Call me a hard-hearted, mean-spirited conservative if you will, but I am not bleeding from the heart over the plight of most of the furloughed federal workers.  While I am certain that some of them have not bothered to accumulate savings, and thus are running out of money with which to pay important bills, the rest of us in the private sector have had to live with the possibility of our incomes being cut off for our entire careers.  Moreover, federal employees, especially in the lower ranges of the income scale, make out like bandits compared to the rest of us with the same skills and responsibilities. Source. Kristin Tate elaborates in The Hill: Federal workers receive pay that is 17 percent higher than private sector employees on average performing comparable work.  That is on top of putting in 12 percent fewer hours.  Furthermore, a Princeton University study found that when "taking differences in employee...(Read Full Post)