Fanning the flames—again

“The federal workforce has become an elite island of secure and high-paid workers, separated from the ocean of average American workers competing in the global economy.” The words are from a blog post by Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute. The whole post – more of a position paper, actually – can be found at a Cato site called www.downsizinggovernment.org.

“The federal workforce has become an elite island of secure and high-paid workers, separated from the ocean of average American workers competing in the global economy.”

The words are from a blog post by Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute. The whole post – more of a position paper, actually – can be found at a Cato site called www.downsizinggovernment.org.

Sure to add a little more fuel to the “overpaid feds” fire, the post also concludes that the federal government’s desire to hire the best and brightest imposes a cost on the economy by pulling those top folks away from the private sector’s “higher-valued activities.”

Do government functions just not rank up there with higher-valued activities? Or does the blogger’s argument skirt another issue—that “you get what you pay for”?

Comments?


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