With respect to STEM career fields, that's a gratuitous no.
For an idea of what a grunt GS-12/13 engineer's salary in Silicon Valley (highest locality adjustment in the country) looks like, see [1]; management is at GS-14/15 level. For the sake of completeness, other locality rates can be found here[2]. Keep in mind that it takes 18 years to progress from Step 1 to Step 10. Not all federal organizations apply the GS scale (the NSA may be one), but they don't deviate far from it either.
[1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
[2] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
This is true in some cases, but not all. I was hired at the GS-11/2 level without any prior government/military experience. A coworker of mine worked as a contractor for a few years, and was hired as a GS-15 last year. This is all in Silicon Valley (although he has a tech background, while I do not).
If your colleague was hired into GS-15 Step 1, then it would still take this person the same 18 years to progress up the ladder to Step 10, assuming no irregular increases in pay.
If coming from private industry, entry step is often negotiable; prior industry salary serves as basis, so it wouldn't surprise me if this person started at Step 10 (not that it matters after Step 5 based on Bay Area locality).
In any case, GS-15 is a management position.
Who is the Fraser Institute? Looking at their website, they seem to turn out libertarian and conservative arguments. For example, playing down income inequality, complaining about difficult investing in oil and gas, "Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada", etc. Wanting to reduce public sector pay would fit with that.
Better ignore everything they say, then!
> Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada
If that's wrong, then why not cite why? If it's correct, I suspect there's a good reason for it (e.g. progressive tax structures work and are objectively a good thing for society).
Choosing to talk about what the rich pay, rather than how they have siphoned wealth from society (i.e. how much of their ill gotten gains should they be allowed to keep, rather than how much do they give) is not a "fact" even if it is a true statement, it is a political position, a rhetorical strategy, and a framing device -- it is an assault on your brain, an attempt to trick you into accepting a conservative frame covertly without being honest about it: "I'm just stating facts, what's wrong with that?" Well, everything is wrong with that. There are trillions of facts yet they state this one. For a reason, obviously.
You can reconstruct perfectly an ideological argument (of any ideology) based only on the sequence of facts they choose to present.
Who did JK Rowing rob to get her money?
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has done its own reports on this [1].
This also seem to be true in the UK, but at least there they say the gap is closing [2].
The IFS report says what I've also observed and what this [3] economist article states:
"Wage differentials are relatively small in the public sector. Lower-level workers, such as secretaries, are usually better paid than their private-sector equivalents, whereas higher-level workers are worse paid."
[1] https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy/wage-watch-comparison-p...
I don't know if this is a problem in the US, but something else worth mentioning is that for many jobs, public sectors pay much more (higher pay, better pensions, more sick leave, better job security, ...). So it isn't just about firing people for incompetence. [1]
If the govt should be increasing pay to match market rates, then it should also be decreasing pay to match market rates.
[1] https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government...