Back in the old days, a public service job was security. You received a reasonable salary, nothing extravagant, your job was relatively safe, and the work pressures were expected to be less than in “the real world.” If you wanted more, you ventured out into that real world where there were no limits to what you could achieve and earn. Public service was public service—it wasn’t meant to be Maseratis and mansions.

Today, we pay public servants more than they would get in the real world, where market forces—profitability and competence—are at play.

The phrase “public service union” is an oxymoron. A union holding a company to ransom where there is a market reality controlling the negotiations is arguably a relatively fair system. When there is no profit and loss equation, just threats and handshakes between multiple levels of the same public service, it becomes a joke.

And doing it via an arm’s length committee is an insulting camouflage that no one believes.

Image by Grok.

Tell me, what additional benefit did California get paying one of its Fire executives $750,000 a year that $250,000, or even $150,000, would have got?

Public service remuneration is not in competition with the commercial world; it is public money, taxpayers’ money, that needs to be carefully administered, not squandered. The fact is that half the workforce earns less than $38,000 a year and is doing without to make that money last.

“Oh, but we have to offer commensurate pay with commercial enterprises to get the best people.” How is that working for you, California? The reason for public service must never be financial gain, either for employees or for the Congress version of what we laughingly call public service.

Public service is service. Service to the public—not the party, not the oligarch, not your particular sense of truth or justice—it’s service to the public under the Constitution and laws of the nation. You don’t get rich doing that; it’s a different sort of pay-off. Dare I suggest that if that were known and understood, then we would not have the sort of people who seem to be the majority of our elected representatives.

Motivation is important for success, and the right motivation is essential for honest government.

Congress millionaires, multiple waterfront housing, first-class jet travel to Guam... these are not what it’s about—or rather, shouldn’t be what it’s about. But that’s what “public service” has become in every country.

I know Australia well. A few decades ago, it had a strong conservative politician as Prime Minister—John Howard, a man colloquially known as “Honest John,” who was a conservative through and through. Yet, when someone once suggested that Parliamentary salaries and exclusive perks, including his, were excessive, he went feral. Featherbedding is built into the system, and it shouldn’t be.

Public servants doing their job shouldn’t starve. No one disputes that they should be able to live comfortably. However, they should not be elevated above the public they serve. They should not get benefits more than the general public or benefit from other special rules.

Instead, they must be neutral employees doing exemplary work under the Constitution and rule of law. If they are part of the Executive branch, that means following and supporting the President’s agenda or, if they don’t, resigning, which is an honorable alternative.

“We serve at the pleasure of the President” was a phrase used repeatedly in Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing. Even if you were a Republican, when Sorkin’s Democrat President asked you to serve, your answer was, “I serve at the pleasure of the President.” That is the way America is supposed to work, not “I get a paycheck and do what I think is better.”

Nodrog Snave is a pseudonym.