These people then have forgone the opportunity to contribute to a pension
program, that can lead to retirement, then?

If they have, it was thier choice to do so

My point, exactly. Not much reason for quality people to go to work for someone
(like the government) that they can not retire with.

There are IRAs for a start,

IRA programs do not have employer matching, like good pension programs.

and
government pensions are often better than private pensions.

Yes they are, but you have to be able to retire with the government for them to
work.

Pensions should
be portble in any case.

Yeah, right. What planet are you from. They are not, in 99.99% of the cases.

But bad pension laws are nt a reason to have a permanent professional
bureaucracy
running a country for thier own benifit.

What? The government is controlled by, and at the wim of politicians.

Why would ANYONE ever work for a governmental job, in that case.

A sense of civic duty?

That does not put food on the table. Try again.

I see lots
of opportunity for even greater incompetance. Only losers would take a
government job.

Some might suggest that is the situation we have now.

Never assume what is happening at the present is as bad as it can get. You may
be proved wrong.
--
Jim in NC