The stickiest case, to my mind, is reforming civil service rules to make it easier for governments at all levels to hire high performers and fire low performers. As Jen Pahlka and others have documented, this is an important foundation for building state capacity and delivering high quality public services that earn public trust. But it also is in strong tension with the short term interests of some of the unions that are most powerful within the Democratic party.
How do we resolve this? Is there a way to get public sector unions on the side of state capacity through high performance? Or do we have to face the unpalatable choice of throwing core constituents under the bus or accepting worse governance outcomes, especially in deep blue states and cities?
Republicans offered an array of proposals that were certain to raise costs. They lured *some* of "the working class" with bigotry to paper over what should have been obvious to thinking people: their proposals ran contrary to public interests.
Dems need to stop taking advice from lite republicans.
The only unions of real importance anymore are the public sector unions, and especially the teachers. The teachers union more or less runs the Democratic Party in most places, and it’s why education sucks.
I’d also add that the medical sector is kind of unionized too. While there is no formal union the sector is heavily regulated and most dollars come from the government in one way or another. That makes entities like the AMA pretty public sector union like.
Lo and behold our two least effective economic sectors, Ed’s and meds, are run by public sector unions aligned with democrats.
The stickiest case, to my mind, is reforming civil service rules to make it easier for governments at all levels to hire high performers and fire low performers. As Jen Pahlka and others have documented, this is an important foundation for building state capacity and delivering high quality public services that earn public trust. But it also is in strong tension with the short term interests of some of the unions that are most powerful within the Democratic party.
How do we resolve this? Is there a way to get public sector unions on the side of state capacity through high performance? Or do we have to face the unpalatable choice of throwing core constituents under the bus or accepting worse governance outcomes, especially in deep blue states and cities?
Republicans offered an array of proposals that were certain to raise costs. They lured *some* of "the working class" with bigotry to paper over what should have been obvious to thinking people: their proposals ran contrary to public interests.
Dems need to stop taking advice from lite republicans.
The only unions of real importance anymore are the public sector unions, and especially the teachers. The teachers union more or less runs the Democratic Party in most places, and it’s why education sucks.
I’d also add that the medical sector is kind of unionized too. While there is no formal union the sector is heavily regulated and most dollars come from the government in one way or another. That makes entities like the AMA pretty public sector union like.
Lo and behold our two least effective economic sectors, Ed’s and meds, are run by public sector unions aligned with democrats.