The "Have-Yours" Class: Bankers and Government Workers

The 'Madison Protests' are very significant, and will soon be copied by similar actions in Ohio, Missouri, and a few other states (perhaps including California and New York.)

I had mentioned that, since public-employee unionization was granted ex nihilo by the State (1959 in Wisconsin, 1962 nationally), the State could also remove that privilege. While total removal is not likely, others have had similar thought patterns.

Anyone who responds to the current crisis by anointing unionized employees of the government as the epitome of 'the working man' is placing themselves, and I really do not say this lightly, at the mercy of socialism -- not just as an intellectual theory, but as an emotional promise of happiness. There has never been a viable, durable Labor Party in the US. But neither has the government class ever been so big or faced such an existential threat --Poulos, quoted by Freire

Freire connects TARP to the Madison protests:

Being a Wall Street banker may have some whiff of sin to the working man, but the loathsome element isn't merely the wealth of the AIG or Goldman Sachs executive, but that it has been compensated with taxpayer subsidies when taxpayers themselves are struggling to make ends meet. It's not so much about haves and have nots. It's about haves and have yours.

Indeed. "Too-Big-to-Fail-Land" is occupied by the same sort of folks who occupy the bureaucracy in Governments: those who are using taxpayers as their life-support system.

Taxpayers are becoming acutely aware of the have-yours as a class -- something like Angelo Codevilla's ruling class -- whose gains in salaries and benefits aren't associated with harder work and important innovations but political access. Public-sector unions rallying in Madison aren't even taking a hit for their political activism, given that their protest is made possible by paid sick days, negotiated for them by their collective bargaining units who, it must be said, donate to the very people with whom they negotiate.

It should come as no surprise that the Unions cannot find support for their position. That's evidenced by: 1) the "we'll make concessions" announcement of Saturday and 2) the "Go back to the classrooms" order from WEAC HQ on Sunday. What the unions suddenly realized is what Cuomo (NY) and Brown (CA), Walker (WI) and Kasich (OH) also figured out: the taxpaying public did not like TARP and does not like its cousin, Government Unions.

Yes, it's a watershed.