Unions are the average person's lobbying firm

Reasons to disagree:

1. Unions often represent the needs of the "average people", as long as you define "average people" as union members. Union members are often average people, i.e. good hard working Americans. However, more precisely, unions are the lobbying firm oftheir union members. It may be true that the "average person's" needs are aligned with the union members, but often the union member's desires may conflict with the desire of the larger community of average people. For instance the average person may want the government's budget to be balanced, however a union, as any good special interest, is focused on a more narrow band of goals: the desires of union members. The average person may want to have their kids to have good teachers. The average person may not have a pension, may have to pay for their health care, and may want the people teaching his children to be rewarded and advanced with merit pay. In all these cases the union is going to be lobbying against the desires of the average person, and for the desires of its members. The whole problem is special interest. Good historians are saying this is what destroyed Rome: politicians only cared about their needs. Special interest only cared about their needs. You had the rich merchants trying to get richer, the new Romans vs. the Old Romans. No one cared if the whole thing burned, as long as each group was able to fight for their dirty little scrap of what was left. We need to come reason TOGETHER and determine what is good for the country as a whole.