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The ignorant opinions posted on these threads can be pretty amazing. The most common complaint I've seen is, "Government workers are overpaid!" When I've asked if they're referring to local, state, or federal workers, the answer is usually "All of 'em!", even though they're all on different salary and benefit schedules. When I've asked if they think that government janitors are overpaid, or maybe it's just the government neurosurgeons, I get the same answer - "All of 'em!" Last time I looked (a few years back), some of the least educated federal employees (janitors, secretaries, etc.) were getting slightly more than industry standard, while the scientists and engineers were earning significantly less than people with comparable experience in industry - and how much less depended on locality.

And the government retirement benefits that people picture aren't always there, either. I was talking with a municipal firefighter many years ago, and he described the best retirement package I had ever heard of: he could retire after 25 years (in his mid-40s) with full pay and benefits! When I told him how fantastic that sounded, he told me that every single one of his friends on the department who had retired ahead of him was dead by the age of 50, from cancer. So he was actually dreading retirement - he considered it a death sentence. More commonly, government employees seem to retire in their 60s with some fraction of their salary - and that isn't always a lot. Because my mother split her teaching career between two school districts in different states, her pension income is less than what a minimum-wage worker would make in a year. Talk about a 'golden retirement'...