&gt; But your public sector workers demand to be kept in the style to which they have been accustomed, and the money has to come from the government&#x27;s &quot;real&quot; spending.<p>In America, public workers took pay <i>cuts</i> for the past 5-6 years since the federal pay tables were frozen (not increasing for inflation, so spending power decreased) and mandatory health care costs went up!<p>In America, I haven&#x27;t seen any evidence of public sector employees (the public sector is huge, NASA engineers, Air Force pilots, National Park Rangers, etc) &#x27;demanding&#x27; more pay. The only thing I&#x27;ve seen that can be categorized as evidence of this is top tier engineers leaving NASA &amp; FFRDCs to work in the private sector. Not once have I seen a NASA employee go &quot;We successfully lobbied Congress for more pay!&quot;.