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Conclusion

Public employees have become targets for those wanting to justify tax cuts and public service reductions. If public payrolls can be portrayed as "bloated," then cutting taxes is an obvious way to reduce them. If public employees are protected, while their private sector counterparts are struggling in a competitive environment, then something must be wrong with government. Yet, these ideological myths cannot be proven. When public workers are compared to private workers who perform essentially the same jobs, the playing field is level. The only clear advantage many public workers may enjoy relative to the private sector is better pension coverage. Given their lack of coverage under Social Security or other more generous benefits, it is not clear that this puts public workers much further ahead than their private sector counterparts.

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