The Central Labor Council of New York City is scheduled to have a big demonstration at noon today in Battery Park, denouncing President Bush’s idea of allowing people to invest part of their Social Security payroll tax in personal accounts. What a bunch of hypocrites.

There will probably be some representatives of the United Federation of Teachers at the rally. As the Tax Foundation points out, as of last year, the Teachers Retirement System of New York City had $36.7 billion in assets, controlled by a board that includes three UFT officials. Of those assets, 78% were invested in stocks. There will probably be some representatives of 1199 SEIU, the healthcare employees union, at today’s rally. Its $6 billion employee pension fund is 52% invested in stocks.

As Bryan O’Keefe of the American Enterprise Institute put it to us, “If Wall Street is such a bad investment, then union members should take their pension funds out of the markets and put them into Social Security-like savings accounts.” The union members won’t do it, because they don’t want to sacrifice the returns available in the stock market. We don’t blame them for investing wisely, just for trying to prevent other Americans from joining them.