Many socialists, including Wisconsin’s Noddlez revolutionary are rejoicing that the people’s revolutionary masses are now on the march from Tunisia to Wisconsin.
One easily overlooked difference is the fact that the North African uprising AGAINST the government, while the Wisconsin protests are FOR continued government spending.
From mises.org:
In Tunisia, “free” university education is guaranteed to anyone who passes the government’s exams at the end of high school. Largely as a result of this, the number of Tunisians who graduated college more than tripled in the last ten years. This may sound like a good thing, but it has produced a glut of graduates.
Fifty-Seven percent of young Tunisians entering the labor market are college educated. This is while only 30 percent of Americans earn a college degree by the time they are 27. Recent Tunisian college grads have an unemployment rate approximately three times higher than the national average of 15 percent. This is up ninefold from 1994.
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In fact, the Tunisian protests began after a recent graduate killed himself because government authorities confiscated his fruit stand when they discovered he did not have an “official” permit. The BBC reported that most of the early protesters were unemployed recent graduates.
From the Daily Bell:
originally published in The Times/N.I. Syndication:
“[Mohamed Bouazizi, the] young [street] trader had been in trouble with the authorities before….Under the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, permits were required for every form of business activity, often accompanied by a bribe. Bouazizi’s family would later claim that he had refused to pay the bribe demanded by the officials….According to other fruit and vegetable pedlars, vendors have a choice when faced with a municipal inspector: they can flee, and leave behind both borrow and merchandise; pay a fine equivalent to several days’ earnings, or fork out a bribe. Bouazizi, it seems, was not inclined to do any of these. When [a 45 year old female inspector] Hamdi began seizing his applies, he tried to grab them back, and she slapped him in the face….”
After this event all hell broke loose and escalated and ended, eventually, in the ouster of President Ben Ali’s government. So, by any reasonable account what brought about the Tunisian upheaval is the government’s intervention with freedom of trade, exactly the kind of conduct by government officials that a good many American jurists, political thinkers and politicians claim is constitutional and certainly not dictatorial.
For over 60 years, employers have had a federally protected right under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to hold paid, mandatory meetings with employees to discuss various issues related to unions and unionization. These meetings, often referred to by unions as “captive-audience” talks, have historically been used by employers to explain to new hires and other employees the tactics unions use to collect union authorization cards, the legal rights employees have when asked to sign those cards, and the merits of a union-free workplace. . . .
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