Maybe there really are "two Americas". Edwards focused on the "haves" and have nots". Stossel looks at "public" and "private".
Many didn't believe Edwards. But today, Michael Barone writes that according to a recent Rasmussen poll, there may be two Americas; one of government workers, the other private-sector workers.
The poll found that many more government workers are optimistic about their financial futures and rated their personal finances higher than private-sector employees.
It's not surprising. Private-sector employment is down 6 percent since December 2007, when the recession officially began. Government workers? Holding steady with less than a 1 percent decline in jobs. And government workers are paid on average $30,000 more than private-sector workers.
Barone knows why this has happened.
This is not an accident; it is the result of deliberate public policy. About one-third of the $787 billion stimulus package passed in February 2009 was directed at state and local governments...
The policy aim, Democrats say, was to maintain public services and aid. The political aim, although Democrats don't say so, was to maintain public-sector jobs -- and the flow of union dues to the public employees unions that represent almost 40 percent of public-sector workers.
Those unions in turn have contributed generously to Democrats... The total union contribution to Democrats has been estimated at $400 million.
The fear, says Barone, is what happens in the next decade.
At some point -- and this already has occurred in much of Western Europe -- public sector spending tends to choke off private-sector growth. America's current high unemployment levels have been commonplace in much of Western Europe for the last 25 years.
The question now is whether they will become commonplace in the United States in the decade ahead. The decision by the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress to hold public-sector employees in place while the private sector is gravely weakened has the potential to place us on that trajectory.
