expected in 2013, only $415 million comes from operating revenue — passenger fares, parking fees, etc. The other $257 million comes from taxpayers, mostly through sales taxes. BART’s biggest 2013 expense, by far, is the $381 million they have budgeted for labor.

Electing own management

Which brings us to a teachable moment.

BART’s compensation relies partially on the ability of its workers to strike. But unionized public-sector workers, who have only limited ability to strike, still benefit from binding arbitration rules, as well as major advantages that BART’s unions do not have — they elect their management. California’s public-sector unions collect and spend more than $1 billion per year, with about one-third of that (a staggering amount) going to explicitly political activity, but nearly all of it used to advance a political agenda — how we manage our public agencies.

The financial consequences of the ability of public-sector unions to decisively influence the election of politicians they negotiate with should be obvious by now, especially to “fiscal conservatives,” regardless of their party. Here are a few examples of the average total compensation — direct pay plus employer paid benefits — for California’s city workers:  San Jose — $149,907, Anaheim — $146,551, Costa Mesa — $146,863, Irvine — $143,691.

And here is a study showing California’s total state and local government debt, when you include the present value of unfunded liabilities for pensions and retirement health care at realistic rates of return, to exceed $1 trillion.

What politicians and voters need to understand is that public-sector unions wield leverage even more potent than BART’s unions. This leverage has resulted in an overpaid public-sector workforce and potentially catastrophic levels of state and local government debt.

So what will fiscally conservative Democrats do? What will voters do?

It is healthy to appreciate the contributions made by our public servants. But to pay public servants literally two to three times as much as the average private-sector worker is to invert the relationship. Public servants have no right to exempt themselves from the economic challenges facing private-sector workers. Until public-sector workers cannot inordinately influence our politicians, and until public-sector workers earn taxpayer-funded benefits according to the same formulas and incentives as private-sector workers, the challenge of achieving a financially sustainable government will have no chance of success.

*   *   *

Ed Ring is the executive director of the California Public Policy Center.

—  Roger Berkowitz, Executive Director, Hannah Arendt Center

The above quote explains quite well the intrinsic conflict of interest that accrues to public-sector unions. This conflict of interest is the primary distinction between public-sector unions and private-sector unions. It is the reason that private-sector unions can muster strong arguments for their continued relevance in society, whereas the very legitimacy of public-sector unions is questionable.

And lest anyone suggest that calls for reform — if not the abolition — of public-sector unions emanates solely from the “extreme right wing,” consider the provenance of the above quote. The highly regarded, intellectually elite Hannah Arendt Center boasts perhaps the most impeccable nonpartisan, anti-ideological credentials of any comparable institution in the world. It is named after famous political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the author of numerous books, the most famous being “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”

The reason Democrats don’t support public-sector union reform is obvious. There is no special interest in America that donates more money to the Democratic Party than public-sector unions. The data in the table below make this clear. If you go to the source of this data, OpenSecrets.org, you will see that the vast majority of the $535 million contributed to Democrats between 2000 and 2010 came from public-sector unions, whose membership in absolute numbers now exceeds that of private-sector unions.

In California, where public-sector union spending on state and local campaigns and lobbying exceeds $500 million per two-year cycle, the same percentages apply.

Conflicts of interest

Democrats are reluctant to recognize the conflict of interest because the Democratic Party is financially dependent on public-sector unions. It is significant that, on the above table, which covers federal elections and lobbying efforts, corporate contributions are nearly balanced between Democrats and Republicans. If union spending provided a counterweight to corporate spending, as the unions claim, then one could make a case against reform.

But “union spending” is predominantly “public-sector union spending,” and their primary agenda has nothing to do with protecting the rights of private-sector workers. Their agenda has to do with exempting public-sector workers from the economic challenges facing ordinary American workers who have to compete — along with corporations — in the global economy. And corporations, facing a monolithic, self-interested, unionized government, play ball.

Breaking the power of public-sector unions, if not eliminating them altogether, is a prerequisite, ironically, to reforming the financial sector and restoring a competitive corporate environment. It is also a prerequisite to reforming taxpayer-funded, government-administered benefits and entitlements so that all American workers earn them according to the same set of formulas and incentives — regardless of whether or not they work for the government or in the private sector.

Most of the public-sector union reform strategies that have been attempted — successfully or not — have been oriented toward facilitating “opt-out” behavior for government workers. Right-to-work laws allow employees of unionized government agencies to refuse to pay union dues. Most states, even California, permit employees of unionized government agencies to opt-out of paying the political portion of their dues. But these reforms do nothing to stop the overwhelming portion of government union money flowing to Democrats, a partisan strategy on the part of public-sector union leadership that is entirely unrepresentative of their membership.

Party identification

Taking this concept to its logical extreme makes the point clear:  Using very rough numbers, the party identification among America’s government workers nearly mirrors that of the private-sector workers, splitting about one-third each among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, according to a Gallup poll in 2011.

A successful paycheck protection law would, arguably, result in government political contributions diminishing by one-third — possibly more, depending on the sentiments of independents. That is, instead of diverting, for example, $100 million dollars from the taxpayer-funded government payroll into the coffers of the Democratic party, only $66 million would go there. The Republicans would still get nothing, and the essence of a forcibly politicized government workforce would remain intact.

Other than abolition, speculating over what alternative public-sector union reform strategy might be more effective than “paycheck protection” is dangerous. Paycheck protection laws are similar to Proposition 32 on California’s November 2012 ballot. In the ballot language, it would have prohibited “unions from using payroll-deducted funds for political purposes.” Voters turned it down, 57-43.

But it might be possible to force, through litigation, the allocation of government union political contributions to parties according to the party registration of the union memberships. Once per year, unionized government workers would fill out a form where they would disclose, anonymously, their party registration. A 3rd party agency, perhaps a major public accounting firm, would collect these ballots, collect the political contributions, and allocate the money to the respective parties based on the voting of the members.

*   *   *

Ed Ring is the executive director of the California Public Policy Center.

Romero, a Democrat who served as Senate majority leader, knows what she’s talking about. Her focus is on education, where the teachers’ unions have blocked meaningful reforms for years by protecting bad teachers from being terminated, promoting based on seniority instead of merit, taking over local school boards with hand-picked, union-financed candidates, attacking charter schools, prioritizing teacher compensation and job security over student achievement, and pushing a social agenda in front of academic fundamentals. Romero considers it a civil rights issue, since the negative impact of the union takeover has disproportionately harmed public education in low-income and minority communities.

What Romero discusses publicly — criticizing not only teachers’ unions for undermining public education, but also public safety unions for pricing their services beyond the ability of cities and counties to afford them — is privately echoed by Democratic lawmakers throughout California. And it should come as no surprise that Romero, along with virtually all Democratic lawmakers, places equal if not greater blame on the corrupting influence of corporate special interests in Sacramento.

Connection

But there’s another crucial connection: Public sector unions have an identity of interests with those elements of capitalism they decry the loudest, the crony capitalists and the casino bankers. If this is understood by Democratic legislators, or even Republicans, it is rarely articulated. And to the extent it is understood, awareness has yet to translate into proposals, much less into action.

The alliance between public sector unions and entrenched private-sector elites is not an adjunct point to be recognized, acknowledged and forgotten. It is the primary underlying cause of some of America’s most challenging threats, including economic stagnation, increased stratification of wealth, financial insolvency, mediocre education outcomes, and eroding civil liberties.  As I explain in “Why Public Sector Unions are Special Special Interests”:

“This reality, that public sector unions operate at the heart of the corporate and financial elite, that they are the brokers and enablers of corporate and financial power, is the tragic irony that is lost on California’s electorate. Public sector unions are the foot soldiers of corporatism, because without their blessing and support, crony capitalists would not successfully lobby for anti-competitive laws, pension bankers would not have a taxpayer-guaranteed virtually unlimited source of funds to invest, and bond underwriters would not be collecting commissions on hundreds of billions in bond issues necessitated by spending deficits. Public sector unions are also the facilitators of authoritarianism, because every new law and every new intrusion on civil liberties is accompanied by a need for more unionized government workers.”

Evidence

Evidence of the connection between public-sector unions and crony capitalists is everywhere:

* Overbuilt schools and prisons, constructed by politically connected construction firms and costing taxpayers far more than what right-sized, competitively bid institutions should have cost.

* “Affordable housing” and big box retailing being constructed using public funds and eminent domain laws, where the primary criteria for participation are political connections — i.e., public sector union connections — not market savvy and access to risk capital.

* “Carbon emissions auctions” set to extract more than $2 billion from ratepayer supported utilities in November 2013, eventually increasing to over 10 times that much annually, so financial traders can make a killing in commissions, crony capitalists can access funds for “green” projects that ought to be able to withstand the scrutiny of genuine venture investors, and public entities can collect financial windfalls for enacting “smart growth” ordinances and by redefining jobs to include “global warming mitigation.”

* California’s $370 billion in state and local government bond debt, rolling over every five to 30 years, earning billions in commissions to financial interests, and enabling deficit spending by governments that can’t afford to pay their unionized workforces.

* At least $600 billion in assets currently invested by California’s 80 different public employee pension funds, earning financial interests billions in management fees and commissions every year, and guaranteeing public employees retirement packages that ordinary citizens can only dream of.

* Anywhere between $200 and $600 billion (or more) in unfunded public employee pension and retirement health care obligations, that financial interests will make additional billions in fees to invest, once their attorneys, working in tandem with public sector union attorneys, compel taxpayers to fork over the money.

Context

This is the context in which one of California’s teachers’ unions produced a video cartoon a few months ago, showing the caricature of a rich tycoon urinating onto a crowd of poor people. The irony is only matched by the hypocrisy.

Romero distinguished herself last year by supporting Proposition 32, which would have merely required anyone collecting political contributions via payroll deductions to ask for permission once a year. Because passage of Prop. 32 would have threatened the money pouring into public sector unions, Romero’s support was an act of extraordinary courage.

At this point, we should emphasize this startling fact: By undermining the power of public sector unions, you are undermining the entire apparatus of corruption. You are weakening the entire nexus of government power and financial greed.

Ed Ring is the executive director of the California Public Policy Center, and the editor of UnionWatch.org.

Fortunately, public sector union reform is something even Democrats are realizing is essential if governments are going to get budgets under control, implement labor-saving new technologies, reform public education, and have funds left over to rebuild and upgrade infrastructure.

Now a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin, Tim Carpenter, has picked up where Gov. Walker left off. An article in the Wisconsin Reporter entitled “Police union says Dem proposal on collective bargaining is retaliation,” describes Carpenter’s “Act 10 Equity” legislation that would “expand the state’s controversial restrictions on collective bargaining to the two sectors spared from the new law more than two years ago.”

Again, a cynic might suggest this is indeed retaliation — if those liberal teachers unions are going to be restricted, so should those conservative police unions. But if conservatives truly adhere to the fundamental principles of limited government and individual freedoms, it is the right thing to do.

‘Intrinsically in favor of less freedom’

With all public employee unions, the more restrictions on property rights or personal freedoms there are, the more public employees are needed to enforce them. Public employee unions are intrinsically in favor of bigger government and less freedom because that is how they serve their members and build their organizations. Even if public employee unions were banned entirely, public employees would still be extremely active and influential in politics, because their livelyhoods are intimately affected by public policy.

This conflict of interests — the fact that a bigger, more intrusive government serves the interests of government employees but does not necessarily serve the interests of private citizens — is magnified in the case of public safety unions. As noted in a UnionWatch editorial earlier this year “How Public Sector Unions Skew America’s Public Safety and National Security Agenda,” as we enter an era of ubiquitous surveillance and automated law-enforcement tactics, it is vital that civil libertarians on both sides of the political spectrum recognize that government unions have a vested interest in expanding the size and the powers of government.

There are compelling reasons why law enforcement is more challenging that it has ever been. The globalization of crime, the emergence of cyber-crime, asymmetric terror threats and cultural upheaval, all combine to require police work of unprecedented scope and sophistication. But how we maintain the precarious balance between security and liberty should be a discussion that isn’t preempted by public safety unions whose primary agenda is to increase the payroll and power of their agencies. In Wisconsin, for example, they will still wield tremendous political influence even if their unions are subjected to the same restrictions as unions representing other public employees.

Walker may ‘finish the job’  in Wisconsin

Gov. Walker has recently opened the door to completing the work he started. As reported last week in Wisconsin Public Radio News and the Huffington Post, he said “state Republicans might expand the state’s controversial restrictions on collective bargaining to the two sectors spared from the new law more than two years ago.”

If Walker decides to try to finish the job, he may encounter resistance from Republicans who lack the courage of their convictions because they need to accept political contributions from public safety unions. But Walker may find unexpected support from Democrats.

Wisconsin, along with most states in America right now, is in the midst of an epic debate over whether or not public sector unions should be more heavily regulated, if not outlawed entirely. In a partisan, and very superficial context, it is a debate between Democrats and Republicans. In an economic context, it is a debate as to whether or not government employees should be permitted to use union clout to elevate themselves to positions of extraordinary economic privilege, exempting themselves from the challenges facing their fellow citizens. And in the related context of civil liberties, it is a debate as to whether or not unionized government workers are enabling a police state that ensures perpetuation of a status quo favoring anti-competitive monopolies, wealthy elites and government workers.

Ring is the executive director of the California Public Policy Center, and the editor of UnionWatch.org.

This is patently false, and spreading this falsehood has dangerous consequences.

Not only are the financial adjustments necessary to fix Social Security far easier to implement than what it’s going to take to rescue public sector pensions, but the sheer size of the public sector pension liability is actually bigger than the total liability for the entire Social Security fund. It is imperative that American voters understand this fact.

In the United States today, about 20 percent of workers are employed by the government (or public utilities that offer benefits on par with government). For recent retirees, their average pension after a 30 year career is more than $60,000 per year, and their average retirement age is 58. Because they retire 10 years before full Social Security benefits are eligible to private citizens at age 68, retired public employees actually comprise nearly 30 percent of the retired population.

The average Social Security benefit is less than $20,000 per year. Critically, the ratio of workers to retirees in the Social Security system is more than 3-to-1, set to move downwards marginally within the next 20 years, whereas the ratio of workers to retirees participating in government worker pension plans is already less than 2-to-1 and is on track to move to roughly 1.5-to-1 within the next 20 years. Here’s how that math stacks up:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2030, when Social Security will be supposedly approaching insolvency, there will be 99.4 million citizens over 58 years old, and 59.5 million citizens over 68 years old. This means that by 2030 (assuming no public employees also participate in Social Security — which many of them do), there will be 19.9 million government retirees collecting pensions that average $60,000 per year, and there will be 47.6 million private sector retirees collecting Social Security benefits that average $20,000 per year.

Got that? The total pension payouts to government retirees, who were only 20 precent of the workforce, will be $1.2 trillion, whereas the total Social Security payouts to private sector retirees will be $952 billion, only 80 percent as much.

Solvency

Now let’s talk about solvency, something that trained economists like Jeffrey Dorfman ought to understand thoroughly. Assuming government’s share of the workforce remains at around 20 percent, in 2030 we will have 247 million citizens over the age of 25. On a pay-as-you-go basis, to pay $1.2 trillion annually to 19.9 million government pensioners, 29.6 million active government workers would each require $40,343 per year withheld from their paychecks; to pay $952 billion annually to 47.6 million retired Social Security recipients, 150 million private sector workers would require $6,337 per year withheld from their paychecks — one sixth as much.

You can tweak the numbers all you like. Use medians instead of averages. Assume the public sector worker actually keeps working, on average, to age 60. Take into account disability payments, which are drawn from the Social Security fund. Assume people collect Social Security benefits before age 68. The stark fact remains: Our government pays more money to its own retirees — who represent 20 percent of the active workforce — than it pays in Social Security retirement benefits to everybody else put together. Financing Social Security, forever, can be accomplished with relatively minor incremental adjustments to withholding and benefits.

It is in this context that two special interest groups, public sector unions, and public/private investment fund managers, would have you believe Social Security is the bigger problem. Government labor unions want our attention drawn away from the cataclysmic disaster facing public sector pensions for as long as possible. They want voters to perceive the problem of retirement security to be one that requires shared sacrifice, when nothing of the sort reflects reality. Pension fund managers are getting filthy rich investing public sector pension fund money, and would love to get their hands on the nearly equivalent funds that currently flow into Social Security.

Dorfman’s final insult is to suggest 401(k) funds provide a more secure retirement than defined benefits. Sure, if you are a fund manager collecting commissions on individual 401(k) accounts, regardless of their volatility.

Benefits

The reality is that defined benefits are always preferable to 401(k) accounts because they greatly reduce market risk and they virtually eliminate mortality risk — i.e., in a pooled fund you don’t have to hope you die before your money runs out. The problem with public sector pensions is simple: (1) They rely too much on asset appreciation, something that is going to be increasingly problematic in our debt-saturated, deficit-ridden, aging society; and (2) they are way, way out of line with what ordinary citizens can ever hope to expect from Social Security.

Fixing public sector pensions is furthered by borrowing some concepts from Social Security, which might be characterized as an “adjustable defined benefit.” Here is the solution:

(1) Base pension benefits on career earnings, not final years of earnings.
(2) Stop using the taxpayers’ money to manipulate global investment markets and just put all the funds into Treasury Bills; better yet, put pensions onto a pay-as-you go financial footing where current workers pay for retiree benefits.
(3) Calibrate benefits so highly compensated participants get a lower pension as a percent of their career earnings than participants with low or average career compensation.
(4) Put a ceiling on annual pension benefits of twice the maximum annual social security benefit.
(5) Whenever necessary, lower pension benefits for all retirees on a pro-rata basis (subject to a floor equivalent to 75 percent of the average Social Security benefit) to the extent the system is underfunded, in order to restore full funding.
(6) Raise the age at which participants become eligible for pension benefits to a minimum of age 60.

Public sector unions and private investment fund managers are allies in what is probably the most egregious fleecing of taxpayers in American history.

*   *   *

Ed Ring is the executive director of the California Public Policy Center and the editor of UnionWatch.org.

California’s state and local spending, in total, has risen to nearly $400 billion a year.

That is, if anyone can actually compile accurate financial information. The state controller hasn’t produced a consolidated financial report for K-12 school districts and community colleges since 2000. The most recent data available from the state controller’s office, “Consolidated Annual Financial Reports,” for cities, counties, special districts and redevelopment agencies, concern the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, more than two years ago. And if you want to match revenue coming from funding agencies — such as the federal and state government to local cities and counties — don’t expect the reported disbursements on the reports from the funding agencies to match the reported receipts from the receiving agencies.

These are among the findings of a new study released yesterday by the California Public Policy Center, where I am executive director, after several months of wading through virtually every official source of consolidated financial data produced by state agencies, and after talking with dozens of financial professionals working in those agencies.

If you read the study, “How Big Are California’s State and Local Governments Combined?,” you will note the extensively footnoted calculations put California’s total state and local government spending at $365 billion per year. You will see that, in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, California’s taxpayers paid an estimated:

* $48.7 billion for direct state operations, including higher education;

* $67.4 billion for K-12 public schools and community colleges;

* $57.4 billion for the county governments;

* $55.8 billion for the city governments;

* $40.5 billion for special districts;

* $8.9 billion for redevelopment agencies;

* $86.3 billion for medicaid, welfare, and unemployment compensation.

How much?

Who knows how much we spent in the fiscal year just ended, on June 30, 2013? The informational website, USGovernmentSpending.com, reports, “California State & Local 2013 Spending by Function” at $477.8 billion!

The only takeaways here are:

(1) Evidently, the CPPC did not make any extrapolations that might invite accusations of trying to inflate the numbers to make a point;

(2) The data are so fragmented, so contradictory, so overwhelming in volume and so abundantly lacking in clarity, that it should come as no surprise that a separate independent study might produce a number so much higher. Or perhaps California’s state and local government spending has actually increased 30 percent in two years.

Not easily found in any official report, not even in the many individual city and county financials that the CPPC team spot-checked, was any attempt to produce tables showing personnel costs as a percent of the total budget. It’s an interesting exercise — perhaps too revealing to find its way into the practices and procedures of public agency financial accounting staff.

Workers

For example, according to U.S. Census Bureau data for California’s state and local governments, in 2011 there were 335,971 full time state workers, and 1,158,327 full-time local government workers. Their average pay, before employer paid benefits, was reportedly $70,351 and $73,928, respectively.

From CPPC studies of local government payrolls in California, we know that the average overhead for employer-paid benefits is as follows (please note the CPPC hasn’t yet officially released their payroll analyses for Newport Beach and Fullerton):

* San Jose = 55 percent;

* Anaheim = 51 percent;

* Costa Mesa = 35 percent;

* Irvine = 50 percent;

* Newport Beach = 49 percent;

* Fullerton = 42 percent.

Based on this evidence, it is safe to assume the average state or local government worker in California enjoys employer-paid benefits equivalent to 45 percent of their average base salary, plus overtime. This would mean the average state government worker in California earns total compensation of $102,000 per year, and the average local government worker in California earns total compensation of $107,000 per year.

In other words, if you take out of that $365 billion the $86 billion passed through in the form of medicaid, welfare and unemployment compensation, and if you include as compensation the additional $12 billion spent for part-time government workers (no benefits), a whopping 60 percent, or $166 billion, went to pay personnel costs. And remember, these are direct costs — actual pay and benefit costs — and don’t include the cost for a desk, a chair, an office, etc.

It’s hard to get these numbers. That’s the big story. Because in the private sector these days, instant access by management to data like this is taken for granted. In any major corporation, financial performance data is perpetually updated and can be rapidly formatted to highlight any significant category of spending, certainly including personnel costs. Why are state and local governments still catching up?

Cuts

The other big story is just how significant personnel costs are as a percentage of total government spending. Rather than raising taxes, why not implement cuts to total compensation of 20 percent, and total headcount reductions of 20 percent? The furlough era, when state and local employees all had to take a day per week off without pay, proved the government could still run with a 20 percent reduction in headcount, and it proved that government employees could survive with 20 percent reductions to their compensation.

The impact of a 20 percent reduction in headcount would be to reduce the $166 billion that California’s taxpayers spent on their public servants by $33 billion, to $134 billion.

To then impose a 20 percent reduction to the total compensation on the 80 percent of employees who remained would save an additional $26 billion.

In all, Californians would save $59 billion per year. With these savings, California’s state and local governments could begin to pay down debt instead of continuing to borrow. They could begin to invest in rebuilding infrastructure. They might even be able to lower taxes and amass rainy day funds.

And if government employees made less, maybe they’d use their influence to push for prosperity oriented government policies that would break up monopolies to facilitate competition, encourage land and energy development, welcome emerging new businesses, and lower the cost of living.

But to know these options, we must first have good data.

*   *   *

Ed Ring is the executive director of the California Public Policy Center and the editor of UnionWatch.org.