You can't get competent people into those positions by paying much less than what they'd get in the private sector. The free market works to some extent there also. I've seen this because I used to work in government. I disagree that they are all tax sucking bureaucrats. That's just the mirror image of saying all CEOs are rapacious tycoons.
From the article : ---------------------- The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available. When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000. ----------------------- I worked for the govt also. 4 years. All of a sudden the govt has requirements for such a high level talent pool? I would love to see some of these job titles and responsibilities. Oh, and most CEO`s are rapacious tycoons. But at least they create private sector jobs. Cant say that much for ANY public servant.
bigger government = more beaurocracy = more useful idiots who cant get a job in the real world = more diversity coordinators = more stupid laws, nanny state meddling, higher taxes and the shrinking of freedoms
What I do not understand is that we make such a big deal over civil servents but we, somehow, execuse the almost criminal salaries of some of the executives of the privet sectors.
I am not too surprised by this. What many forget is that in the government, and to a great extent the government contractors, the pay is fairly linear. Meaning that your variation between the top performers and bottom performers over time is not that great. However in the private sector your guarantee of good pay over time does not exist but the opportunity for outrageous pay does exist. There is an exponential difference between top and bottom performers in the private sector. If you compare private sector employees to comparable public sector employees or comparable sized organizations with comparable level so f decision making responsibility you will find that the private sector is 20% - 40% higher in compensation at the mid levels and much higher at the higher levels.
I sense I'm getting myself off track here, I dont' find $170k/yr to be a huge compensation level, though it obviously beats what the average, shrinking-middle-class member is making, and dwarfs what the average, growing-poor-class member is making. But, I'll easily concede that an oligarchy may be growing to compete (collude?) with the plutocracy. Afterall, we have seen a couple of runs at royalty of late, the Kennedy's and the Bush's. However, the oligarchy, despite the fact that there is a revolving door between them and the plutocrats, is still the weaker party in my view. I mean, if we had to put heads on pikes, we couldn't even touch the upper crust, even if we could find them. But we can still probably "access" government department heads.
One's a debit and one's a credit on the government balance sheet. If you're running a business, do you want more or less debits? Less. You want to operate the business effectively with the least amount of expense. For years they've been spending like a dot com startup in the 90's and Obama is taking it to a whole new level.