In any case, Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Walker’s pretense to fiscal responsibility. It is, instead, about power. What Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.
And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.
Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, though less severe than those faced by other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away.
In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions.
But Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims a terrible fiscal crisis, he’s pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse.
Mainly, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.
The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the state’s workers, in effect busting public-employee unions.
Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with easing Wisconsin’s current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help its budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.
It’s not about budgets; it’s about power.
In principle, every U.S. citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put their spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to like-minded politicians (as the Koch brothers did for Walker).
On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in fact, we’re becoming an oligarchy dominated by a handful of wealthy people.
Given this fact, it’s vital to have institutions that can counterbalance the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.
You don’t have to love unions to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans.
Indeed, as America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years, that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.
And now Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.
There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin and elsewhere was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was super-wealthy players who pushed for financial deregulation and set the stage for the economic crisis, whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch.
And now the political right is trying to exploit that crisis to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.
So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.
Paul Krugman writes for The New York Times.