From a dollars and cents perspective, the public sector - that's government, ranging from the city employee mowing the park grass near your home to IRS agents in Washington, D.C. - should reflect the realities of the private sector. Because private-sector dollars pay for public-sector jobs and benefits, it's logical to assume that private-sector jobs should be at least as rewarding as public-sector jobs. Unfortunately, logic plays a diminishing role in America's employment drama.

In late 2007, the previously unimaginable happened. For the first time, U.S. government jobs exceeded the number of jobs in goods-producing, private industry.

A federal study released in January 2012 by the Congressional Budget Office illustrates why. With the exception of workers having a professional degree or doctorate, the CBO study shows government workers consistently receive more pay with better benefits than do their private-sector counterparts. (See http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/01-30-FedPay.pdf)

"We've gone from jobs in profit-making private industry to providing jobs in profit-eating government work," the publication Business Insider noted.

Private industry isn't blameless, of course. The earnings disparity between top executives and everyone else in corporate culture has been widening, and the Great Recession rendered a stern reminder that all business employment bets are off when profits plummet.

But powered by unions, governmental jobs have become so appetizing with their low-risk, high-reward careers that increasing numbers of the country's best and brightest are gravitating to public sector employment. In a painful twist of irony, businesses in some places are struggling to compete for good employees with the very entities those businesses are funding.

The bigger picture is no more encouraging. When you consider that private industry creates products and the public sector, essentially, regulates them, it's clear that our country is becoming more of a manager than a producer. That's like a widget-making factory having more widget inspectors than widget equipment builders, widget designers and widget makers - and the inspectors are now paid better than the others. When regulation overshadows production, when industry is relegated to a subservient role to government on our economic landscape, it's time to reprioritize.

With dozens of local taxing entities well into the process of setting their budgets for the next fiscal year, we implore decision makers to remember the source of their funding and the impact of their choices. Adherence to two principles would prove prudent.

One, even as the economy improves, at the very least, resist the temptation to increase spending. Better still, blow away the status quo and cut spending; give taxpayers a break after the agony of the past few years.

The other is to abandon any thought of across-the-board pay raises. By rewarding lowest achievers and highest achievers equally, unilateral raises discourage excellence. And if burgeoning government really is a reality we all must get used to, the least we can expect is excellence at all levels.