Joe Klein does not understand the implications of his argument

Over at Swampland, Joe Klein thinks that we should be having a "race to the top" in public services:

There aren't so many high-paying manufacturing jobs anymore; the relative security of government work doesn't need to be augmented by ridiculously obstruse [sic] procedures for firing incompetents or by 20-year pension packages. A nice 401k, with healthy matching funds, should be sufficient.

Does he seriously think that the government is competing for the same workers as the manufacturing industry? However, his analysis gets worse:

This is a sad choice, but an essential one. We can either continue to fund the pension system and lose essential services; or we can change the pension system and continue the service-levels--the policing, firefighting, emergency response and garbage pickup--that we've come to expect. The public seems quite unwilling to continue to pay the higher taxes necessary to sustain both. And given our straitened circumstances, and the need to encourage a new burst of private entrepreneurialism, there is a strong argument that any further government stimulus needs to be accompanied by a rigorous program of governmental reform.

By "a rigorous program of governmental reform", he actually means a dramatic cut in compensation for public employees, coming entirely from their pensions. Yet he doesn't seem to ponder the implications of cutting the pay of police, firefighters, and garbage collectors. His preferred option is to "change the pension system and continue the service-levels ... that we've come to expect." However, his changes to the pension system involve making it significantly less generous. Of course, cutting the compensation of public employees will result in lower-quality public employees, who will not provide the level of service to which Americans have become accustomed.