Why Are 'Free Riders' Okay in One Instance and Not in Another?

Why Are 'Free Riders' Okay in One Instance and Not in Another?

 

BY HELEN SMITH 

I thought about this question as I read the decision from the Supreme Court on union fees:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday dealt a big blow to organised labour, ruling that non-members cannot be forced in certain states to pay fees to unions representing public employees such as teachers and police, shutting off a key union revenue source.

The 5-4 ruling overturned a 1977 Supreme Court precedent that had permitted these so-called agency fees, which have been collected from millions of workers who opt not to join unions in lieu of union dues to fund non-political activities such as collective bargaining. The court's conservative justices were in the majority, with the liberal justices dissenting...

Republican President Donald Trump, whose administration backed the challenge to the fees, welcomed the ruling, writing on Twitter, "Big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!"

Unions contend that mandatory agency fees are needed to eliminate the problem of what they call "free riders" - non-members who benefit from union representation, for example through salary and working conditions obtained in collective bargaining - without paying for it.

So, if unions, which tend to be Democrats, don't believe in "free riders," then why do they have no problem with 47% of the population paying no or very few taxes or the top 1% paying most of the taxes while the free riders pay little to none or get earned income back?

In 2014, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.3 percent of all individual income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.7 percent.

The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (39.5 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.1 percent).

The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 27.1 percent individual income tax rate, which is more than seven times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (3.5 percent).

People who are not paying taxes while others do, but who are using the American system, are free riders.

But not only do Democrats have no outrage against this type of free riding, they seem to encourage it.

https://pjmedia.com/drhelen/why-are-free-riders-okay-in-one-instance-and-not-in-another/