A Curious Story on the Subway

During my subway ride home the other day, a couple of ladies were passing out fliers.  The fliers decry how hundreds of thousands of unionized postal workers will likely lose their jobs.  The two women went on a rant about the destruction of good wage jobs and aimed the blame at "privatization" and Wall Street (the same Wall Street that had profits drop by a lot).  The United States Postal Service is losing billions of dollars.  With the increase of email, traditional mail usage has plummeted.  The bottom line is that those postal worker jobs are just not needed any more for our economy.  Keeping those jobs would be extremely inefficient and a poor use of resources, especially government money.

It is difficult not to feel for those postal workers who will lose their jobs.  Likely, they don't have Mitt Romney's level of savings and will likely be economically devastated.  However, jobs is not a charity and keeping all of those jobs for the sake of keeping jobs is not good for an economy that should be built on innovation and growth.  Needless to say, I do not support the point of view that the 2 women were advocating and did not take a flier.

This story illustrates a bigger problem for the middle and working classes in America.  There are so many people who are so committed to squeezing out every last nickel and dime that they can get out of the working man in the name of "efficiency" and "competitiveness".  With the decrease of unionization, these workers are in very weak negotiating positions.  Unions may be an answer to this problem, but the past performance of unions has been mixed.  As many unions have become more and more powerful in the past, they have become corrupt and lazy themselves.  While there is a lot of sympathy for the plight of the working man, the current system is not dedicated towards solving this problem.

Take the example of Washington D.C. think tanks.  How many of these are dedicated to ideological right wing goals?  A lot...Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, The Cato Institute, etc.  There are also left wing think tanks such as the Center for American Progress.  How many think tanks are dedicated to think about how the working and middle classes and lesser educated people to earn a decent living for themselves and their families?  Probably not that many, if any.