This is why the protests in Wisconsin are significant:
To an astonishing extent, the unions are the government in many locales. They elect officials and then sit down to bargain with them over their salaries and benefits. Since they are essentially bargaining with themselves, they generally make out quite nicely. It’s a corrupt and ultimately unsustainable practice. Sooner or later, as Margaret Thatcher observed about socialism, they will run out of other people’s money.
And Rachel Maddow is correct in saying:
[W]hat’s going on right now in the American Midwest is about Republicans versus Democrats. It is about politics. It is about who wins the next election and the elections after that. That’s what’s going on right now in Wisconsin. This is about the survival of the Democratic Party. There are parts of the story that actually don’t make any sense unless you understand that.
That’s because the Unions are one of the key tools used by the Democrats to leverage their agenda and public-employee unions are far more dangerous than private sector unions because (emphasis mine):
In the case of a government workforce, those whose interests are served by keeping costs down would include all who pay taxes and fees to said government. In other words, the universe of folks represented by management is far larger than that represented by the union. This inherent tension is the invisible hand of reality that keeps collective bargaining in line.
However, public sector “collective bargaining” is a bad joke, given that there are only chairs on one side of the bargaining table. The bigger universe of interested parties have zero representation in the process. There is no natural force working to keep costs in line.