Interesting point, Buck; and one which I suggest you dwell upon with considerably more attention. In fact, you might want to take a good hard look at what our federal, state, and local governments pay for various goods and services from various private sector entities, and compare them to the going market rates of the very same goods and services. You might just discover that, in nearly all instances, the government is paying considerably, and quite inexplicably, more for such goods and services. In fact, it is the government's regular willingness to pay considerably more for such goods and services, as say.... healthcare... that artifically inflates the going market rate for such goods and services. Of course, the really sick thing is that such tales of the government paying $400.00 for $20.00 hammer have become more of a macabre comic cliche' than cause for serious outrage by the tax-paying citizenry.
Therefore, Buck, it is my suggestion that if you want to excoriate blatant government waste of tax revenue, in its most extreme, this where you, and those like you, need to focus your attention, not on the modest incomes of public employees.
The bottom line is that you can eliminate collective bargaining for public employees all you want---hell, even reduce them to the level of chattel slavery. In the long, it will not do a damn thing to cut back on government spending.
Why?
Because the fox in the hen house is not the middle-class public employee! It is the upper-class private sector businessman holding a pay-to-play sweetheart government contract, and he will simply steal that much more tax revenue!