British professor (University of Nottingham) Christopher Phelps has a super-heated rant in the new Chronicle Review about the allegedly horrible things being done to government workers in Wisconsin. He declares, “Wisconsin’s public workers and their allies are advancing a reconfigured Wisconsin Idea: that the already precarious middle class should not be destroyed and that labor rights are essential for democracy.”

Yell that through a bull-horn at a mob of union zealots and you’ll get roaring support. But this is baloney. The middle class is not “precarious” in Wisconsin or elsewhere, although the constant expansion of government spending absorbs resources that could be put to more productive use for all people. Slight cutbacks on the lavish benefits given to government employees will not ruin even those people, much less the entire middle class. And as for democracy, it manages to thrive in states that have never had public sector collective bargaining, such as North Carolina. Oh, but aren’t the public employees in those states underpaid? The Pope Center will be releasing this Friday a study comparing average salaries of full-time professors in all the states. To jump the gun a bit, the average salary in North Carolina is $75,972; in Wisconsin, $69,019.

Phelps, I take it, is one of those dyed-in-the-wool old British Labour party types, thoroughly imbued with the Marxian view that workers everywhere are underpaid and only unions stand between society and The Iron Law of Wages. With just a bit of perspective, he might see that those noble government employees are better paid than most Wisconsin workers doing comparable jobs (and probably working harder at them!).

It’s too bad that Chronicle Review publishes such thoughtless, partisan rants as this.