The following is probably familiar though the authorship is in dispute. Some say is by Sir Alex F. Tytler, 1742-1813, a Scottish jurist and historian but others say author is unknown.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”
“The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.”
How is it that in our current state of affairs the taxpayers have allowed “their” public employees to make more on average (including benefits) than themselves? Except for fire, police and others who put their lives on the line, who should be paid “reasonably” more, it seems that the chickens not the rooster are running the henhouse.