"Why are you looking so smug today, Max?” I asked, puzzling over his self-satisfied expression.

“I’ve been proven right,” he said. “Once again, I might add.”

“Oh, how’s that?”

He settled back in his chair, and with his forearms resting on his chest, put the tips of his fingers together. I knew from that he was about to utter a “great truth.”

He contemplated his fingertips and started speaking. “You know I’ve always said that you don’t have to be religious to be moral.”

“Yes, I recall that. In your book, man is basically good,” I said. “That’s in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary, but go ahead.”

Max cleared his throat and began. “The latest issue of the scientific journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences included an article discussing the rather fascinating link between morality and religion. It says that spiritual experiences and religion, which are common across cultures and all eras, are ultimately based in the brain. But there have always been questions about how and why these behaviors originated and how they may have evolved over the period of man’s history.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “I think I’m with you so far. Go on. Who are these guys that wrote the article or paper you’re talking about?”

“They are a couple of real egg heads.” he answered, opening a magazine and thumbing to a page. “One is Doctor Marc Hauser from the Departments of Psychology and Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard.. The other one is, and I’ll have to spell this for you, is Doctor Likka Pyysiainen from the Helsinki Collegeum for Advanced Studies.”

“Yipes, I see what you mean by ‘egg heads,’” I said.

“Anyway, there have been two schools of thought on religion. One school says religion evolved to cope with the question of cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals.”

I mulled real hard on that one and asked, “They saying that the necessity of getting along with folks who were not part of the family caused religion to evolve?”

“Yep, that’s a way of putting it. But the other bunch says religion emerged in the human mind because of pre-existing cognitive capacities, or intuitive or instinctive tendencies.”

“That’s the one you agree with,” I said.

Max went on. “Apparently, there’s support for both these ideas in evolutionary circles, but they’ve been pretty darned difficult to investigate.” He turned a page in the magazine. “For example, Dr.Hauser said, ‘For some, there is no morality without religion, while others see religion as merely one way of expressing moral intuitions.’”

“I assume they found a way to test the theories,” I said. “Otherwise, it all stays theory.”

“You’re right,” Max replied. “What they did was test a bunch of people, some who were religious, religious from childhood, and others who were not at all religious and had no training in religious protocols at all, so to speak.”

“How did they test them?”

Max smiled. “They posed moral dilemmas, situations where each had to decide the way to go to resolve the situations. The participants had to describe their own resolution to the problem. And guess what they found.”

“The non-religious people said, ‘Send for Doctor Phil.’”

"Don’t be cute,” Max scolded. “What they found was that those of different religions and those of no religion at all showed no difference in moral judgments for unfamiliar moral dilemmas. The total of their research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit moral commitments.”

I held up my hand to ask for a pause. “Of course, these were all civilized people, members of communities, educated except that some had no commitment to religion,” I said. “Wouldn’t living in communities sort of press people into the same direction morally?”

“That’s true,” Max replied. “As I’ve said before, when Moses supposedly collected the ten commandments, he was proposing rules for cooperation among everyone, not just members of a particular family. They are common sense rules for getting along with your neighbor, with the folks in your village. If everyone followed those rules, whether or not you believed in a God, it would keep people out of trouble; not messing around with your neighbor’s wife and getting your butt whipped, not stealing, not bearing false witness, taking care of your parents and so on. The bottom line these two birds came up with was that religion did not originally appear as a biological adaptation for cooperation, but evolved as a separate by-product of pre-existing cognitive functions.”

“So, morality came first, then religion?” I asked.

“It would appear so,” Max replied. “Although Dr. Pyysiainen said cooperation is made possible by mental mechanisms not specific to religion, religion can play a part in ‘stabilizing cooperation between groups.’”

I said, “I would imagine that’s probably because people can understand religion when they can’t grasp the idea of morality for morality’s sake. Respect for a higher power, so to speak.”

“I think you nailed it,” Max nodded. “In fact, Dr. Hauser observed that because of religious concepts, religion has become the standard way that the majority of people conceptualize moral situations. And he said, and you’ll appreciate this, ‘people have grown so accustomed to looking upon their moral concepts that way, any criticism directed at their religion is taken as a fundamental threat to their existence.’”

Then it dawned on me. “Sure, that’s got to be true. It’s like the fact that most Christian Americans think of patriotism and Christianity being inexorably linked together. It’s all part of the same concept, God and country! That’s why Christians react so emotionally to secular criticism.”

“You’re right,” Max said. “And old ‘Read-My-Lips’ expressed that concept perfectly.”

“Huh?”

“When he was Reagan’s VP, he said that atheists couldn’t be patriots because this is a ‘nation under God.’ He was speaking out of that single-entity mindset you just mentioned. Hurt my feelings too,” he added, putting on a pouty face.

“I think you’ll live over it, Max,” I said, chuckling

“Sure, because it turns out I’m right anyway.”

In 1973, over 80% of union members in this country were employed in the private sector. They negotiated with their employers over working hours, pay rates, vacations, sick leave and benefits, including medical and retirement. They wanted and got part of the employer’s profits. In negotiations, the employers strove for contracts that would both satisfy the union membership and, at the same time, let them compete in the market place. If employer costs went up, than profit went down or the price to the consumer went up. But price became a factor in private sector competition and exerted pressures that affected what employers could give up in these negotiations. The consumer was thereby protected to at least some measure by pressures of the marketplace. Most importantly, the system worked, because the workers were part of the production cycle and thereby contributed to the production of wealth by the private sector.

The numbers of union workers in the private marketplace have dwindled over the past several years. This is due, in large measure, to the shrinkage of industries that heavily depended on union workers and to the fact that workers began receiving benefits which, at one time, were obtained only through strikes, threatened strikes and negotiations. And it is still a stark reality that they are vulnerable to vagaries of the marketplace and economic growth. In last year’s recession, 771,000 union jobs were lost.

Lately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released some information that should be a giant red flag to taxpayers. It is unsettling to know, that in 2009, a year already damned by certain events, that 51.4% of America’s 15.4 million union workers were employed by the government. For the first time in this country’s history, there are more union workers on government payrolls than on private payrolls. Let that fact sink in for a moment.

While it sinks in, let me to give you some more stats that should chill the blood in your veins:

• The BLS reports that state and local government employees in 1946 numbered 3.3 million. Since then, they have increased to 19.8 million, a 492% increase as the country’s population increased by only 115%. Since 1999 the number of state and local government employees has increased by 18%, twice the 9% increase in population.

• According to the New York Times, “George W. Bush is in line to be the first president since World War II to preside over an economy in which federal government employment rose more rapidly than employment in the private sector.” Apparently reluctant to spoil a good thing, the Obama Administration has continued that hiring binge. Executive branch employment (excluding the Defense Department and Post Office) is scheduled to grow by 2% in 2010 alone, and more than 15% if you include temporary census workers.

• In 1946, the United States had 2.3 state and local government employees per 100 citizens. By the close of 2009, government employees had increased to 6.5 per hundred citizens.

• In 1947, 78% of the national income went to the private sector, 16% to the federal sector, and 6% to the state and local government sector. At present, only 54% of the economy is private, 28% goes to the feds and 18 % goes to state and local governments.

• The average federal salary (including benefits) was $72,800 in 2008. It is set to go to $75,419 in 2010.

• According to a 2007 analysis of U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Asbury Park Press, “the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005 compared to the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector.” The paper found that, across comparable jobs, the federal government paid higher salaries than the private sector three times out of four. As Heritage Foundation legal analyst James Sherk explained to the Press, “The government doesn’t have to worry about going bankrupt, and there isn’t much competition.”

But what we have to worry about is not just today’s salaries. The problem is what is being promised to the workers. All the way back in June of 2005, Business Week reported that “more than 14 million public servants and 6 million retirees are owed $2.37 trillion by more than 2000 different states, cities and agencies. The magazine found that state and local pension payments had increased 50% in just five years.

If you don’t already see it, my point is that government employee unions are not only growing in membership but are expanding their influence as well. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of higher spending and taxes. The unions help elect politicians (mostly but not exclusively Democrats) who repay the unions with more pay and benefits and dues-paying members, who in turn, help to re-elect more politicians. Most importantly, government union employees, unlike their private sector counterparts, do not contribute to the creation of wealth; they are consumers of wealth.
An example: you will recall that, after 9/11, when the huge and elaborate security system at the country’s airports was being established, a certain politicians strenuously objected to contracting private firms to do the screening of passengers and inspection of luggage even though they could have been put in place much more quickly and more efficiently. They insisted that these new employees be government employees.

There was a time when famous liberals, like Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorella LaGuardia, who believed fervently in industrial unions, nonetheless believed public employees had a special social obligation and could too easily exploit their monopoly position. Now we are seeing how wise they were.

The state of California has taken the lead in so many social movements. It has also taken the lead in illustrating the dangers of public employee unions. Some random examples:

• In 1999, the California legislature, in a bi-partisan bill and with virtually no debate, established a “3 percent at 50” retirement plan. Under this plan, at age 50, many categories of public employees are eligible for 3 percent of their final year’s pay multiplied by the number of years they’ve worked. So, if a covered worker starts working at age 20, he can retire at age 50 with 90% of his final year’s salary every year until he dies, then his widow gets the same amount for the rest of her life. There is no retirement plan in the private sector that even approaches this level of generosity or expense.

• `In the midst of California’s 2008-2009 fiscal meltdown, the city of Fullerton sought to retroactively increase the retirement plan for city employees by a staggering 25%. What’s more, the city council negotiated the increase in closed session, which violated state law. When a whistle blower exposed the violation to the local newspaper, local officials actually called for the whistle-blower to be prosecuted and threatened the newspaper with a libel suit..

• More than two-thirds of management-level officials at the California Highway Patrol have inflated disability pay by coming down with something widely known as "Chief’s Disease” about a year before their scheduled retirement in order to lock in lavish pensions. Mike Clesceri, while in a part-time job as a local Mayor, also worked as an investigator for the Orange County District Attorney’s office. As his retirement neared, he claimed to have an extreme case of acid reflux and he got a tax-fee pension of $58,000 a year plus cost of living increases. With his disability retirement, he tried to get a police chief’s job, retained his job as mayor and ran a tough re-election campaign. When locals complained about the absurdity of his disability pension, he had his attorney brother-in-law write them threatening letters.

• In California, unfunded pension and health care liabilities for state workers top $100 billion and the pension contribution has shot from $320 million to $7.3 billion in less than a decade.

Of course, California is not alone in its lunacy. According to the New York state comptroller, the states’ local governments may have to triple annual pension contributions during the next six years, from $2.6 billion to $8 billion.

In Summary: People who are supposed to serve the public have become a privileged elite that exploits political power for financial gain and special perks. This interest group has rigged the game so there are few meaningful checks on its demands. They receive higher pay, benefits and pensions than the vast majority of Americans working in the private sector. Even when they are incompetent or abusive, they can be fired only after a long process and for only the most grievous offenses.

It is a two-tier system in which the rulers are making steady gains at the expense of the ruled. The predictable results are unsustainable levels of debt, higher taxes, eroded public services and massive roadblocks to reform. It’s time to take the required measures to preserve what the founding fathers intended. It may already be too late.

Maxim Gross

"I found a bright spot in the State of the Union speech the other night,” Max said, apropos of nothing.

“Oh, what was that?” I asked rousing from my semi-conscious state reached while we were watching something on the History Channel.

“The President actually said something nice about free trade,” Max replied. “He said that we could not sit on the sidelines while our competitors make trade deals so we have to be aggressive, otherwise we’ll miss our chance to create jobs on our own shores.”

“You’re kidding me,” I exclaimed. “He actually came out favour of free trade? Did he thumb his noise at the unions too?”

“No, he didn’t go that far but he got away with saying that we had to strengthen our trade relations with South Korea , Panama and Columbia .”

“ Columbia ?” I blurted. “How dare he say that when he knows Congress is under strict orders from the AFL/CIO not to allow exports to Columbia ? Oh, well, that won’t last till the water gets hot. The unions will put the quietus on such talk.”

Max squinted his eyes. “You know that’s one of the oddest pieces of stupidity that we’ve seen in this country. Columbia can sell anything to us and ship it into this country duty free, but we can’t ship goods to Columbia . That strikes me as being 180 degrees out of phase. It would seem to me that the unions would want workers to manufacture goods for sale to Columbia . What are they trying to do anyway?”

“Apparently, denying work for our own citizens is less important that putting their thumb in the eye of Columbia because they don’t like the Columbian’s opposition to unions,” I said. “Of course, they’re ignoring the fact that Columbia has unions anyway. But wait,” I said. “Did the President come out and ask his party to support these trade agreements.”

Max hooted. “Oh no, he didn’t do that! He may be naïve but he ain’t crazy.”

“By the way,” I said. “Did you see the latest stats on union membership?”

“No, what was it?”

“Unionized government workers now exceed the number of private sector union workers.”

“That’s bad,” Max said. “The state employee unions in California have already raped that state and won’t let anyone do anything about it because they own the legislature. And now you say that’s what’s in store for all of us?”

“That’s the bottom line,” I said. “ Roosevelt was right. He supported unionization in private industry but opposed it for federal employees. We should have listened to him.”

I thought for a moment. “You know, Max,” I went on. “The system worked. The industrial unions broke new ground and got decent pay and benefits for blue-collar workers in this country. The union organizers saw their job as getting more of the employer’s profits for the workers. Now, that’s changed. Government is now the playing field. Now they want to secure a bigger share of the overall private economy’s wealth. That means that government employees are going up against middle-class taxpayers and arguing for higher taxes.”

“That’s going to be a disaster,” Max exclaimed. “After all, unionized industrial workers were still turning out goods; they were actually part of the wealth-creating system. They pulled their own weight. But government employees don’t create wealth, all they do is suck it up!”

“Looks like a new economic paradigm, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Max agreed. “And not a very pretty one!”