Making too much of and from a “public good.”
David Leonhardt, in this Sunday’s NYTimes Magazine says:
“A public good is something that the free market tends not to provide on its own, to the detriment of society. Pollution laws and police departments are classic examples.”
Elsewhere, in the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal I read:
“In Vallejo, CA compensation packages for police captains top $300,000 a year and average $171,000 a year for firefighters. Regular public employees in the city can retire at age 55 with 81% of their final year’s pay guaranteed. Police and fire officials can retire at age 50 with a pension that pays them 90% of their final year’s salary every year for life and the lives of their spouses.”
In 2008, nearly broke and faced with falling tax revenues, rising pension costs, and unmovable public-employee unions, Vallejo declared bankruptcy.
Are we making, have we made too much of our “public goods?” Are we no longer in charge, and instead are we being driven into financial collapse by overly compensated police and fire departments, not to mention the forever rising number of education and health sector employees?
Perhaps we ought to revise David Leonhardt’s statement and say, that a public good is now something that our elected representatives overly subsidize to the great detriment of society, police and fire department pensions being prime examples.
March 28, 2010 at 11:11 am
Leonhardt’s statement begs the question, conflating free markets (read capitalism) with anarchy. This is nonsense. Implicit in Capitalism is the social contract, and that includes things like police, courts, defense.
I’m no expert but I don’t think police should earn $300k (although the hazard certainly merits a healthy premium), but I’m more willing to tolerate that kind of abuse on a relatively small scale.
The abuse we see, and will soon see on a massive, unprecedented scale, is not something I’m willing to tolerate. And no, the alternative is NOT anarchy. The things I see that are detrimental to society are exactly the things the government tries to provide but should not.