I sometimes wonder if the apparent endemic corruption of government in the US is due in part to a miss-perception of how much government employees should be paid. In Singapore and Japan government jobs were often viewed as jobs for the elite. In Massachusetts we pay many government employees less than they'd make doing literally anything else. A biology teacher's pay starts at ~600/week.

Is it that wrong that the people who ran one of the largest infrastructure programs in the US live in nice homes? The project was horrendously over budget and late, but it did do what proponents wanted it to do. Private firms taking over the commuter rail like Keolis don't seem to be achieving any quality or cost benefits.

We may be in a strange situation where fundamentally underpaid workers find ways to game the system to make about what they could in the private sector, would higher wages help eliminate the "wasteful" practices?