Fwd: Diamond Covered Mercedes

THE CAR COSTS $4.8 MILLION AND IF YOU WANT TO TOUCH IT, YOU HAVE TO PAY $1000.
IT BELONGS TO PRINCE ALWALEED FROM SAUDI ARABIA. It is his 38th car!

Diamond Covered Mercedes of Prince Waleed:

Remember this when gasoline hits $5.00 a gallon.

You paid for this one.

Average pay climbs to $58,448 a year

(By Nicki Bourlioufas and wires)

THE average weekly wage in Australia is now $1124, after growing by a solid 4.8 per cent over the year to February, taking the average annual wage to $58,448.

But men still earn a lot more than women. The average annual male wage, excluding overtime, is now $61,958 compared to $52,166 for women. Both of those pay packets were up 4.8 per cent from a year ago.

The quarterly seasonally-adjusted pace of average weekly ordinary time earnings (AWOTE) rose 1.1 per cent in the three months to February, Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today shows.

The annual rate of wages growth remains above the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) perceived "line in the sand" at 4.5 per cent.

In the twelve months to February 2008, full-time adult total earnings rose by 4.4 per cent for males and 5.2 per cent for females in trend terms.

The strong growth in private-sector wages reflects a booming economy. Employers are having to pay employees more and more as a national skills shortage raises the price of labour keep unemployemnt low. The jobless rate stands at just 4.2 per cent.

The composition of the AWOTE series tends to make it volatile and why the RBA prefers to use the wage price index - released yesterday - as one of its main guides to wages growth.

That index proved surprisingly benign, given a tight labour market, increasing at its slowest pace since September 2006 for an annual rate of 4.1 per cent in the year to March.

This was down a notch from the 4.2 per cent growth seen during 2007.

Last week the Reserve Bank said that while the current level of interest rates was appropriate, it indicated that it would have little tolerance to second-round effects from high inflation, such as rising wages.

(Source: news.com.au)