Mind Warp

The Scott Burns column in the Sunday paper was about the semantics of taxation. He mentioned a hedge fund manager named John Paulson, whose income last year was five billion dollars. Not five million -- five fucking BILLION. Burns pointed out that this one guy's income exceeded the entire NFL team payroll by 1.4 billion dollars (5,000,000,000 to 3,600,000,000). That's every dollar paid to every player on every team, and there are plenty of millionaires among pro football players. Meanwhile, here at the ranch, I get nervous when gasoline reaches three dollars per gallon. I can't visualize an income of five million dollars, much less a thousand times that much.