You're joining a growing chorus on the "top-flight-lawyers-and-scientists" issue, but I'd contend the issue is a bit more complicated than just "underpaid bureaucrats."

The problem isn't just level of pay but how the pay system for government employees is structured: the civil service pay scale is designed so that it undercompensates really talented people in fields where there are lots of other attractive options, but it also overcompensates some other, less talented, critical, or easier-to-come by folks (a certain class of political appointees who are just chilling their heels between elections would be the prime example here, but there are also probably places in the career staff where this is true, as in any system where outcomes can be fuzzy and compensation is heavily tied to education and experience.).  This isn't just a federal government issue--it happens in a lot of single-salary scale compensation systems, for example in public education, where it's a major barrier to improving teacher quality. 

Before y'all castigate me for sounding like a conservative, I am not arguing that we should overall pay government workers less, or that we should give this administration carte blanche to set up its own version of merit pay scheme for government employees that would most certainly be disastrous.  What I am saying is that, as progressives, we should want to make the federal government as efficient and effective in its operation as it can be, and that includes setting up pay schemes that attract and retain high-quality individuals in key posts and create the right set of performance and other incentives for the federal workforce as a whole (a process that would require carefully thought out fairness guarantees and firewalls against political abuse).  While the type of pay schemes the government uses today were an important innovation at their creation, and the feds have made steps to modernize the system to be more performance-based, the way we pay federal workers remains out-dated and out of sync with the mindset of new generations of workers.  Matt's recommendation is a necessary, but not sufficient, step to address this problem.  

"is starting to suffer"  "Already in the late Clinton years"

Whoo boy, you are young.  Underpaid bureaucrats has been a problem at least since the 1970s.  I suspect it had been a problem long before then, but that was when I first starting to pay attention to salaries, and I can guarantee you that government workers have been underpaid at least since then.  It was a no brainer not to go to work for the government.

You might want to throw in state and municipal workers as well.  They don't make diddly.

I would slash the number of employees, make it easier to hire and fire, and crank up salaries, myself.  But then I'm a heartlless conservative.

The rule is that nobody in the civil service can be [paid] more than a member of congress

Imagine that, a law that no member of congress may be paid less than the highest paid civil service employee.  And I wonder what branch of our government enacted a crazy law like that.

The rule is that nobody in the civil service can be made more than a member of congress, which allows for salaries that, while pretty decent, are low compared to what highly-skilled professionals can earn in the private sector. This is having a slow-moving but corrosive impact on the ability of the government to function well.

Tom Freidman made that point also today in his NYT editorial.  I agree completely...how can we expect the best out of our government when the best want to remain in the private sector?  We are getting what we pay for...mediocrity, all the way to the top.

I have to disagree. It's civil service. It's not supposed to be about money. What ever happened to altruism? 

I have to disagree. It's civil service. It's not supposed to be about money. What ever happened to altruism? 

I think it's a matter of degree not kind. Personally, I wouldn't want government jobs to mirror the salaries of equivalent private sector jobs, and I'd be very suspicious of anyone who went into government to "make a killing." But there's a point at which people equate money and status. If you ask someone to put up with disrespect in the name of "altruism" you'll get a diminishing pool of dedicated individuals along with other people who just can't do anything else. If the goal is to get the best and brightest, you need a lot more than an appeal to altruism, though I agree that this can be part of the motivation.

There's also a practical matter here: Given the cost of higher education and particularly law school, many really smart people coming out of top institutions can't afford to take lower-paid jobs as public servants and still cover their loans, etc.  There are some loan forgiveness or help programs in the government and from some institutions that are helping address this, but it's still a big issue for lots of people starting out in their careers.

I wonder if it's the discrepancy that's the problem -- the fact that you can make so much more in the private sector.  I would bet that this discrepancy is fueled by the 20-30 year trend of way overcompensating upper management coupled with the 20-30 year trend of reducing high marginal rates on the super-rich. 

I suspect that these trends you describe are important.  Has anyone seen any research/articles on whether European civil service also suffers from the same sort of brain drain?  It would be interesting to look at salaries and after-tax civil service/private sector income ratio considering their higher marginal tax rates.

Forgive the cynicism but civil servants are doubly protected both by civil service lawas and being unionized.  Nobody goes to work for government out of altruism.

The civil service laws you speak of are being rapidly undermined by the bush administration and the federal labor unions are and have always been pretty much toothless. I may not have gone to work for the government completely out of altruism, but it certainly played a part. I continue to work for the government even though I could make more money elsewhere because I provide a valuable service to the community. Don't dismiss my altruism because you don't have any.

Altruism is fine in many occupations but when it comes to senior management responsible for billions if not trillions of dollars, you want superior competence and you don't get that without paying for it  (See FEMA for reference). 

Dan K's proposal is certainly provocative. But continuing in this line, you could sanction non-performance by punitive measures: jail, civil disgrace, more years of service - may be in demoted positions, etc.



PS: I'm for a all-draft army, even though I know this position doesn't stand a chance. My 2 cents of idealism.

Altruism is fine in many occupations but when it comes to senior management responsible for billions if not trillions of dollars, you want superior competence and you don't get that without paying for it  (See FEMA for reference). 

Sorry, Bush's appointment's (combined with Lieberman's spineless vetting committee) had zero to do with altruism - zero.  There is nothing benevolent about cronyism and political kickbacks. The fact that Lieberman seems to think it's okay just further convinces me he should resign as a senator from Connecticut.  He's a disgrace. See the CNN video on Lieberman's continuing apathy.

So the first thing we need to establish is that important jobs need to be filled with people who are qualified, gifted, or have a calling for what needs doing.  There's nothing benevolent about it - it's important business. 

I think you believe that the people we need running humanitarian and security bureaucracies somehow will do a better job if they're well paid rather than because they love the job, enjoy challenges, have found their calling, and so on.

Clinton's appointee made no more money than Brownie.  Yet, everyone agrees the entire agency was enriched by the fellow who inspired trust, good-will, and so on.

IMO, everyone in government should be exposed to accountability that can result in immediate firing.   Tha, more than money will soon improve this crooked republican government.

and there doesn't seem to be any, or even a possibility for one because people are generally so misinformed, on the right, left, and middle.

It’s ironic most are comfortable with the private sector’s vast compensation packages, assuming it buys competence. Actually, it often goes to self aggrandizing con men. That makes clear why we need better regulation to stop them from cooking the books and bilking shareholders with the chair-people’s complicity, and why we need to end the cultural error of confusing celebrity with performance. To do so we need a cultural evolution and a better informed public. Learning one scandal at a time seems the hard way.

Yet, at the same time, we expect some noblesse oblige from elected officials and revile high compensation generally for career public servants and technocrats, for fear it might corrupt them. What an absurd notion high pay might corrupt them, when in fact, we already have far too many lobbyists and revolving doors making the chasing of wealth so consuming it takes all our politicians’ time. It seems pretty clear those choosing public service for purely altruistic reasons are far too scarce to be relied upon. Always have been, and always will be. Yet we continue to hope against hope for a plethora of highly skilled saints to suddenly emerge from an unfriendly society, and run for office with campaign funds to win.

It’s a great irritation to me that the first casualty of the cold war was reasonable thinking itself. It irks me to no end that the cold war literally set us back a century in the discussion of social organization, producing zealots on either side of the debate.

I can’t even use the words “social” or “welfare” because they mean something vaguely communist in a lot of people’s minds. Similarly the terms “upwardly mobile” and even the idea of a “meritocracy” are equally loaded to others, vaguely meaning something to do with plutocracy and callous indifference.

You’ve got ideologues on one side arguing for pure laissez faire global finance, and the dismantling of government for everything to be privatized, even the military now. Only those in power always lie and cheat to deal themselves a better hand, to maintain power, figuring it’s their Social Darwinist right if they can get away with it.

On the opposite end you’ve got other ideologue's equally absurd non-solutions, such as the abolition of borders, various Marxist dogma, etc. Only they know they’ll never actually be burdened with making such fantasizes function, so they safely kvetch and promise everything in the hypothetical, basically radicalizing a small minority to function as the left's fifth column.

The result is a public which sees radical ideologues on the left and right, tunes out, doesn’t vote, and avoid politics in polite conversation. They often sum the opposing radical arguments, divide by two, and wind up with a non-functional hodge-podge, hence our present government of neurosis.

That’s the real problem, we as a country can’t even begin a discussion on sensible government and the private sector without goring someone’s ideological ox, and we can't suggest anything new to the general public centrists because they're jaded against radical fringe groups.

Sometimes I wonder how many US tragedies are inevitable while we learn things the hard way. How long till the public is tired of all zealots including dogmatic centrists? When do people start discussing a new course which is rational; neither reactionary left, reactionary right, or reactionary centrist?

Sometimes I think the real solution is just to move to a country which didn’t fight the cold war directly. Move to a culture which is not shell shocked from the conflict and which still has some cultural sanity, able to discuss pragmatism without undue ideology.

I have to agree with Ryk6.  And, chalk me up as another civil servant who works almost completely for "altruistic" reasons: I could work in the private sector and make considerably more money.  Thing is, I believe not only in my agency's mission, but that our government can be a force for good.  And those beliefs, for me, are based on a deep "reverence" (for lack of a better word) of the concepts of the United States and our Constitution.  Is it perfect?  Hell, no.  But it is--or perhaps should be--the unifying concept for civil servants.

The question of civil servant performance is one that has vexed my mind for some time, having to deal all-too-often with lazy and uncaring civil servants who are simply in place to collect a paycheck.  Having read (for example) the RAND report on high-performance government, the idea of higher pay, or a different pay structure, is not new.

But, I think that Matthew and some of the other commenters are coming at the question of an efficient bureaucracy (an oxymoron if ever one existed) from the wrong direction.  Why should this be about money?  Can there be a more "modern Republican" way of thinking about how we should entice people, than to suggest buying their love?  Aren't we, in general, self-centered enough (that is, too much); don’t we already ask too often, "Yeah, but what's in it for me?"  Certainly, we have to ensure that civil servants are paid enough to survive and then some, but what happened to the concept of the greater good? 

Civil servants are the implements by which We the people strive for a more perfect Union, to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty," and to put money ahead of that concept is a betrayal of the ideas on which the Nation was founded.

So here's how I've thought about the question of an efficient bureaucracy: is it possible to acquire and retain civil servants who are driven by the ideal of a more perfect Union, rather than an easy or large paycheck?  And to further qualify the question, can such a goal be achieved without indoctrination so complete that thinking is precluded?  I think it is possible...I can simultaneously hold the view that the general concepts embodied in our Constitution are as near to ideal as a human construct can be, while at the same time think critically of those things that need to be changed to achieve a more perfect Union.  I just can't figure out what, precisely, got me to this mindset.

Overly idealistic?  Quite possibly.  But why shouldn't we aim for the ideal?  Why aim for any less? 

A European civil servant who interacts with civil servants around the world told me that in his experience US civil servants were of noticeably lower quality than in other countries.  But given that they're underpaid and treated as less than scum by their citizens and political leaders, where is the surprise in that?

Look it's a combination.  I work in the General Counsel's office of a highly specialized federal agency.  I love my work and I think it's important.  But the fact of the matter is that we consistently get the best people out of law school, provide them with 2-3 years of excellent courtroom and client experience which they could never get at a law firm where they would be stuck doing research and never see a courtroom, and then lose them to the private sector because it pays them a lot more. 

If it was just a question of salary, we wouldn't lose so many people.  But people have ridiculous loans coming out of law school and the gov't repayment programs are not very good.  So you have to deal not only with a paycut, but the fact that you'll be in deep debt for quite some time. 

But given that they're underpaid and treated as less than scum by their citizens and political leaders, where is the surprise in that?

 Nonsense on both counts.  Here in Connecticut, scandal after scandal appears in the pages of the Hartford Courant.  The -cough- poor public servants you shed tears for more often than not were pulling down triple digit salaries ($100-300K), enormous benefit packages, government vehicles, expense accounts, benefits no one in the private sector enjoys except CEOs, and so on.

 Please.  I've performed a couple of contracts at State facilities and the pay scale was far below the going rate in the public sector but I never witnessed poorly paid State employees.  I did witness an environment hostile to change, efficiency, and accountability.  taxpayer money is poured in buckets in wasteful, empty programs.

Treated as scum?  I listen to public employees flaunt their good fortune routinely.  They live well, often double and triple dipping into the government retirement and benefit troughs. 

Studies have shown that most often it is public employees suing the government because these employees know the ropes. 

The people who are treated like scum are the unemployed (yet another set of constraints to separate unemployed workers from reasonable benefits), private employees hanging on for dear life, and so on.

The size of our government is already unsustainable economically - speak to that issue.

Money is one, prestige is another. We should reward excellence in government both monetarily and in terms of public homage.

This is a good point, that there are other incentives besides money for working in the government. I'm not a civil servant, but I work at a public university, so my salary comes from the same public funds. I could make a lot more money (perhaps 50% more) in the private sector, but I like my job. I think that most of the people in my department stay here and enjoy their work for reasons other than personal gain.

First, it's enormously rewarding to know that you're helping students learn how to be successful, whether through teaching or advising. The rewards are different for some civil service jobs, where connections to the public are more tenuous, but I think that they're still present--it takes the right kind of person to appreciate more abstract contributions they make to the general good.

Second, I think that most scientists appreciate whatever public or peer recognition comes their way, but that they are much more concerned that their work is valuable in a less personal sense. We talk about making a contribution to the field, for example, in contrast to individual findings. I think a reasonable analogy here is the distinction a judge might make between giving a just ruling in a given case and producing a decision that could influence legal rulings for the better in the future. Again, it's hard to see how such an abstract, external incentive might appeal to some civil servants, but at least at high levels of government it's possible to think of work as pursuing higher ideals. (Of course, here we run into the problem of ideologues in government chasing their pet ideologies without regard for public benefit.)

Clearly the same incentives, internal or external, are not going to apply uniformly to all positions in government. It's worth thinking about what they might be, though, and to make people aware of them.