If I were a conservative, I’d be laughing. But as a liberal, my chuckles ring pretty hollow at the sight of Bill de Blasio struggling with New York’s 152 public sector unions, all fighting for first place at the trough. The big dog that’s barking loudest right now, according to Steven Greenhouse and Kate Taylor at the New York Times, is the United Federation of Teachers, claiming Big Bill owes them $3.4 billion in back pay.
It seems that back in 2009 and 2010, when millions of Americans were losing their jobs, public sector unions in New York were pocketing 4% raises. But the teachers didn’t get in that party. Mike Bloomberg, after winning a third term, decided he no longer needed to be nice to the UFT and stiffed the teachers, claiming that if teachers insisted on raises, they’d get layoffs instead.*
Well, now the UFT thinks it’s payback time. And if de Blasio is going to rain cash on the teachers, what about the other 151 unions? And, um, where is de Blasio going to get the cash to finance his grandiose plans to abolish poverty in the Big Apple? He’ll discover, as so many reformers have discovered before him, that by the time he gets finished paying off the existing bureaucracy, he has no money left to create new ones.
I wish de Blasio luck—transcendental luck, really—in trying square this circle.† Perhaps—and this is a real long shot—he’ll realize that New York would benefit far more from cutting than creating.
† “Transcendental luck” because π is a transcendental number. And because he’ll need it.
