Cheeseheads!

It was bad enough that we had to suffer through a Packer win in the Super Bowl. But now, the Cheeseheads are acting like, well, Europeans. Did you expect less from those Socialist Swedes across the boarder from us in Illinois? So far, at least, they've left the Molotov Cocktails at home, unlike their brothers-in-arms in Athens. But just weeks after conservatives got a finger wagging lecture about vitriol and civil discourse, Wisconsin workers stormed their capitol over the outrageous prospect of having to chip in a little for their health care and pension benefits. What oppression!

Private sector workers have been ravaged by this most brutal recession, while the public sector has, for the most part, been relatively insulated. Companies I work with have struggled to make payroll, trimmed certain benefits to keep the doors open, and strained to make their budgets, for if they fail, their lenders will shut them down or force them to be sold. Their public sector counterparts until now faced no such pressure.

In Illinois, of course, we dealt with the collapse of tax revenues by raising taxes, cutting programs for the poor, slashing higher education, and borrowing money. You notice that there were no protests here. Who cares if the elderly do without and young kids get their tuition jacked up at U of I? We have union benefits to protect.

This is not a simple management/worker dispute. This is conflict of interest problem. In the private sector, the tension is between ownership and labor. Every dollar not spent on labor can either be a dollar reinvested in the business or returned to the shareholders. It's a classic tug-of-war. It is management's goal to constantly reduce costs to remain competitive, and labor is merely an input cost. Unfortunately for workers, labor does not get a say in who owns the enterprise.

The public sector presents a much different picture. In the public sector, both both sides are on the same side of this devil's bargain. Labor bargains for ever fatter bundles of pay and benefits and full employment, and in exchange, they promise their bosses their votes. There is no pressure to reduce costs. Their managers, the politicians, are more than happy to cave in to labor's demands. Unlike private sector bargaining where management and the shareholders feel the pain of a bad bargain, in the public sector, politicians don't get stuck with the bill. The taxpayers do.

That symbiotically parasitic relationship worked for decades. But now, the states and the federal government are broke and we are pushing back. The tea party protests of last summer were just the beginning. Workers in the private sector will not stand for a society where their home equity has vanished, their 401(k)'s have been decimated, and higher and higher taxes are being demanded of them so their public sector brethren can retire at age 55 with little or no out- of -pocket costs for their benefits. That is just slavery.

The petulant children that now occupy the Wisconsin capitol and their silly Democratic benefactors that fled the state need a healthy dose of reality. All in, these workers are generally paid above market wages and benefits for the skill level that they bring. Almost every company I have worked with over the past 3 years has had to do more with less.

Unions served a useful function in many industries. In coal and transportation, they ensured vital safety standards. They have provided a measure of protection against capricious treatment. But in the public sector, they have bankrupted us. They have manipulated a wealth transfer of monumental proportion and feathered their own nests by promising to deliver the vote to politicians.

Game's up. It's time to get you acquainted with reality. Elections do indeed have consequences.