I think we need to chop government worker pay severely, but I don't like the misleading way this headline frames the problem. That is -- I think others may corr

I think we need to chop government worker pay severely, but I don't like the misleading way this headline frames the problem. That is -- I think others may correctly point out that this is a very odd metric to quote, and hence people must need to fudge the numbers to argue the case. The more accurate is what Rand Paul just said -- federal total compensation averages $120k vs. $60k for private sector. The only subtlety there is total compensation including benefits vs. salary. The problem with those making more than X has increased by Y is that you can always generate extreme numbers by choosing X appropriately. Imagine there was a large subset of our all-knowing overlords making $145k five years ago. Maybe this was the cap for some particular level in the hierarchy. Now assume they got a 5% raise. Bam, huge increase in number of feds making over $150k. True, but misleading. If you want subtlety, there are studies out there comparing apples to apples (since federal employees are skewed towards professionals) and still finds massive pay differences.