Time for some much-needed positive news. Ordinary taxpayers are slowly but surely figuring out that federal workers are overpaid and underworked. Here are some of the details from the story in the Washington Post.
More than half of Americans say they think that federal workers are overpaid for the work they do…according to a Washington Post poll.
Half also say the men and women who keep the government running do not work as hard as employees at private companies.
…In the new Post survey, 52 percent of Americans think that federal civil servants are paid too much, a view held by nearly two in three Republicans and about seven in 10 conservatives. Far fewer Democrats, independents, liberals and moderates hold this opinion.
…Three-quarters of those surveyed say they think federal workers are paid more and get better benefits than their counterparts outside government, an increase of seven percentage points from a Post-ABC poll conducted in 1982.
And if you want to know why a bloated and overpaid government workforce is bad for the economy, this part of the story says it all.
…nearly half of Republicans would recommend a government job to a relative or close friend just graduating, compared with 70 percent of Democrats. “Why not?” asked Nirmal Sandhu, 56, the father of two college students, who emigrated from India to Long Island in 1987. “Working in the federal government is a good job. For my kids, I think it would be great.”
…African Americans are far more sympathetic to civil servants than are whites, with three-quarters saying they would like to see a young person close to them pursue a career in government.
When people think that mooching off taxpayers and pushing paper for a bureaucracy is a worthy ambition, that is a sign that the nation’s social capital is eroding. And when people actually wind up in the bureaucracy, that is a sign that the nation’s labor force is being misallocated. In either case, long-term growth suffers.
