One of the sad things about government involvement with anything is that it makes enemies out of people who have no reason to quarrel on a free-market. Take the question of worker compensation. I don’t care what wages other people freely negotiate with their employers, and it’s none of my business. I interact with people everyday who earn various wages; I don’t know, and I don’t care to know what they earn.
Enter government. We often have debates about whether or not public school teachers, for example, are over or underpaid. This is not something any of us are qualified to determine, just as we’re not qualified to decide whether a chemist or an engineer should be paid more. That’s up to the market, which is nothing more than the revealed preferences of millions of freely acting people. But when government takes our money by force (taxation) and decides to spend it we (rightly) feel that we should have some say over the spending, since we are part of a representative government. Hence debates over teacher and other government employee compensation, which tend to divide otherwise amicable parties.
The extent of such debates grows everytime government does. Earlier today I posted a graph illustrating how much employees of the big three make compared to other workers. I didn’t post it because I think I know what wages they deserve, or that I should be deciding who gets what. I never would’ve noticed or posted anything about their wages if they were simply operating privately in the free-market. When they decided to seek my tax dollars however, they became a target for my (and everyone else’s) critique of their business model, spending, compensation, etc.
I have no interest in getting into debates over what wages anyone should be paid. Nor do I have an interest in having my money taken and given to certain businesses, industries, workers or professions against my will. Until the latter stops, it is sadly legitimate to engage in the former.
