I've worked for federal and state government for the last 5 years (after starting off in private industry). I can speak to both sides.
On one hand, yes,
there is very little accountability in a lot of cases. I could walk into my boss's office right now and call him a dumb SOB and probably not get much more than a talking-to. Blowing the whistle on some sort of abuse of power or questioning the decisions of upper management are more likely to get you in trouble than actually doing something wrong yourself. Getting fired takes
a lot.
Congratulations... without a doubt one of the greatest understatements of all time. There is NO accountability, at least to the taxpayers, as required by our Constitution. Would you believe that we're actually supposed to be provided with a balanced and completely accurate, totally transparent, accounting of where every single cent of our money goes, all of the time?
One of my dearest friends recently passed away, but previous to that he had been involved in an audit of the CDC, a Feral Agency dwarfed by the likes of the NSA, HLS, and most others. When asked about their $16,000,000 annual utility bills for just one particular group of buildings that they lease it was disclosed that they actually and honestly had no idea whatsoever how many buildings they even had, be they leased or owned by us.
Nobody fired. Everybody got their COLA, and no doubt bonuses were probably awarded.
A while before that he had worked as an economist for NIOSH, where he admitted that they had so much grant money to give away that that was pretty much all that he was responsible for. Grant money BTW is academia-speak for academic welfare, although both corporations and universities derived tens of millions in benefit from this particular pig. Again... our money, being redistributed by bureaucrats to whatever group their political whore boss is beholden to. They have to do it for us 'cuz we're just like little children... too simple minded to figure out what to do with it ourselves.
Except for the military, and by that I mean a military tasked with performing only those functions for which it was intended... protecting our borders from attack, there is almost nothing that government can be said to do a better job of than the private sector has the potential to perform. Of course in a world run by cronyism we don't get to see too much of that carried out in any kind of significant fashion.
The comparison of contractors to Feral and State employees is also something of a straw man. Thanks to unionization of the Feral, State, and Local employees we have succeeded in inflating both sides of that equation unnecessarily. There's a reason the Navy buys $1,000 wrenches, and it ain't 'cuz they were made for working on nuclear reactors. Billions and billions of dollars are spent by our rulers every year to further American hegemony in ways that most people don't even know of, much less understand, and at each level of each of those transactions there are whole departments and buildings filled with government employees to facilitate that fraud.
What we get in return is pathetic. Unravel all of the graft and waste associated with any of these frauds and we could probably pay private medical providers well enough that everyone would actually receive world class care.
Meanwhile the vidiot box is ablaze every night with emotional panderings and panhandlings to help provide for the young people whose lives have been distorted and destroyed by manipulating their sense of patriotism into some sort of weird excuse to sacrifice themselves for the corporate oligarchy. Does no one understand that the pact that we have with our service men and women is exactly that, and that if they choose to serve, we... our government that we created, will 100%, forever and ever til the end of their lives, have their backs. We employ more useless government employees one way or the other, than even the Soviets managed, and yet we still can't find a way to even keep up with the needs of the kids returning from our most recent war(s), to say nothing of all the rest that have preceded them? It's insulting... and nuts!
On the other hand, the pay (and really even the benefits) aren't as great as a many outsiders think, at least not at the state level. I make about 2/3-3/4 of a comparable private industry salary for someone at my experience level. COLAs were non-existent for about 7 years, we're susceptible to furloughs when the powers that be can't get the budget straight, and a lot of people work 2 jobs to keep up. With that kind of environment, most of the workers worth a damn get recruited by consultants, leaving behind the people who either can't do any better, or who really care about what they do but don't ask for any recognition. They are there, but when they're doing their jobs right, the public doesn't notice. As soon as a screw-up happens, the "my tax dollars pay for this?!" hand-wringing starts.
Spoken like a man who is happy not to be left to the current vagaries of the open market. This all obviously varies by State, but by and large the larger the entity the worse the abuses of power... and our money. Regardless, State wages and pay rates are a kind of back handed pay off to the unions that help to limit market access, as most legislation is designed to do. The laws are crafted by the special interest groups to keep the door closed to the very people that they all swear they are trying to foster and help. It's all crap, just smoke and mirrors to keep you distracted and looking at the shiny ball whilst they finish picking our pockets.
Funny but predictable that you condescend over the very idea that people might "hand wring" over how their money is spent. 
Ultimately there is absolutely no sane or rational excuse for the huge segment of our population that has gravitated from being producers to becoming Rand's "moochers and looters".
