Gadol > Their most recent study showed that federal employees are underpaid by as much as 22-35 percent
I may sound like a virus denier here, but I am layering personal experience over the statistics. A lot of those employees are dead weight. They request you to send some nonsense paperwork and then have multiple meetings going over that. They have no insight of the cost that their work to the government directly or to the private sector they are supervising. It is a logical market consequence of lack of accountability. Just compare Amazon prime with proverbial DMV or IRS.
You look at it philosophically, as part of the federal process that is intended to be inefficient but rule-based non-partisan harmless process. Except that it became too powerful and possibly captured partisan from the time of FDR. Simple reason – progressive-minded people are motivated to go work for the powerful government, often with the zeal of Trotsky.