"There are givers and there are takers"

Paul Lemmon of the AFL-CIO eloquently explains what it means for the country that unions have lost concentration of membership and therefore political power. He's a powerful advocate.

Whether by coincidence or design, the decline of industrial unions has neatly coincided with the decline of a middle class...with the decline in confidence for many Americans that if they do their job they'll have a job to do, and if they get sick it won't mean (ever more elusive) bankruptcy.

But Ezra slips around an important point. When I was growing up in the late 70s unions like the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO were still powerful, but were easy scapegoats for a country that was seeing the decline of the America's industrial power. That image -- of sleazy, corrupt union leadership that cared more about its members' dues than its members was hammered in to us relentlessly, and was believable because even union members themselves knew their leadership to often be just that. But as far as I can tell, McArdle's a kid*. If, as Ezra suggests, she thinks of union leadership that way, where does that come from?

*UPDATE: Apparently that assertion is flat wrong.