[silverc4s]

I think that one of the reasons that big government gets away with their runaway spending (BOTH parties do it these days, I am on neither side), is that we cannot really grasp the value of the spending that is being proposed, approved, forecasted, allocated, or whatever.

As a famous lawmaker once said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you are talking about a lot of money." We poor citizens have no idea what a billion dollars is in real life terms. I want to propose an new monetary measuring unit for government spending; the Life Tax Unit. It would work like this:

(All numbers are just for demonstration, real values should be used.)

Let's say the average American worker is employed for 40 years. In that time he earns a total of $2.6 million, average annual earnings of $65,000. He pays an average of 22% of this in taxes, for a lifetime total of: $572,000. Therefore one Life Tax Unit would be currently equal to $572,000.

1 Billion dollars in Government spending, for example, would be expressed as 1748.25 LTU's, meaning that the entire lifetime earnings of 1748.25 Americans would be used to pay for that program. I can understand that better than I can a billion dollars.

I'm trying to think of grass roots ways to spread this idea and see if there is sufficient interest in requiring our government to use a method of this nature. I think it would be a more honest way of communication regarding spending at that level.

Comments, suggestions, ridicule, abuse, anyone?

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