The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards seems to think so and offers this chart:

The obvious problem here is that we have no idea what these federal workers are actually doing. When you think about what it is federal employees do, it seems to involve a relatively large amount of high-skilled professionals—lots of lawyers, for example—and relatively few people in low-skill job categories. It would be much more meaningful to look at the compensation of government workers compared to other people with similar jobs. It’s rough and anecdotal, but it is worth considering the fact that while you regularly here about people leaving the public sector to “cash in” at private sector firms, you basically never hear of the reverse thing happening. People leave jobs at law firms to go work in the civil service, but they don’t do it in order to earn more money.

Given the high level of unionization in the public sector, I do think it’s plausible that low-end government workers are earning more money than comparably skilled people might be able to garner in the private market. But one look at the 2009 General Service Pay Scale should disabuse you of the notion that a government job is a cash cow. People at the higher levels of the civil service are earning a living, but it’s much less than senior managers or highly skilled professionals can get in the private sector.

Representative Ted Poe thinks the health reform bill in the House is too long:

He described the package on health reform as a 1,017-page document. He said it was delivered near midnight and put up for debate at 9:30 a.m. the next morning, before many had the chance to read it. Poe said he has read all 1,017 pages.

“It is longer than War and Peace and not near as funny,” said Poe.

I have not read all 1,107 pages of the bill since that’s not actually an enlightening way to understand legislation. I have, however, read War and Peace and it’s longer than that. The Signet Classics edition is 1,456 pages. The Vintage Classics edition is 1,296 pages. The Penguin Classics edition is 1,424 pages. Even the relatively brief Norton Critical Edition rolls in at 1,200 pages.

Maybe he was thinking of Anna Karenina

Virginia Congressman Jim Moran thinks the DC government should alter more of its policies to serve the interests of his constituents rather than the interests of the people who live here. And he has some specific ideas of how we can help out:

As Virginia works to add hot lanes to I-95 and 395, Virginia Congressman Jim Moran says HOT lanes wont end the rush hour congestion if the District doesn’t do its part.

“Once they get to D.C. it stops, so what D.C. should do is widen 14th Street Bridge, widen 14th Street and get some of the revenue that’s coming from these HOT lanes,” he said. “We’ve suggested it time and time again and they just won’t listen, let alone act on it.”

Maybe DC doesn’t want to widen 14th Street because it’s an urban street with buildings on both sides:

Instead of demolishing the city to make the streets wider, the sensible thing to do would be to have a toll on the bridges from Virginia or a congestion charge for entering the central city. Alternatively or in addition, downtown parking could be taxed more heavily. That would leave a less-congested drive for those who place a high priority on speedy private motor vehicle access to the central business district. And the funds could be used to enhance the metro area’s existing transit options.

And of course this isn’t an idiosyncratic feature of our 14th Street. Severe traffic congestion problems tend to emerge in areas where we’ve already gone and built a lot of stuff. Attempting to ameliorate them by building more lanes would require demolishing the stuff. But the congestion is problematic primarily because access to the stuff is valuable. If you just leveled the whole city, traffic jams would abate (and there’d be plenty of parking!) but there’d be no city left.

I find myself pretty strongly disagreeing with the Scottish government’s release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi. But David Frum’s post on the matter reminds me of one of the things I most appreciate about Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy:

Of course, there’s a more likely explanation for the lack of outcry: this administration’s lack of moral center on terrorism. Whether it is his gentle reproofs of Ahmadinejad or his readiness to shake hands with Hugo Chavez, Barack Obama just does not get all that excited about international bad actors. Not that the president never gets angry. He can get plenty angry over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates or Israeli settlements. Lockerbie: not so much.

To me what’s going on here is that Barack Obama tries to make policy according to what Weber called an “ethic of responsibility.” He’s the President of the United States. He wields a mighty and awesome degree of power. But he’s not omnipotent. So he’s resolved to try to use his power on the world stage in ways that make things better. Refusing to shake hands with Hugo Chavez doesn’t help anyone or improve anything. Talking with the UK government in advance about our objections to releasing a Lockerbie bomber might achieve something. But loudly denouncing them ex post facto isn’t going to help anyone or improve anything. By contrast, getting mad at Israel about settlements really might accomplish something—the US-Israeli relationship is completely different from the US-Iranian relationship and “this thing we’re doing is pissing off the president” could realistically be a factor in Israeli decision-making.

The Skip Gates episode is an interesting example. I think the way to think about this is that it pushed Obama’s personal buttons in a way that made him forget his sound approach to these things. On Gates, he acted the way Frum and other neocons want him to act all the time—embracing an ethic of ultimate ends in which the most important thing is to align his expression of his sentiments with transcendent moral values. The fact that wading into the controversy wouldn’t accomplish anything was set aside. But, in fact, the intervention only made things worse and Obama wisely moved to try to reverse himself and smooth things out.

The point either way is that venting outrage is a job for a columnist or a blogger. A president needs to manage real-world situations with attention to the consequences for people’s lives.

Via Brad DeLong, an interesting illustration of improved standards of living across the 20th century:

It strikes me as noteworthy that the trend toward bigger-and-bigger houses has continued apace over the past 20 years even though by 1990 the problem of overcrowded housing had become the exclusive province of the very poor. Part of the story is that we have a number of policies—ranging from odd tax incentives to land use regulations and beyond—in place that encourage people to live in big houses. This is not a very efficient use of valuable energy and land resources, and it arguably intensifies the problem of providing an adequate standard of housing to the relatively small remaining minority that can’t afford decent shelter.