12/12/09 Stockholm, Sweden – Congress is in the process of increasing the federal debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion to $14 trillion. It’s an incomprehensible sum, and even more so at a time of already massive debts and 10 percent unemployment.
Investor’s Business Daily bristles at the move, especially in light of recent data that shows a significant rise in government employee salaries of late:
“For governmental workers, this historic recession and economic crisis has been party time. Last week, a USA Today analysis of federal government pay data found that six-figure salaries jumped from 14% of all civil servants to 19% during the first year and a half of the downturn — and that’s not counting bonuses and overtime.
“Delving into the details is even more galling. At the outset of the recession, for example, the Transportation Department had one employee salaried at $170,000 or more. Now, only 18 months later, it has 1,690. With fewer Americans driving or taking mass transit to work, what are those thousands of super talented transportation bureaucrats doing that warrant so much extra cash? Counting the empty seats on the commuter trains?”
Read the entire perspective in IBD’s coverage of how a $71,206 salary isn’t bad for government work.
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of The Daily Reckoning. Previously, he was founding publisher of UrbanTurf and RFID Update, which he operated from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico, and associate publisher of FierceFinance. He specialized in direct marketing at MBI, facilitated MIT Sloan School of Management programs, and has been featured on CBS. Vega graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he was on the board of Let’s Go Publications and directed business programs involving McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Harvard Business School faculty. He is also enrolled at the Stockholm School of Economics.
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There counting more then just empty seats RV! The MTA in NY State has just increased its fares by 24% and r hose’in every 1 who drives a motor vehicle, with an MTA tax on all motor vehicle registration and license renewals. This state is out of control and broke! In the hole by 4 Billion and counting. By 2014 the whole country should b belly-up and broke! Oh xcuse me! Were broke already’were just not belly-up yet? Lets all start learning how 2 speak Mander’in… W0o! Live long and prosper every 1… *S*
If yer in yer out…….and itz gonna be that way for years until you get the point.