Sunday, June 10, 2012

Home Truth

Writing at Reason, Steven Greenhut gets to an important point:


Collective bargaining has made it nearly impossible for agencies to fire bad workers or pursue cost-saving alternatives. Although California leads the way in most absurd trends, the vast expansion of government compensation and special privileges is a nationwide problem, and in Tuesday’s election voters across the nation said they have had enough.

How did it get this bad?

The technical answer is the economic notion of “dispersed costs and concentrated benefits.” If we imposed a one-cent annual tax on every American to benefit the Greenhut family, no one would get mad and few people would notice, but I would have a great incentive to keep that tiny tax alive and plenty of money to hire the best lobbyists. All special interest groups work that way—they push for small concentrated benefits, and figure that the rest of us don’t have the time or incentive to fight back given the costs are spread out.


Eternal vigilance, people. It's always about eternal vigilance.

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