Progress toward exposing problems we face has been impPrudently slow… and there are so many. They are interrelated, but it is far too complex to discuss them all at once. Let’s move forward.
UNIONIZATION
There are valid reasons for otherwise independent, sovereign individuals to put their futures and ability be productive into he hands of others who may or may not share their best interests. Usually those reasons are related to bad management decisions, but unionism has devolved into monopoly labor, and it’s just as flawed as monopoly capitalism. The private sector has largely rejected unionism; monopoly labor primarily exists in the “public” sector – government financed and managed work. The reason for this phenomenon, the dirtiest possible, is the value of rewarding an army of political, re-election workers, be they in construction, policing, firefighting, plumbing, paving or bus-driving.
Most are good people. It’s never a question of individual people, it’s the power held by a relative few of them who purport to “represent” their membership in obtaining more “fairness” in pay and work rules. The process of keeping power for union leaders lies in politicians having voted for legal status for unions; it lies in “public” contracting and public employment being required to be unionized. The unions, as a result these legal requirements, also are obligated to “negotiate” with the same politicians who granted them power and for whom they work at election times. It is a game in which the politicians always lose when representing “the public” – taxpayers – in determining how much to pay the members of the unions. On the other hand, the politicians, left mostly, but also many on the right, who “fight” for “working families” usually win on the re-election side of the board. “Working families” are always union families, and the “fight” is always to pay them more.
It didn’t take long for what union members were paid became the “prevailing wage” and the rate that anyone doing business with town, state or federal governments had to pay in order to bid on “public” contracts. Unlike business and labor and expenditures in the (dreaded) private sector where all the productive surplus that pays for every public expenditure is earned, virtually no one who negotiates for the “public” represents the interests of the public… not really. Elected officials who win election and re-election by promising to “fight for working families and the ‘middle class’” only fight to keep things as they are, reliably in favor of government, always at higher pay.
If a single change could be made that was “fair” for every American, it would be for every state to be a right-to-work state with no favoritism in public contracting for unionized companies. For contractors who could show superior results from their unionized workforce, they would rightly win their share of “public” projects. Non-union contractors who could show the same, would win theirs. Until that day, the slope will remain downward, always at higher pay.
A sad example of the downside of legally sanctioned unionization is the death and destruction that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020. “Oh, come now Prudence… you’re off the rails with that one,” you might be thinking. But, you’re looking at the wrong end of the whole sequence. The man who was convicted for the manslaughter of Floyd before his body was cold, Officer Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department, was a dues-paying member of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis. That union had no role in his trial relative to George Floyd, but it had protected Chauvin multiple times relative to complaints about his use of force while an active officer, of which there were many – more than 15. Chances are that Chauvin ought to have been separated from the police department long before he restrained George Floyd. He had demonstrated a tendency to use force to restrain detainees past the point when force was needed. The Federation had argued for him in every case, saving his job. That’s what unions do and a large part of why members pay union dues.
EDUCATION
One of the worst examples of public employee unionization is teachers’ unions – not teachers… teachers’ unions. Their stranglehold on public policy and purse strings was made clear during the 3 years’ of COVID-19 fear-mongering. The damage to children and to actual education itself, is nearly immeasurable, the money wasted to appease teacher unions during COVID, is outrageous. Even the supposed scientists at the CDC were taking orders from the Federation of Teachers as to whether schools could open again or kids stop wearing masks – science be damned. Teachers pretended to “teach” remotely while students pretended to “learn” from their computer screens. But, no one learned from the “science” everyone claimed to be following, including the CDC and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases: guardians of “the science,” every one. And that’s another post.
Observers of things educational estimate that kids were set back one to two years of development and learning under the COVID regime. Despite the uselessness of face masks and the increasing understanding of the damage they do to development of the youngest school-children, including socialization and speech and comprehension skills, some school systems, largely pushed by unions, still wanted to mask children at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year! Because of fear of catching COVID? Ridiculous. These are the people we trust to impart knowledge to our children – knowledge that is supposed to prepare them to think on their own, resolve problems and conflicts and to prepare for adulthood. Yet many school teachers and school committees seem Hell-bent on denying the children with whom they are entrusted for five days a week, a fair chance at growing up intact. What are we doing? What are they doing? What in every matter of education should educators consider their mission and success to be? Confuse kids about their sexual outlook or fantasy? Convince kids that their skin color is more important than their abilities to apply themselves?
People who don’t lie to themselves and others about human nature – like socialists and Communists do – will say “No” to those last two questions.
BANKS & ECONOMICS
People whom we pay excessively to “manage” our finances, the money supply and economic growth, appear to not have as deep an understanding as we assume when justifying their exalted pay and position. They are evidently even more ignorant of the majesty of freedom and individual sovereignty; money and freedom are inextricable, after all. The foolhardy actions of the “Biden” administration, following on the heels of the largely mendacious “COVID Pandemic,” and the deadly inflation that results, illustrate all too clearly the lack of intelligence being applied to economics… and to governance, itself.
Amidst the jungle of banking, finance and investment regulations that have grown up since the Great Depression, a basic truth has been lost within government, itself – including Congress – and among the people of the United States. Now, with communistic theories being applied thither and yon, we are approaching the cliff’s edge of economic collapse while a crowd of chowderheads is enthralled with its legislative “victories” in the first two years of the Biden regime, basic truth be damned. And, what truth is this? Inflation is the result of government actions. It is not a virus that attacks without warning, or the result of too much exuberance by free people and enterprise. It refers only to the money (actually, “currency”), supply, something for which the unholy alliance between government and the Federal Reserve are entirely responsible. Rising prices are not inflation, although inflation results in prices rising. Inflation (and this is why it is often employed as a matter of policy) reduces the value of currency, both in tangible form and in electronic accounts. In the short term, it enables government to pay its debts more cheaply, but it also steals from every private person and family, savings and retirement account. Inflation is a thief unleashed upon the population by government.
Lately, the secretive, highly regulated, yet poorly regulated banking industry, has been shaken to its boots by the severe inflation ignited by the pandemic and the wild, unneeded deficit spending of the Biden administration. The Federal Reserve Board assumes as part of its role, that it must regulate the money supply, ostensibly to limit inflation. Contra-indicated is its other assumed role: controlling (limiting) unemployment. Controlling inflation comes first, always, since the health of the financial/banking system relies on stable rates of inflation and of interest. In the world of mortgages and large-asset financing and leasing, interest rates – the cost of money over time – needs to be stable or growing very slowly. Abrupt acceleration in the rate of inflation disturbs both long and short-term financing and, ironically, the availability of cash for daily economic function. Banks have failed in the past two weeks and other banks are scrambling to save weakened banks. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen has repeatedly assured the public and Congress that “the banks” are safe and that depositors will be able to obtain their money when needed. America’s Gramma Yellen looks so friendly. She expects to bring our total debt to 50,000,000,000,000 dollars. That is a difficult number to grasp – maybe FIFTY FRIGGIN’ TRILLION is easier to conceive of. Her calming words consist of the possibility that the total cost of INTEREST(!) will be a certain relatively small percentage of GROSS FRIGGIN’ DOMESTIC PRODUCT!
Yellen is a committed Keynesian economist, which is to say that she believes in deficit spending as a matter of policy and appropriate government action/response to financial OR social anomalies. This belief blends in with the socialist view that any problem brought to government’s attention, must be resolved by government action. “Deficit” spending also fits the modus operandi of the Federal Reserve, itself, since it is enabled by law to lend money to the government that it – the Fed – does not have! What could go wrong?
Deficit spending, itself, is premised on the vast majority of the population being ignorant of the possible effects of it. That is, so long as “people” (voters) don’t understand what government is doing to them (“for them” in theory), and it is primarily economic “doing,” the government can do what is good for government and keep voters occupied with a host of social issues, angers, unfairness-es, and fundamentally local grievances. With enough words in favor of this or that response to these non-federal (non-Constitutional) issues, Congressmen and women and Senators, many of whom don’t understand economics much, either, can keep getting re-elected. The permanent government and the “experts,” like Yellen, who slide into and out of powerful federal positions, can maintain the direction they want government to go, regardless of the wishes of the citizenry whose power they actually exercise. Janet Yellen has been influential or powerful in the economic direction of the federal government for three decades – first as one of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors in the mid ‘90’s, then as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors for Bill Clinton for two years. Barack Obama named her Chair of the Federal Reserve – technically a private consortium of banks, not Federal, in fact. Joe Biden chose her for Treasury Secretary, likely as he chose many of the key people from the Obama Administration: at Obama’s direction.
Despite supposedly favoring low unemployment over inflation control, Yellen has argued for continued “stimulus” during the pandemic, and for higher taxes and lower “retirement” spending to deal with the national debt. Republicans are routinely lied-about at any suggestion of reducing Social Security or Medicare expenditures like what Janet Yellen suggested. Doesn’t matter, so long as she is happy to enable and promote Keynesian deficits in the face of “crises,” socialists will be happy to take her advice.
We are in trouble. Stay tuned for more ways to Prudently analyze or resolve the problems we face.