I appreciate the appeal of federal employment. I have applied for many government jobs, and interviewed for a few, during my two decades inside the Beltway, and I would still love to land one.

Government work offers the kind of job security and loyalty to employees that have all but disappeared in the private sector. Government benefits, including pensions that are rare in the business world these days, tend to be better, too.

But like Melissa Clouthier, I hate to see that the number of government workers surpassed the number of goods-producing workers in the private sector in the last decade — and the gap is widening.

The trend has paved the way for white-collar welfare. People who don’t want to lose their cushy jobs are more likely to vote in ways that secure their own futures rather than the future of the country as a whole.