POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Wisconsin’s Delayed Day of Reckoning

Largely lost in the discussions of the Wisconsin-Teachers Unions Showdown has been the role of the federal government in the timing. The collapse of the markets gave Obama the opportunity that he needed to ride roughshod over (weak) Republican candidate McCain, and in the wake of his election, he and his advisers--true believers in Keynesian fantasies--justified their lavish spending by guaranteeing that the federal government could create jobs. The shovel-readiness of shovel-ready projects turned out to be a figment of their collective imagination, though, and the enormous debt purchased by Obama the administration failed to deliver the stimulus that was promised.

Among the monies that were set aside to salvage the economy were the $670 million the feds set aside for Wisconsin's public schools. This amount, and comparable per capita amounts for the other states, was paid for by creating a larger federal debt burden on every American taxpayer. At the time, there were many analysts who said that these federal donations of tax monies would simply forestall the day of reckoning, but Obama and company were either convinced that that wouldn't matter in a couple of years, or that their economic policies were such that the economy would have made up its lost ground within that period, or that it was still worthwhile as a matter of politics to reward the unions that had helped put him over the top in 2008's campaign--or some combination of the above.

Clearly, they could not have foreseen their utter repudiation in 2010's elections. Had they not been drubbed, the policy of forestalling the inevitable would have been continued, provided that the Democrats could have continued finding creditors willing to fuel their Spendapalooza. But the day of reckoning is upon us.

Most of the states, unlike the feds, are required to balance their budgets. Most of them see that they are broke because of the exorbitant cost of public payrolls and pensions. Indeed, in Wisconsin the previous Governor added to the shortfall by raiding pension funds to avoid having for the moment to have to make cuts in payroll and services. Similarly, the feds have resorted to "quantitative easing" to forestall actually meeting debt obligations, the result of which has been voracious (even if undeclared by the MSM) inflation of consumer prices. Real wages are stalled, and that means that Americans are poorer than they were.

Cunctation can be a brilliant battlefield strategy, because armies are comprised of human beings who can be wearied, and supply lines, which can be cut. Compound interest never tires.

The administration has similarly bought time with regard to physicians' salaries with the so-called "Doc Fix," which expires in two years. It will run out, and when it does, the federal government will be forced to require that they accept 20% less in compensation, even while being beholden to the massive bureaucracy that is being created to oversee them. At the same time, there is no real federal attempt to deal with the bubble in higher education, the cost of which has been increasing for decades at rates much higher than the growth of personal income.

How much of that out of control growth is due to the creation of "diversity officers" and other absurdities, I don't know. What I do know is that people in the comments have been stating that teachers and other personnel in the public education systems deserve their levels of compensation because they have acquired degrees. Unfortunately, many of the degrees they've acquired have been in . . . education, which is a fashion system that pretends to more content than it contains. Thus it is that school systems have decided that students' attitudes toward polar bears are more important than their capacity to calculate home mortgages.

I hope, as well, that coming to grips with priorities will mean the end of idiocies such as this.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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