Almanac chapter 4: Money

                                     Chapter 4

                                       MONEY


              All  the  known  gold  in the world would make a smaller pile
         than four cords of firewood.  The pile of  all  the  gold  so  far
         mined  or discovered would be less than 8 feet tall by 8 feet wide
         and 8 feet deep. The pile would weigh 97,000 tons.

              Twenty-four-karat gold has some copper mixed into it.  If  it
         didn't it would be so soft you could change the shape of coins and
         jewelry with your bare hands.

              How  much  cash  is  there in America? There is about $823 in
         circulation for each of us.

              The Federal Reserve offers a free service. If you  have  cash
         that  has been burned, torn or otherwise destroyed, they will help
         you verify and replace that money. They once  received  a  shotgun
         where  a  man had hidden some money, but forgot and fired the gun.
         In another case, a farmer sent his  cow's  stomach  to  them,  all
         stuffed with money.

              It costs 2.5 cents to make a $1 or a $100 bill.

              A  few  years  ago,  a  new coin was introduced, the Susan B.
         Anthony dollar. People didn't like them because they were easy  to
         mix  up  with  quarters,  since  they were about the same size and
         color.  At the Federal Reserve  is  a  locker  that  contains  334
         million Susan B. Anthony dollars.

              Real  dollar bills have little red and blue fibers mixed into
         the paper. You can quickly spot most counterfeits because they  do
         not have these fibers.

              The  paper  U.S. money is printed on is not paper at all, but
         cloth: 3/4 cotton and 1/4 linen.

              One time the Federal Reserve accidentally printed bills worth
         $5 on the front, but with $1 backs. Inspectors caught the  mistake
         before they were circulated.

              The  United  States  Secret Service was originated in 1865 to
         combat counterfeit money. There was a time when  as  much  as  one
         third of all the money in America was counterfeit.

              The Philadelphia mint produces 26 million pennies per day.

              In 1989, Americans spent an average of $5580.25 per family on
         Christmas gifts.

              Americans send three billion Christmas cards a year.  If  you
         have  the  average  number  of friends, you should get at least 12
         cards a year. How many do you get?

              The average American spends 148 hours  per  year  waiting  in
         lines.   If  you  could  be paid minimum wage for those 3-1/2 work
         weeks, you would get $498.80.

              If a man could be paid minimum wage  for  shaving,  he  would
         earn $11,222.50 in a lifetime, working 3,350 hours.

              If  the  average housewife were paid one penny for every step
         she takes as she works around the house, she  would  make  $64,240
         per year.

              The  people who work in the Interior Decorating Department of
         Sears have to write a customer's name in 67 different places for a
         job which can sell for as little as $300 installed.

              Fifty-two percent of women  have  jobs.   Ninety  percent  of
         these women are between 20 and 30 years old.

              One  out  of  every  four women fail in business. Four out of
         every five men fail in business.

              In the past decade, the  number  of  women  in  business  for
         themselves has doubled.

              Over  half  of  the  millionaires in America are women. (50.4
         percent)

              One out of every 300 Americans is a millionaire.

              There  are  157  billionaires.  One  out  of every 48 million
         people in the world is a billionaire.

              The wealthiest man in the world is the Sultan of Brunei, who,
         it is estimated, has $35 billion dollars.

              How  much  is  a  million  dollars?   Since  a dollar bill is
         0.004375" thick, a million dollars in crisp new one  dollar  bills
         stacked sideways would be a bit  longer  than a football field. If
         you laid 1 million  one-dollar bills end to end, it would take you
         31 hours to walk to the end of the line.

              Parker  Brothers  have  printed more money for their Monopoly
         games than the Federal  Reserve  has  issued  in  real  money  for
         America.   If you stacked up all the Monopoly sets they have made,
         the pile would be over 1100 miles tall.

              A mile of pennies laid out is  $844.80.   By  this  standard,
         America is about $2.5 million wide from coast to coast.

              Since  1900,  90  billion  pennies have been made in America.
         That is over 37000 for each American. Of  course,  there  are  not
         that  many pennies now. Many billions have been lost or destroyed.
         There are some people who throw their pennies  away.   Workers  at
         landfills  and recycling plants report seeing thousands of pennies
         in the trash.  The U.S.  Treasury says that now 6 billion  pennies
         are disappearing every year.
              Pennies  are  becoming  useless,  thanks  to  inflation. Many
         merchants find that paying employees to account for pennies  costs
         more  than  the pennies are worth. Some stores have gone so far as
         to post signs saying they no  longer  accept  pennies.   Americans
         could probably lead normal lives if pennies were abolished.
              Pennies  are  now  copper coated zinc.  You can prove this by
         cutting a new penny in half.  The older solid copper  pennies  are
         worth more for their metal than one cent each.

              Paper  money  is  evolved  from wealthy Europeans who used to
         have goldsmiths keep their gold, jewels and  valuables  in  safes.
         The  goldsmiths  would  issue  receipts.   Sometimes  people would
         simply trade the receipts for goods or services, and the receipt's
         new owner could collect the gold.  This saved  the  gold's  owners
         from the necessity of visiting the goldsmith's shops to pay debts.
         Years  ago,  anyone  with  American paper money could trade it for
         genuine silver being held by the United States.

              88.5  million  Americans  bought something mailorder in 1988.
         The average mailorder purchase was $74.

              In 1989, the average lawyer charged $118 per hour.

              It costs a restaurant twelve cents to serve you  a  glass  of
         water.

              Americans  spend  $650  billion  a year on medical attention.
         That averages out to $2,674.81 per person per year.

              The most expensive earphones are made by Sony for home stereo
         fanatics who have $4,000 to spend. A Sony employee says,  "They're
         what  people  use  when they want to hear what things really sound
         like."

              A check is merely an I.O.U., and I.O.U.'s can be  written  on
         anything.   Someone  once  wrote  a $15 check on an eggshell.  The
         recipient took the eggshell to a bank  in  Canada,  where  it  was
         cashed like any other check.

              In rural places today, you still find people who wear several
         hats.   Here  in  Applegate, Oregon, the family that runs the post
         office also pumps gas, owns the general store and restaurant,  and
         rents video tapes.
              George Green, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was born in 1817 and died
         63  years later. During that time he was the president of 6 banks,
         ten railroads, and  three  colleges,  owned  a  hotel,  newspaper,
         nursery  and  built steamboats, was a mayor and sat on the supreme
         court, and worked as a lawyer, teacher, and geologist.

              Have you ever wondered what the brand name Kodak  means?  The
         name  Kodak,  invented  by George Eastman, means nothing.  When he
         was looking for a good brand  name,  someone  told  him  that  the
         letter K made a nice sound that is easy to remember, and that five
         letters is a good name length. He took that advice.

              The total budget of the National Cancer Institute is about $4
         per American.

              Are  you  looking for a career?  Economists and futurists are
         saying  the  fastest  growing  job  in  America  is  going  to  be
         "information  gardeners,"  officially  called  database  managers.
         These will be people who use computers  to  collect,  monitor  and
         maintain  vast  pools  of  information.   Already, most of the big
         companies in America would totally  collapse  if  their  computers
         suddenly  went  dead.   There will be several levels of employment
         ranging  from  people  with  minimal  education  who   just   type
         information  into  the  computers  to  the  people  who design the
         computers and the programs.   The  difference  between  graduating
         from  high  school with low grades and doing well in college would
         be either having a  boring  job  as  typist  or  being  the  chief
         programmer in charge of a database.

              In  the  1950's  65  percent  of  the  American workforce was
         blue-collar workers, the people who actually apply their hands  to
         the work or product. Now the figure is about 17 percent.

              Some people have all the luck. Randy Halvorson's pool won the
         lottery  in  February  1988.   He gets to share $3,400,000 with 13
         other people in the pool.  He took some of that money  and  bought
         more  tickets.   In January, 1990, he and his brother won and will
         be splitting an additional $7,200,000.

              There used to be an English  coin  shaped  like  a  four-leaf
         clover.  A person could break off one of the corners and use it as
         one-quarter the value of the whole coin.

              There is more than one million dollars  belonging  to  Hitler
         and other Nazis still on deposit in American banks.

              Most of the people in the world have an average annual income
         under $200.

              The  song,  Happy  Birthday  to  You,  was  written  in 1936.
         Royalties are still paid to the estate of the authors, Mildred and
         Patty Hill.

              In the 1920's you could buy a brand new car for under $300.

              Between 1968 and  1978  the  price  of  a  new  car  went  up
         drastically. They cost twice as much in 1978 as they did in 1968.

              The  formula  used  in  the  toy,  Silly  Putty, was a failed
         attempt at making synthetic rubber. The company that  makes  Silly
         Putty was founded on a loan of $147.  Today the company makes over
         3  million  Silly  Putty eggs per year. They use a cement mixer to
         mix the ingredients and a taffy machine to slice  it  into  little
         portions.  The  astronauts on Apollo 8 tried it for sticking tools
         to the walls so they wouldn't float away.  Their's was supplied in
         a silver egg.

              Each episode of Miami Vice, the TV show, is budgeted at  $1.4
         million.   The  whole  yearly budget of the real Miami Police Vice
         department is only $1.2 million.

                         Some Expenditures You May Not Like

              The United States government spends over $16,000 per  second,
         twenty four hours a day.

              The  state  of  Arizona employees 120 "cactus cops," men whose
         jobs are to investigate the illegal transporting  of  big  saguaro
         cacti.  How effective are these investigators?  They conducted 201
         investigations last year which resulted in 70 convictions.  That's
         less than two investigations per  investigator  per  year.  At the
         same time, in the same state, anyone who wants to develop land can
         legaly bulldoze  over any cacti that are in the way.

              The  United  States  Navy  ordered a computerized bookkeeping
         system that was to have cost $33  million.   As  the  project  was
         being built the price climbed steadily higher.  Finally, the price
         grew  so  high,  the  Navy gave up without completing the job. The
         Navy spent $230 million of our money and got  absolutely  nothing.
         In a similar case, the Internal Revenue Service spent $187 million
         just  to decide if they should buy a $1.8 billion computerized tax
         return system.  They decided no.

              A private audit of the waste of the United States  government
         estimated  internal waste at 4.2 billion dollars in 1988.  This is
         money that is spend, but does not bring any  results,  whatsoever.
         That's $17.28 absolutely wasted from every man, woman and child in
         America.  And in the average American home, someone gets yelled at
         if they leave a 10-cent-a-day light on.

              If you leave a 60 watt light on for 24  hours,  and  if  your
         electricity  costs  about six cents per kilowatt/hour like it does
         here in southern Oregon, then that light will cost  less  than  10
         cents.  If you accidentally left it on for a whole month, the cost
         would still only be under $3.00. But there is a hidden cost.   The
         power  to run that light comes from a generating station is either
         a fossil fuel plant that pollutes the air  or  is  nuclear,  which
         might  be  risky.  If  you and thousands of other folks turned off
         unnecessary lights,  we  may  be  able  to  use  less  nuclear  or
         fossil-fuel generating stations.

              "The President is a prisoner of the American manufacturers of
         armaments who control the White House." - Mikhail Gorbachev

              About  six  percent  of  the  American  GNP  (Gross  National
         Product) is spent on defense. In Russia, they spend 18 percent  on
         defense.

              A  typical  aircraft  carrier costs about $4-5 billion, about
         $80 from every family in America.

              Between 1965  and  1975,  Howard  Hughes  cost  the  American
         taxpayers  $1.7  million/year,  a total of $6 billion. This was in
         the form of government contracts for military machines, etc.

              Howard Hughes  never  once  attended  a  board  of  directors
         meeting, or any sort of meeting at any of the companies he owned.

              A  pyramid  similar  to  the  ones in Egypt is being built in
         Indiana to attract tourists.  Of the total  cost  of  $3  million,
         $700,000  is  U.S. taxpayers' money. This pyramid is only going to
         be 1/5th the size of the real thing.

              Taxpayers' money, in the amount of $121,000 was  spent  in  a
         scientific study to find out why people say "ain't."

              In Los Angeles $203,979 of taxpayers' money was spent to help
         people lost on the freeways.

              Prisoners in Texas may have face-lifts, liposuction, any kind
         of plastic surgery they want at taxpayers expense.

              The  United States Treasury Department has issued a report on
         the monetary value of tuxedos. It contains  54  pages.   The  only
         ones who read this report are the IRS.


                                       Taxes

              The  IRS offers free advice, but thirty percent of the advice
         they give is wrong. If you fill out your forms  incorrectly  based
         on  what  they  have  told  you, you are still responsible for the
         fines and penalties.

              The IRS has 120,000 employees. In 1987, 88  of  these  people
         were convicted of crimes such as accepting bribes or embezzlement.

              Before 1913 there was no income tax.

              In  1915  the  average  income in America was around $625 per
         year.

              In the year 1930 income tax was 1.5  percent  for  the  first
         $7,500.

              The average American pays just over $1,000 per year in taxes.
         (This average includes non-workers and children.)

              The  typical  American  works three hours per day just to pay
         taxes, and only gets to keep the money made during the other  five
         hours  of the work day. Another way of looking at this is that the
         first four and a half months of the year  Americans  work  to  pay
         their  taxes, keeping only the money made after April 15th (income
         tax due day).

              If your income is less that $25,000,  chances  that  the  IRS
         will want to conduct an audit of your financial affairs are one in
         fifty-six.

              The  IRS would need at least 15-3/4 miles of shelves to store
         the tax forms they receive each year.