The last I heard, the "stimulus" package was up to $900 Billion. That's "Billion" with a capital "B." Since most people don't really have a good handle on what this means, I pulled out the calculator and gave some electrons a bit of a workout. Let's break this down, shall we? First, we'll "spell it out":

900,000,000,000.00
That's 9x10^11 for the scientists among us.

As of July 24, 2008, the Federal Minimum Wage is $6.55 per hour. If you worked constantly, with NO breaks, for 24 hours each day with no weekends, how long would it take you to earn enough to cover this stimulus?


That's 15,674,718.25 years. 15 MILLION years being paid continuously at minimum wage.

So, let's speed this up a little. What if you were paid a dollar a second? This is 1x60x60=$3600/hour:


That's 28,519.3 years, working continuously at $1/second.

Kind of puts it in perspective, doesn't it? This Sunday in church, I'll have to give some kids big hugs and thank them for their generosity...

Have YOU contacted your Senators yet?

To be fair, divide the responsibility over the number of people paying taxes, and businesses, to arrive at the time it will take the United States to pay for that SINGLE item in our budget.

The federal budget is a shell-game. Many amounts on it are the result of sleight-of-hand. Then, there's the "off-budget" items, like we don't have to pay for them.

Ever wonder how the War in Iraq could cost one billion a month? That's arrived at by adding up "all" of the expenditures, including billing one part of the military for the services of another. The Navy bills the Army for the use of their aircraft, and ordnance, and depreciation. The Army bills the Navy for the use of helos to transport Navy combatants in-country. The fact that it all comes from the same pot is ignored, and the media picks up on it, and makes a big deal of "the cost". Then, there's the cost of maintaining ships on site. Of course, the FULL cost is what we hear about, ignoring the fact that active duty ships, in peace-time, are expensive, and would cost quite a bit sitting in port. Same with salaries and benefits of the personnel in Iraq.

The government has become quite adept at this charging one division against another since WWII, when GM, Ford, and others taught them about it.