May 14, 2012 9:23AM # Scott Walker and Public-Sector Unions By [Roger Pilon](https://www.cato.org/people/roger-pilon) --- SHARE Today [POLITICO Arena](http://www.politico.com/arena/) asks: > Did foes of Scott Walker make a bad bet on the recall? My response: We’ll know soon enough whether foes of Scott Walker made a bad bet on the recall, but either way, Wisconsin made a bad bet years ago in initiating America’s public-sector union movement. The incentives thus established — with concentrated benefits for state employees and dispersed costs for taxpayers — have made it all too easy for politicians to cave in to union demands, resulting over time in government workers with benefits far exceeding anything a rational market would afford — or those who pay for the benefits (taxpayers) can afford. Not surprisingly, therefore, states with strong public-sector unions — California, Illinois, New York — are today in economic disarray. Bad enough that *private*-sector unions make businesses less competitive, the remedy for which is moving to right-to-work states or abroad. States can’t move. But their businesses and citizens can — and they do. Witness California over the past decade, and New York for several decades. Scott Walker has done us all a favor by crystallizing the issues facing so many states today. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).