4 Responses to “Not To Dig Too Hard For Analysis…”

1. Emery Says:
   March 12th, 2014 at 9:16 pm

   It makes sense for the GOP to nominate a Governor. Any reason why you didn’t include Ohio Governor John Kasich on your list?

   Re: Governor Walker
   By the time another election rolls around, the argument won’t be about whether collective bargaining should be a right. It will be about whether public employees and union members deserve special priviliges and benefits that most other workers don’t have. Only about 20% of workers have those privileges and benefits. 80% don’t. The Republicans can afford to lose a few sympathy votes when they start with an 80-20 advantage. Most people’s contacts with public employees tend to be negative, standing in line or waiting on a phone, paying taxes and fees. I think the Republicans are in good shape politically.

2. Mitch Berg Says:
   March 13th, 2014 at 10:06 am

   It makes sense for the GOP to nominate a Governor. Any reason why you didn’t include Ohio Governor John Kasich on your list?

   a) because I mostly cribbed the list from the Instapundit poll, and they didn’t include him, for whatever reason.

   b) In fact, the one addition I made to Reynolds’ list was to add Senator John Hoeven (former governor) of ND. Partly as a homer josh. Partly because, objectively speaking, he was one of the most successful governors in America.

   Of course, he governed a state with 1/4 the population of the Twin Cities, so he’ll never get his due. But we could do worse. Indeed, we are.

3. Powhatan Mingo Says:
   March 13th, 2014 at 11:49 am

   In 2013, the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were
   members of unions–was 11.3 percent, the same as in 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
   Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to
   unions, at 14.5 million, was little different from 2012. In 1983, the first year
   for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1
   percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

   The data on union membership were collected as part of the Current Population
   Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 households that obtains
   information on employment and unemployment among the nation’s civilian noninstitutional
   population age 16 and over. For more information, see the Technical Note.

   Highlights from the 2013 data:

   –Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.3 percent) more
   than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent).
   (See table 3.)

   –Workers in education, training, and library occupations and in protective
   service occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 35.3 percent for
   each occupation group. (See table 3.)

   –Men had a higher union membership rate (11.9 percent) than women (10.5
   percent). (See table 1.)

   –Black workers were more likely to be union members than white, Asian, or
   Hispanic workers. (See table 1.)

   –Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate
   (24.4 percent), and North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.0 percent). (See
   table 5.)

   http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

   If you dig through the numbers, you’ll find that half of all union members are in the public sector, and few of them do labor in the traditional sense of the word (they are desk workers who enjoy a great deal of autonomy).
   If you are a union member, you are about 5 times as likely to work in the public sector than in the private sector.

   Other highlights from the BLS report:

   -Among occupational groups, the highest unionization rates in 2013 were in education, training, and library occupations and protective service occupations (35.3 percent each).

   -Among major race and ethnicity groups, black workers had a higher union membership rate in 2013 (13.6 percent) than workers who were white (11.0 percent), Asian (9.4 percent), or Hispanic (9.4 percent).

   -By age, the union membership rate was highest among workers ages 45 to 64–14.0 percent for those ages 45 to 54 and 14.3 percent for those ages 55 to 64.

   Unions do not look like America. They are as narrow and self-interested an economic ‘special interest’ as the copyright nazis at the MPAA. They view government as mechanism to transfer wealth from other peoples’ pockets into their own.

4. Emery Says:
   March 13th, 2014 at 8:49 pm

   What is really required is that the cost of pensions or other derived benefits be charged to current taxpayers, and not be deferred to the future. The cost of teachers, police and other public sector workers needs to be fully accounted for and not hidden from the taxpayer. Taxpayers will then be able to make political decisions in light of the true cost of such services.

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