Federal workers make twice as much as workers in private sector

(USA Today) - At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

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U.S. to train 3,000 offshore IT workers

(Information Week) - Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.

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When politicians make sense

Congressman Ron Paul discusses the business cycle and government contributions to our economic turmoil.

In a state's search for sales tax, Amazon raises privacy concerns

(NY Times) - North Carolina last month began an audit of online businesses, assuming that millions of dollars in sales taxes owed to the state had disappeared into the Internet.

"This is really an issue of fairness and equity for small businesses, the brick and mortar, corner store operations," said Kenneth R. Lay, the state's secretary of revenue. "These businesses are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to collect sales taxes that other businesses do not."

The response of one of those online businesses, Amazon.com, was succinct: back off. (Full story)

Want to get rich? Work for feds

(Washington Examiner) - For decades, public sector unions have peddled the fantasy that government employees were paid less than their counterparts in the private sector. In fact, the pay disparity is the other way around. Government workers, especially at the federal level, make salaries that are scandalously higher than those paid to private sector workers. And let's not forget private sector workers not only have to be sufficiently productive to earn their paychecks, they also must pay the taxes that support the more generous jobs in the public sector.

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Governments will "bankrupt us": Marc Faber

(CNBC) - Current economic policies are not sustainable and the world faces doom because "the governments are taking over", said Marc Faber, editor & publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

"They will all bankrupt us and expropriate us, but it may not happen tomorrow. They'll give us something to play with, until the whole system breaks down...they'll just print money and print more money," he said on CNBC Thursday.

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Lawmakers predict Congress will pass finance bill

(NY Times) - Senate Republicans and Democrats predicted on Wednesday that Congress would soon pass a far-reaching overhaul of the nation's financial regulatory system, indicating a potentially swift resolution of the latest partisan firefight on Capitol Hill.

But the sides offered starkly different reasons for their optimism, The New York Times's Edward Wyatt and David M. Herszenhorn report. Republicans said that they had forced Democrats back to the bargaining table to negotiate a bipartisan accord, while Democrats said that Republicans were hastily abandoning their opposition in fear of a public outcry.

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"Death panels" will save money

The Medicare Advisory Board will essentially have the power to decide which treatments will be covered under "Obamacare." The less-than-surprising admission is made by Keynesian economist Paul Krugman:

In other words, this "death panel" will get to decide who lives and who dies. Welcome to rationed health care.

Post-Palin Alaska has largest debt burden in U.S.

(Raw Story) - Sarah Palin has long sold herself as a fiscal conservative, arguing against the Democrats' health overhaul on the grounds that the nation simply can't afford it.

But when the former vice presidential candidate resigned as governor of Alaska in the summer of 2009, she left the state with a 70 percent debt-to-GDP ratio -- the highest state debt burden in the United States.

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