The standoff between the Wisconsin government and unions, with the latter enjoying the full support of Democrats and President Barack Obama, is a timely reminder that we must say no to unions of all kinds if we want to avoid being driven to bankruptcy.

There was a time when unions had a raison d’être, that is, when no proper labour and work standards and laws existed, and workers were indeed exploited by their bosses. But this is no longer true. We now have rules and regulations for safe and reasonable working conditions in place virtually everywhere in the civilized world.

Unions today, of course, are no longer about enabling people to work in decent and humane conditions. Today they’re all about extorting money and benefits that most non-unionized workers never get to enjoy.

The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, understands what is at stake, and he says, enough is enough. After all, why should a relatively small group of the privileged continue to receive wage increases at a higher rate than what the vast majority of the working population can expect to see? Why should they be entitled to defined-benefit pensions without making the necessary contributions themselves?

These are just some of the examples of the regular blackmail unions engage in, particularly in the public sector. But in the private sector they’ve also caused a lot of damage. The near-bankruptcies of most major automakers in the US in recent years, and which necessitated billions of dollars in bailout money, were the direct result of years and years of outrageous and unrealistic demands by autoworkers’ unions.

Former economist Paul Krugman, and now a peddler of falsehoods for the New York Times, doesn’t get it that we don’t live in the 18th, 19th or even 20th centuries. He still speaks of unions as being the “most important” institutions representing the interests of “middle- and working-class Americans”, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Real middle- and working-class Americans (as well Canadians, and so on) aren’t represented by unions. Union bosses, and their expensive lifestyles, have more in common with generously-compensated business executives – the very people unions claim to fight – than with “middle- and working-class” people.

As a matter of fact, what ordinary people need is protection from unions and company bosses. Both can be equally detrimental to society and the well-being of hardworking people everywhere. Not only do unions regularly destroy jobs with their unrealistic demands or by driving their members’ employers to bankruptcy, they also harm taxpayers on a daily basis by securing excessive pay for very little actual work. In the public sector, in particular, it is indeed rare for any unionized worker to ever suffer so much as a paper cut or actually work for more than four hours a day (if that).

What Krugman writes about unions was true but isn’t anymore. This is 2011, not 1811. Today they don’t provide protection and help to those who really need it; they only look out for their own benefits. Workers who are unionized against their will regularly report of their union reps not lifting a finger when actual grievances are brought before them. Not surprising: unions today don’t do an actual union’s job anymore. They’re like Italian crime families who are all about amassing money, power and influence for those higher up in the hierarchy. Those on the lower rungs are merely plankton (sometimes quite literally if the contents of the Hudson River in New York is anything to go by).

Walker, contrary to what Krugman and other lefties claim, isn’t out to destroy unions as such. He merely wants to put an end to their never-ending extortion of the taxpayers. Collective bargaining shouldn’t be allowed anyway, as all other (non-unionized) occupations and professions are prohibited by law from engaging in such collusive measures, such as price-fixing. If any other professions acted the way unions do, they’d face anti-trust or anti-cartel charges and be looking at astronomical fines or even prison time.

In a fair society, either all have the right to bargain collectively, or no one does. The same goes for benefits: we must give defined-benefit pension plans to everyone or no one.

Sorry, Krugman, but you’re way out of touch with reality. You should re-read Animal Farm, and on closer inspection, you’d find that the corrupt fat pigs on the farm don’t symbolize corporate bosses, but your pals in the top echelons of the labour movement.