Part of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's union-busting agenda is including a "right to work" rule for public-sector employees, which would prohibit workers from being required to pay for this union representation. What right-to-work laws actually guarantee is the ability for a worker to benefit from union representation without having to pay for union representation. Copyrights, which prohibit free-loading by requiring that peeople are paid for their work, provide a good analogy.

Organized labor is not always at its best. It can be myopic and hidebound. It can fight for rigid work rules that make workplaces less efficient and workers less happy. It can argue for pension and health-care benefits that, in the long run, are simply not sustainable. But to paraphrase Tolstoy’s insight about families, all institutions are broken in their own unique ways. Corporations and governments have their flaws, too. Like labor, they’re necessary participants in a balanced economy.

The U.S. government budget deficit is now $1.5 trillion, and political leaders in most states are wringing their hands and crying in unison: “There’s just no money.” Actually, there’s tons of money. Billions of dollars. The problem is that it’s not available to meet everyone’s needs because the giant corporations and the rich have taken it. There is no way the rest of us can make up the difference. The only solution is to get the money where there’s a lot of it.