• Steven Greenhut, Plunder!, How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives, and Bankrupting the Nation. Santa Ana, Calif.: The Forum Press, 2009, 249 pages, $18.95.

Karl Marx was right — sort of. He was right in saying that society is riven by class warfare, but he got the classes wrong. It’s not the case that capitalists exploit workers, but rather than tax consumers exploit taxpayers.

That truth long has been kept hidden from the average American by deceptive propaganda about the workings of democracy and the supposed nobility of “public service,” but people are starting to comprehend. Articles in major newspapers recently have disclosed the crucial fact that government employees generally are paid substantially more than are comparable private sector workers and enjoy more generous and secure benefits. And now Steven Greenhut’s book Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives, and Bankrupting the Nation no doubt will fan the flames of resentment against the political class for its constant and increasing picking of the pockets of productive people.

Greenhut, a California writer, shows that government employees, especially unionized ones in states where unions have great political clout, are living it up on wealth extracted from the rest of the population via taxation. Making matters worse, politicians keep granting them pay and benefit increases even when it’s clear that current levels of compensation will lead to unmanageable budget deficits.

For some places, the wolf is already at the door. The city of Vallejo, Calif., recently declared bankruptcy because tax revenues are no longer sufficient to cover its extremely heavy personnel costs, including a city manger whose total compensation package is $400,000 and a 190-person fire department, half of whom earn in excess of $170,000 per year. The city is decrepit, but the “public servants” go on bleeding the taxpayers white.

Not only are these people paid astoundingly high salaries, but they also can retire at an early age and collect up to 90 percent of their final salary for life. On top of that, many claim purportedly work-related disabilities, thereby shielding half of their generous benefits from taxation. There are public boards to evaluate those claims, but (naturally) the boards are dominated by employee unions and rubber-stamp nearly every one.

Politicians of both major parties go along with the plunder. Democrats, who receive vast campaign “contributions”— the description isn’t accurate because unionized workers have no choice in the candidates they support; their money goes wherever union officials dictate — long have favored schemes to redistribute wealth as long as it leads to votes.

Republicans more recently have gotten on board. Most of them can’t resist the “law and order” cachet that comes from helping police, firefighter, and prison guard unions get what they want. Both parties treat the rare politician who dares to buck the system like a leper.

Greenhut introduces readers to public choice economic theory and gives them a superb lesson in it. The subject of overpaid, coddled government employees is a pure case of the way concentrated benefits for a few triumphs over dispersed costs for the many in a democracy.

Whenever the gravy train comes under attack, the unions and their political allies counterattack with a finely honed arsenal. A particularly egregious lie they resort to is that their high, early pensions are justified because police officers and firefighters tend to die at an early age. Greenhut produces evidence to conclusively refute that claim.

Truth, however, doesn’t matter. The unions and their allies continue making this and other false statements to keep the public complacent. Another devious tactic is to seek out auditors who will use creative accounting to mask the extent of the underfunding problem.

One of Greenhut’s specific targets is the public education system, so high in cost and so low in productivity. Taxpayers are forced to pay huge amounts of money to prop up a monstrosity that many of them never have had anything to do with. The education establishment and teachers’ unions never stop demanding more, with syrupy messages that it’s all “for the kids.”

The outrages are not just financial. Greenhut shows that our “public servants” are not content to live high on the hog at everyone else’s expense. In fact, they connive to put themselves above the law. In California, for example, many government employees are eligible for special license plates that identify them as part of the “family” and thus immune to punishment for traffic violations. Moreover, there is something akin to the Mafia’s code of silence that lets police and guards get away with acts of violence that ought to land them in jail.

Greenhut sums matters up, writing, “We’ve seen a massive transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector, from taxpayers to tax consumers. The result is a class of coddled, overpaid, and under-worked public ‘servants’ whose pay and retirement levels cannot be sustained without cutbacks in public services and higher taxes.”

Plunder! is a book that will make Americans say, “I’m mad as hell and won’t take it any more.” Get a copy, read it, then pass it along.