I'm thinking the pay scale is more to what I meant. Yes, when people are getting excessively high pay scales, they end up with excessively high pensions.
Some people will say it is worth it to hire top quality people, but I see little evidence that we are getting "top quality people." Are we getting good value for the money we spend on these costly positions? Not so far as I can tell.
There are only a few who have his pay-grade in the fed/gov. Highly placed private business men (at his pay-grade) often get much more as well as Golden Parachutes. Even if they ran the business into the ground.
The difference is we can decide for ourselves voluntarily whether or not we want to contribute to businesses that pay insane levels of money for piss poor performance. (Like the NFL, to which I do not contribute anything) Not so with the Government.
Board meetings with Directors decide what is given to the higher executives as compensation. It is very naive to believe we have any say in the matter.
Federal pay at the highest grades are a pittance compared to the tens or hundreds of millions the CEOs are paid even if their jobs are equal in responsibility and difficulty. Supervisors in government supervise far more employees than in the private sector.
Be aware that if the more prized jobs (jobs that are competed for) have their salaries reduced so will everyone else.