‘Defining deviancy down” was how the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan described society’s quiet acceptance of decline. His specific point was that New Yorkers had become docile about stratospheric levels of crime, but he could have said the same thing about Americans’ tolerance for government waste.

On that point, I humbly offer a wake-up call. If you’re still numb about bureaucrats wasting your tax dollars, read the inspector general’s report on the Las Vegas splurge by federal workers. If you don’t get steamed, you’re either dead or brain dead.

You probably heard about the report because the head of the agency involved, the General Services Administration, fired her top deputies, then quit Monday just before it became public. Case closed? Perhaps, but a scandal is a terrible thing to waste. This one is a mini-case study in the argument for shrinking government.

The hot button isn’t so much the total tab — $823,000, which is a pittance in an era of trillion-dollar deficits and $500 million grants to politically connected solar companies.

The outrage lies in the casualness with which 300 employees took their fellow citizens to the cleaners. Bosses knew and approved, with one saying the conference should be “over the top.” It certainly was. They spent months planning, with hardly a peep of dissent. If nothing else, the incident reveals the banality of chiseling.

The workers traveled, ate, slept and had cocktail receptions where they paid $4 for each shrimp. They tipped 22 percent and gave themselves awards and mementos. Some took family members. It was essentially a week’s vacation that they called work at a Las Vegas resort.

They cut corners on purchasing rules they demand of other federal agencies. They hid costs and made secret deals with the hotel. They used stimulus money to celebrate their use of stimulus money. They were entertained by clowns — and behaved like clowns. They hired a mind reader, yet nobody saw the fallout coming.

They were entitled to splurge because, well, they were entitled. They are our masters. We work for them.

According to the report, one employee — just one! — argued that a team-building exercise devoted to charity should have been done on private time, not work time. The criticism was dismissed.

All this happened when the economy was cratering and unemployment was soaring.

Their conference also came despite President Obama’s ridiculing of financial institutions for wasting federal bailout money. “You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime,” he said in February 2009.

Oh, irony. That was the same month the GSA began soliciting bids for its trip to Vegas on the taxpayers’ dime. Guess they didn’t get the president’s memo, or maybe they didn’t take him seriously.

Why should they? Obama traveled to Vegas to campaign for Harry Reid on Oct. 22, 2010. The GSA blowout started just three days later.

The conference was hard work, by government standards. According to the report, five employees conducted a “scouting trip” to nine hotels as far back as March 2009 — 19 months before the gathering.

Within days, 15 workers returned to scout out two of the hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton and the M Resort.

The M Resort was selected, and seven more employees went back for a “planning meeting.” A second “planning meeting” there drew 11 employees. A third drew 16.

Inexplicably, nine employees attended a “planning meeting” at a Denver hotel. Then it was back to Vegas in June, where 21 employees had, yep, a “planning meeting.”

In August, 31 employees went to the M Resort for a “dry run” of the conference. The planning alone cost you, dear taxpayer, $136,000. Are you steamed yet?

The 23-page report, available online, is written in the dry, matter-of-fact language of the bureaucracy. And why not? There’s nothing unusual here. This is government in all its ordinariness.

City not working

What’s up with the city’s unemployment rate? That was a trick question — it’s the unemployment rate that is up. It’s too damn high.

It now stands at a staggering 9.6 percent, a rise of .3 percent in one month and .8 percent over the last year. It’s moving in the opposite direction of the national rate, which was 9 percent a year ago and is now 8.3.

Outside the five boroughs, state unemployment is 7.7 percent, only a single tick higher than a year ago.

City Hall concedes it doesn’t have a clear explanation. Mayor Bloomberg’s office says the rise could be due to the fact that, because the city is actually adding jobs, more people are entering the workforce. Some may be coming here looking for work. “So in a recovery, it is not surprising that job numbers and unemployment data would move in opposite directions,” an aide says.

Maybe, but the state and nation are adding jobs, too, and their unemployment rates are flat or falling.

Overall, the city added 62,000 jobs in the last year, half of the state total. Gotham grew by a healthy 11,100 private-sector jobs in February, but had a net gain of only 9,600 because government jobs fell by about 1,500.

Some added city jobs almost certainly went to suburban commuters, while the loss of government jobs might be more concentrated among city residents.

These are theories — no one knows for sure. But with thousands of new high-school and college grads poised to join the labor force, one thing is certain: Mandated wage hikes and higher taxes will only make matters worse.

Quick, somebody tell the City Council.

Still a ’saur point

On the theory that any sign of common sense in government is cause for celebration, it’s hats off to city educrats. By withdrawing their demand that new school tests avoid 50 common words and topics, from birthdays to dinosaurs to religious holidays, they struck a major blow in the war against mindless political correctness. Surely, tough New York kids don’t need their feelings swathed in red tape to take a test.

Still, two questions: Whose dopey idea was this in the first place? And why did the mayor’s minions rush to the barricades to defend it when it was so clearly indefensible?

The answers will tell us whether something like it will happen again.

Flimflam Bam

President Obama is trotting out high-toned references, calling the GOP budget “a Trojan Horse” and “social Darwinism.” He should make his point more simply and clearly. He should say the other side thinks there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and I think you should eat all you want and force somebody else to pay for it. At least that would be honest.

Hoop-de-do!

George Bernard Shaw famously lamented that “youth is wasted on the young,” but then he never got to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. For sheer exuberance, athleticism and sportsmanship, nothing equals March Madness. What a glorious festival of American youth.