If all private sector reporters and economists do as poor a job researching a story as the USA Today reporter and Chris Edwards of CATO (so much for the BA and MA in Economics Mr. Edwards) did then no wonder they get paid less. The issues reported in this article and nearly every other recent story or TV "news" report fail to consider critical apple-to-apple factors in trying to compare Fed and private sector salaries. It's not enough to take an occupation, run a simple average salary, look at benefits and then say one is compensated more than the other. To make a true meaningful and EDUCATED comparison, you need to adjust for years of experience, geographic location (I'd argue that a larger percentage of Feds live in cities with much higher cost of living than the avg private person), number of degrees, and a few other critical factors. If you do not perform such "normalizations", then you as a reporter or Director of Tax Policy Studies (Mr. Edwards) are not truly educating the reader, basically all you are doing is feeding the hype to sell a story or play politics. And who cares about the facts and what's real so long as you sell a story or bash the Feds, right?

Let us not forget to mention value created. Government workers? HA!

I work in government and some of this is true. I have no doubt that Government could be cut, I'm currently doing the job of what used to be 3 government workers. I know I try my best to same the taxpayers money anyway I can.

With that being said can you really take these numbers at face value without knowing where they came from. Private Industry has the ability to make quick drastic changes and fire people on a whim. Government does not. Another problem with government is the agency gets punished for saving money. If I need $10 for 2011, but I manage to save $3. In 2012 i'll only get $7. What kind of logic does Congress have when they discourage/punish the government from saving money.