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I_come_bearing_gifts


				

				

				

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joined 2022 September 08 13:35:34 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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I_come_bearing_gifts


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 08 13:35:34 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

  1. I know that the deal typically has feds leaving the civil service and taking jobs in the private sector, but later going back the other way is less common to my knowledge.
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  2. Definitely a good living, but also likely quite rare for two GS-15s to be in a married couple.
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The DC suburbs are indeed very rich relative to a lot of the country, but it's not the federal employees who are holding up that average. The most a typical federal employee can make in DC is $191,900 as a GS15 Step 7-10 (note that $191,900 is a hard cap government wide and DC has one of the highest locality pay adjustments of any city in the country). That's a great salary by most standards, but bear in mind that GS15 positions are rare (most feds will retire never having reached a GS15 position) and you may gain one step a year after earning the position (OPM claims it takes on average 18 years to reach Step 10).


On top of that, as you say the DC suburbs are some of the richest in the country, and it's consequently incredibly expensive to live here. So while that $191,900 looks good, it's just getting into the range where you could comfortably buy a non-"fixer upper" house inside the Beltway without needing a contribution from your spouse's salary.


There are numerous industries in DC where you could make more with less experience like tech, law, defense contracting, lobbying, general federal contracting etc. Consider that those last three are all industries whose existence is predicated on their ability to suckle from the federal teat. If there's any villain in the story of modern government inefficiency I'd suggest we look at the contractors before we start vilifying the feds.


Federal pay scale for DC: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2024/DCB.pdf


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cheaper maybe, but more authoritarian than I'd think most would be comfortable with especially considering that immigration isn't necessary here, just travel. TB is incredibly infectious. Even if you ban travel to affected countries, it still leaves you open to second order infections (American travels to e.g. Japan, Japan isn't restricting travel to the Philippines, American contracts antibiotic resistant TB from a Japanese traveler who visited the Philippines). As others have said, there's no guarantee that this antibiotic resistant strain of TB will be treatable without novel antibiotic research (which is expensive as well, and results are not guaranteed).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The selfish motivation is that pathogens don't respect borders. Travel between the US and the Philippines is relatively common, almost a million Americans visited the country in 2024. Any one of them can pick up a new antibiotic resistant strain of TB and bring it home, at which point it's our problem. Solve the problems where they are so we don't have to solve them here in the future.