Why Unions Can Be Just As Bad As Big Business

The last few days in class we've been talking about how big businesses will often seek regulation that benefits their industry in the name of the "public interest." It's easy to criticize the much maligned (and often deservedly so) investment banks for doing so after the 2008 crash, but what's much harder is to see this behavior in industries we actually believe are seeking regulation and policy in our -- and our childrens' -- interests.

Betsy DeVos was one of President Trump's most controversial nominee picks. Vice President Pence had to break the 50-50 tie in the Senate to push her confirmation through, meaning she was confirmed literally by the smallest margin possible. Contrary to most of what's been written about her, DeVos isn't an enemy of public education or children ... she's an enemy of the teachers' unions. She's interested in exploring charter schools and vouchers, policies that create school choice (read competition/eliminating barriers to entry) for those who cannot afford private school and currently largely don't have a choice in where their kids go to school. What DeVos really wants is to take the power to decide the quality of our children's education away from unions and give it to parents to improve the quality of education. Whether her policies will achieve that goal is another story, but her intentions are generally good.

So why is she so controversial? Well, the two largest teachers' unions are the 3rd and 8th largest contributors to liberal organizations (candidates, super PACs, etc). To give some perspective, Goldman Sachs is #20. Most of us think these organizations fight strictly for things pretty much all of us agree with -- higher wages for teachers, etc. While they do fight for these things, they're also fighting for freedom from accountability, as we saw when President Obama's Education Secretary John King Jr. was accused of "destroying what it means to teach" by the National Education Association (#3 on list mentioned above) for advocating for using test scores as a measure of performance. Or sometimes even fighting for tax-payer funded plastic surgery at the expense of other teachers losing their jobs. But somehow we have conflated the interests of teachers' unions with the interests of the public ... which is exactly what they want, and what Stigler said they would try to do. Check out this article from the American Federation of Teachers, AKA #8 on the list of donors mentioned above, to see it for yourself: Why Teachers Unions Are Good For Teachers -- And The Public. Any large group seeking to influence governmental policy and regulation should be viewed skeptically, regardless of what they say their intentions are.