The union worker, the chief executive, the capitalist, and all of us are facing the same problem: We stand on the very brink of economic breakdown. Can America come together to fix its problems?

States and cities across the country are on the verge of failure. Some small cities have already gone bankrupt. Government officials are being forced to consider unprecedented actions.

But the times are unprecedented!

In Hawaii, the state has not only furloughed its teachers, it has furloughed its students—instituting a four-day school week. Student classroom time was cut by 20 percent. The state is far from alone, and the New York Times reports that more school districts are considering doing the same.

In Georgia, Clayton County shut down its bus system in a desperate attempt to balance its budget. The hard decision stranded 8,400 daily commuters.

In Colorado Springs, the city switched off one third of its 24,512 streetlamps to conserve cash. It slashed its police force and parks department.

And all the while, one small business after another shutters its doors for good.

It is deindustrialization on a national scale. But it is more than that.

All across America—North Dakota, Michigan, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere—states are grinding up asphalt roads and letting them go back to gravel. Some states, like Ohio, can’t even afford the grinding costs and are simply letting the roads erode back to gravel. The arteries, the linkages connecting small-town America with the giant interstate markets, are being chewed up and spit out.

Is it a sign that America is headed “back to the Stone Age”? wonders Purdue University’s John Habermann.

Furloughing children, pawning the city’s buses, street lights going dark, reverting to gravel: All these stories have a common theme: squandered wealth. More specifically, plundered wealth.

Almost without exception, the high cost of unions—and the corrupt officials who allowed states to indenture themselves, their children and their children’s children to the unions—are bankrupting the nation.

Don’t believe it? It is simple math.

On a national level, it is well known that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are on course to break the nation. Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker estimates the U.S. government will need over $60 trillion to pay for these programs over the coming years. Since the total U.S. budget is only around $3.5 trillion, the dirty little secret that everyone in Washington knows, but won’t admit, is that these programs are soon to be severely cut or eliminated. America just doesn’t have the money to pay for all these retirement promises.

Social Security is already giving out more in benefits than it collects in premiums. To make up the difference, the federal government borrows money to pay benefits.

This kind of financial irresponsibility can only go on for so long. The system is already breaking and it is primarily due to two gigantic unions. They are called Democrats and Republicans. Both unions pretend to stand for different things, but in the end, they both just want your vote. And in America, you are a card-carrying member of one or the other or your voice gets squashed.

At the more local level, employee unions are doing a fantastic job of sabotaging the economy too. Take the recent state multibillion-dollar bailout just passed by Congress.

On August 10, at a special session, the House voted to give states $26 billion to prevent 300,000 teachers, police and other public employees from being laid off.

But why do the states need a bailout in the first place? Why is it the federal government is now paying the salaries of state employees? Because states are bankrupt. According to the New York Times, states are running a cumulative $3 trillion funding deficit.

Why such a huge deficit? Because they have made unsustainable and extravagant promises to unions.

For example, in Milwaukee, the teachers union is fighting the school board to get taxpayer-funded Viagra back into their health plans. If a judge forces the school board to pay up, based on historical usage it will cost the city an astounding $786,000 per year.

Think about that.

Seven hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars—each and every year—so teachers can get paid access to the passion pill. This is how ridiculous unions have become. With the whole nation mired in a deep recession, with millions of people losing their jobs, this is the union’s priority?

But here is the real kick in the pants for taxpayers.

According to a consultant for the school board, the $786,000 could be instead used to “keep perhaps a dozen first-year teachers employed.”

Did you get that? In other words, the cost to the city for hiring a unionized rookie teacher straight out of college is $65,000 per year (when including benefits). In some school districts, teachers are paid more than $72,000 per year, not including benefits. Benefits like family health care for a family of four can cost around $22,000 per year.

And when public employees retire, they are often entitled to a salary plus benefits equal to their highest wage earned throughout their career. And employees have learned to take advantage of this, engaging in retirement spiking—by working as much overtime as possible during the final year of employment—and then collecting “juiced” pension payments for the rest of their life.

Let’s assume a private-sector employee wanted to retire and receive a $65,000 annual salary. If that person thought he or she would live for 20 years beyond retirement, assuming a generous 7 percent annual return he or she would need to plop down almost $700,000.

How many people have that kind of money at retirement? Unions have done well.

Next question: How many teachers, police, firefighters and other unionized employees are on state payrolls heading for retirement? New Jersey, for example, has 200,000 members in just its teachers union. Can you see why states are going bankrupt? Look how much money will be needed to cover all these teachers’ salaries as they retire.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been very vocal about the union parasites in his state. In a speech earlier this year he told how each and every teacher is required to pay $730 per year in mandatory dues to the union. And if teachers wants to opt out of the union, that is fine, but they still have to pay $620 per year to the union just for the privilege of opting out. The New Jersey teachers union alone collects around $130 million per year in mandatory dues. According to Christie, it is blood money used to coerce and blackmail politicians into supporting union initiatives.

In Los Angeles, the teachers union is currently trying to blackmail the Los Angeles Times into not reporting on the state of the local school system.

America’s education system is a shambles. Union gangsters care more about preserving their power than helping children.

Teachers unions have become so corrupt that it is virtually impossible to fire bad teachers. Unions won’t even allow teachers “engaging in lewd behavior,” or who make sexual advances to students, to be fired. Some unions have even become child molesters’ best friends, protecting them from losing their jobs and paychecks. Here is a snippet from the Los Angeles Times:

Every school day, Kim’s shift begins at 7:50 a.m., with 30 minutes for lunch, and ends when the bell at his old campus rings at 3:20 p.m. He is to take off all breaks, school vacations and holidays, per a district agreement with the teachers union. At no time is he to be given any work by the district or show up at school.He has never missed a paycheck.In the jargon of the school district, Kim is being “housed” while his fitness to teach is under review. A special education teacher, he was removed from Grant High School in Van Nuys and assigned to a district office in 2002 after the school board voted to fire him for allegedly harassing teenage students and colleagues. In the meantime, the district has spent more than $2 million on him in salary and legal costs.Last week, Kim was ordered to continue this daily routine at home. District officials said the offices for “housed” employees were becoming too crowded.About 160 teachers and other staff sit idly in buildings scattered around the sprawling district, waiting for allegations of misconduct to be resolved.The housed are accused, among other things, of sexual contact with students, harassment, theft or drug possession. Nearly all are being paid. All told, they collect about $10 million in salaries per year—even as the district is contemplating widespread layoffs of teachers because of a financial shortfall. …”It’s a glaring example of how hard it is to remove someone from the classroom and how the process is tilted toward teachers,” said school board member Marlene Canter, who recently proposed—unsuccessfully—to revamp the disciplinary process.

As sad as that is, it is just one sad example of what unions have become. And teachers unions are only the beginning.

In Oakland, California, 75 percent of the city budget goes toward paying police and firefighters salaries and 10 percent goes to paying interest on city debt. California has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country, and still these unions are not happy with 75 percent of the money.

Writing for the Plain Truth magazine in April 1985, Herbert W. Armstrong highlighted the problem that unions were becoming. He noted how in the past unions had helped the common workers, preventing them from being exploited by unscrupulous employers.

However, as Herbert Armstrong wrote, the labor unions became corrupted: They “went all out to ‘get’ all possible …. A new ‘get’ economic philosophy infiltrated labor unionism. No longer was a single company a ‘team’ where all worked together against rival competition. … But now capital and management became the enemy of labor. …

“Too often a union leader said to an employee, ‘Slow down, there, buddy—or we’ll all have to work as conscientiously as you are!’”

So now America has come to the state where America can no longer afford unions. When 75 percent of city budgets go just toward the salaries of two unions, they have literally gotten just about all that there is to give.

Yet when it gets right down to it, are the unions really all that different from what goes on in the rest of America?

There are two ways of life: the give way and the get way. As Herbert Armstrong wrote: “‘Get’ seems to have got us all! The ‘get’ incentive is the root cause of all the world’s troubles and evils! The way of ‘give,’ cooperate, serve, help, share, is the basic spiritual law of our Maker! The world has been trying to beat that law—and is being beaten by it!” (ibid.).

How true.