Taxes galore

I don't know for sure that Mr. Paskel is the gentleman who authored this text. But I thank him for forarding it. I especially thank Jerry Holsworth for sending it to me. I don't beleive in forwarding emails myself, but I encourage my friends to read my blog, so I'm posting this here.

---- Original Message -----
From: Stanley L. Paskel Sr.
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 9:18 PM
Subject: What is a Billion???

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

Add to this list: A billion grains of salt fills a bathtub.

UPDATE: I don't know how long this has been circulating, but I just recalculated how long it takes to blow through a billion dollars. According to figures in this white house report, it takes the federal government 3 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds to spend a billion dollars.

There is a lot more to this email and you can see the rest at GoogleDocs.
I highly recommend it.