I am a public school head custodian and the other day I had a student ask me who the "owner" of our school was and do they pay me to be the janitor. How funny I thought. I explained to her that every person that is a tax payer “owns” our school so actually no one person “owns” it really. This got me to thinking about the well known economic theory of “the tragedy of the commons”. I also pondered that if this was truly a private school and owned by an educational entrepreneur that I would probably be paid a lot less than what I make now because as I work for a city government I am not being paid what would be a true “market wage”. The union that represents the custodians in my school district dictate the wage that I earn. It is not my productivity, but my experience is a factor as well as number of years in the system. Because of the economy I have not had a raise in about 4 years as we used to get a COLA (cost of living increase) every year. Most in the private sector do not get a cost of living increase unless they have become more valuable (educated) or productive to their company, so I am ok with not getting a raise every year. The public sector should be run more like private enterprise until we NO LONGER have a public sector, except for those few areas where "free riders" could not be excluded such as the provision of roads, fire/ems and police! I am really glad that Robert Love of Love Box Company worked tirelessly during his life to make and keep Kansas a "right to work state". This way the union goons and weasels of SEIU could not keep me from being gainfully employed as a custodian in a government run school. As you may have guessed it, I have never been and never will be a member of a trade union!
