I am old enough to remember when government careers meant trading off job security for less money than you could earn in the private sector.  But that was before government workers could unionize and start bribing politicians with campaign donations.  How things have changed! The Cato Institute has just published a study that the Government Executive website comments on.  The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards compared data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to show that, in his view, civilian federal workers are overcompensated. Factoring both salary and benefits, Edwards pointed to BEA data showing the average federal employee earns about $119,000 annually, compared to the private sector worker who earns $67,000 per year. When comparing just salaries, feds collect 50 percent bigger paychecks, Edwards said. The wage gap between the federal and private sectors has grown since the 1990s, Cato’s director of tax policy studies found. The divide has...(Read Full Post)