This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 26, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown. Public sector unions threaten to crowd out other state priorities.

Unlike private sector unions, those in the public sector don't have to worry as much that their

benefactors will go out of business.

Governments, after all, retain the power to tax.

At a Cato Institute Capitol Hill briefing on March 31st, author Armantiblo detailed the real

world costs of public sector unions.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

I've been told it's good to start with something that gets your attention.

How's this? The topic we're discussing today, public unionism and its consequences,

is very likely to be the most important domestic economic issue of the next decade.

If wage demands and pension and health benefits of unionized public employees are not derailed

from their current path.

Public unionism by itself will more than likely bankrupt most of the states,

and probably the nation as a whole even before Social Security,

the new health care entitlements, cap and trade can get around to it.

The engine behind this is what I called in my Cato article, Political Rent Seeking. And it's important for us to understand. Cato Article political rent seeking.

And it's important for us to understand its relationship to the growth of public

employee unionism and to reckon with its consequences.

It is the elephant standing here in the elevator with us and I think that it's time that we acknowledge it.

Last Friday's Wall Street Journal lead editorial was called Government Pay Boom. It notes that public employees

earn salaries that average 28% higher than private workers and that their

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