Meteor Blades wrote about it today. Please read that first.
But this is a meme I've been hearing for months from the right. I am sick of it. These folks know not what they talk about. Below the fold two personal examples, I could offer many more.
My father, two years after I was born in 1969, graduated with a PhD in History from LSU. His major professor was T. Harry Williams. Williams won a Pulitzer Prize for his book on Huey Long. To say my father's major professor was T. Harry is like saying you learned to program an OS from Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
He had a choice of any job he wanted.
Instead he took a job for less money to teach at the Army War College at Fort Leavenworth. The grad school for West Point. He was still pained he broke both his legs jumping out of a plane in military high school and was refused enlistment for the Vietnam War.
I got this "fun" game I play with him. When I see a younger military general on TV talking this shit or that shit I ask if he was in one of my father's classes. Most often they were. He taught the current leaders of our military.
After that he was moved to the AFCC (Air Force Communications Command). When I say my father wrote the textbook on the use of communications in warfare, I mean he actually wrote the textbook used to this day.
When I lived in DC for about 20 years my best friend (lets call him Steve) was a lawyer at the EPA in their enforcement division. Went to Michigan State undergrad and got a 4.0. Graduated top of his class in law school at Michigan.
He could have gone to work just about anywhere. He choose the EPA, cause well he kind of cares about the environment. To say his job is a "long hard slog" would be an understatement.
Steve does ground water. He worked on one case for almost six years just to get cities to post notices that when there is a lot of rainfall the local sewage systems backup into rivers and lakes. Please don't swim or fish.
My father and Steve could have made more money right out of college. Made a ton more once they started to get a decade and then two decades plus of experience on the government side of things.
Even though my father is retired he gets calls 24/7 from DoD contractors. Steve gets thrown huge sums of money from companies he regulates to come (with his experience) to work for them.
Neither have any desire to do that, even though it would be so easy.
Now based on their GS ratings both were and/or are making around $120,000 to $150,000 a year. Not a small salary. Good benefits. But in the private sector based on their experience that is close to pennies on the dollar for what they could make.
Think about the person with a PhD and 15 years experience working at NASA, NIH, or Sandia National Laboratories. I am sure the "teabaggers" are confused somebody working in a job for the Department of Energy is making $150,000. But that person could make 3-4 times that much in the private sector. So could the local police officer or EMT in your local community that rocks at their jobs if they went to say Blackwater, sorry Xe Services.
I got a lot of pet peeves, but this is close to the top of the list. IMHO the government gets by paying a below market wage, even if a more then living wage, cause many folks do actually want to serve their nation. Make the world a better place.
Now even these individuals are under attack from the right. When will it end?