The most ridiculous critique of civil service unions I've heard so far this week goes like this: "It isn't fair that the union members can vote for the people who will ultimately meet them on the other side of the negotiating table.  Even worse, the unions contribute money to campaigns and thus have undo influence over there negotiating partners in government."

I wonder if these critics are also concerned that the Chamber of Commerce contributes money to elections and that its members vote.  If they are concerned about that, then by all means lets talk about public election financing and ending political contributions, including personal contributions from wealthy candidates to fund their own campaigns, entirely.

But somehow I don't think these people are so worried about money as a corrupting force in politics -- just union money.  Because we all know that teachers and people who clean the town parks are way more corrupt than bankers.  You all recall the great $800 billion teacher bailout of 2008, right?

I wrote more about unions for The Daily this week.  I actually focused on something the Wisconsin employees are willing to give on -- the sanctity of pension promises.  I really think the Wisconsin workers are making a financial mistake by giving on that, even if the politics make sense.  When you tell some one that you're going to pay them less now in exchange for deferred compensation later, which is all a pension really is, then you can't renege on the deferred comp as the bill comes due.  Private companies certainly don't.  Dick Cheney even received deferred compensation payments from Halliburton while he held public office and though his critics raised an eyebrow at it, everyone eventually agreed that Halliburton had made a promise and that Cheney had the right to collect on it.  Why do we hold teachers to a different standard than that?  And don't even get me started on AIG again.

I'm reading a wonderful book about economists called The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner.  It's a survey of the important economic philosophers that I frankly skipped over in college and had only learned about through reference and anecdote in the years that followed.  I'm on a chapter about 19th century social Utopians -- people who tried to build planned cooperative economic communities that would spare people the unhappiness of capitalism.  The author is respectful of these people but decidedly believes they are on the fringe and is more worried that his readers will think they're so fringe that the chapter may as well be skipped.

He defends them like this: "They lived in a world that was not only harsh and cruel but that rationalized its cruelty under the guise of economic law."

Surely, true.  But I still can't believe that such a smart contemporary scholar would write a sentence like that in the past tense.