And the Bankers Say "Fuck 'Em!"

[A Theist]

That sounds like demonizing everybody for the sins of a few, like denying welfare to everybody because a tiny fraction abuse the system.

It's not as though many of those same abuses don't take place in the private sector, it's just that the beneficiaries tend to exist higher up the ladder and at the expense of everybody below them. Private sector workers are definitely subject to a lot more abuse from their employers, and for some reason, this should be the standard?

It's been my experience that people with an opinion similar to that expressed by BreadGod above have little to no exposure to government employees. At least not at the professional level in the federal government. To begin with promotions for federal jobs are awarded competitively. If you want to move into a different position in order to earn a higher salary your resume and performance evaluations are going to be compared against those of all the others interested in the position you want. The US federal government is among the largest employers in the world. That means there is lot of competition for desirable jobs.

I have spent most of the last 25 plus years as a federal government contractor. I work with federal employees every day. With very few exceptions the government employees I work with are intelligent dedicated individuals who consistently put in more than a forty hour work week in a sometimes vain attempt to do more with less. In most cases they are asked to do this for less pay than their contractor counterparts.

...the government employees I work with are intelligent dedicated individuals who consistently put in more than a forty hour work week in a sometimes vain attempt to do more with less.

So it is with a lot of private sector employees too. If government jobs are so bad and so demanding then why did government employees take them in the first place? It would seem to me that government employees knew what they were getting into before they took the jobs. Something about government jobs must have appealed to them. Maybe the cushy benefits packages that they get appealed to them.