Government jobs

We were sitting around last week with a few friends and the daughter of one of our friends was in town. She is a college student at an ivy league institution and we inquired about her studies and aspirations. She proceeded to tell us her goal is to obtain a government job after she graduates. My immediate reaction was that this country must be in bad shape if graduates from our most esteemed institutions seek government employment as their goal. Of course, their are government jobs that are important and people who work for the government are to be admired but I always felt that by working for the government one is settling. My impression is a government job is for someone who cannot or does not want to compete in the private sector. They want the security of a job that is easily performed with minimal expectations and highly unlikely to be eliminated.
These impressions are not formed in a vacuum. I have spoken to several municipal employees who tell me that there are a tremendous number of meaningless jobs in government. One person can easily do the jobs of several employees. One municipal employee told me his sole job was to turn on and off the lights at the high school stadium. He would be upset those few days it snowed because he would have to help clear the snow on top of his already arduous workload. One only has to go to the MVA to see the number of employees sitting around doing next to nothing.
The sad part is that the taxpayer has to pay for this waste. Our real estate taxes have exploded and the local government does nothing to stem the growth of wasteful spending. Whats more upsetting is that the government employee, who is essentially working for us, the taxpayer, has better benefits than we do. He has more time off, better retirement benefits and his health insurance is much better. The municipality doesn't have an incentive to trim their budget, they just raise taxes to balance their budget and avoid any cuts. We the taxpayer have to endure painful cuts in our lifestyle due to the current economic crisis, but the public employee is protected and we have to pay for it.
Maybe my friends daughter is smarter than I think.