The rhetoric is that the public sector is overpaid relative to the private sector.
Ok, they don’t adjust for education and probably a few other things, but it all still misses the point.

Back when I was a kid in Ct. the 50’s, I recall the private sector jobs paying a lot more than the public sector jobs. People worked for the US Post Office, for example, because of the security, or because they couldn’t get a higher paying private sector job for one reason or another.

So seems since then things have reversed.

The reason is the overly tight fiscal policy that’s kept unemployment a lot higher, and beat down the private sector.

And best I can tell, it’s not that public sector employees are earning too much (with a few anecdotal exceptions), it’s that because the economy is so bad, private sector employees aren’t earning what they might in a good economy.

The obvious answer to me.
Instead of trying to drag down public sector compensation to today’s depressed private sector levels, which also happens to further hurt the private sector at exactly the wrong time,
I’d rather see us restore a full employment economy (like we had in 1999-2000)
and let the good times bring up private sector wages and benefits, which, in a good economy, surpass public sector wages and benefits.

But no one is even considering that option.
Because they all agree:
The US has run out of money.
And now must borrow from the likes of China in order to spend
And leave the tab to the grandchildren.
And Social Security and Medicare are bankrupting the nation.
And the deficit is taking away our savings starving private investment.
And that the US could be the next Greece if we don’t get our fiscal house in order NOW.
And all the rest of that kind of nonsense.