If you are going to get started, might as well get ASICs from Butterfly Labs (butterflylabs.com). If the hashrates are right (which they have been in the past), these will blow away GPU mining.

I was thinking about how to set up a system for payroll that would allow companies to pay their employees in Bitcoin, but would convert the necessary taxes to dollars for the government's pound of flesh. That got me thinking about how Bitcoin would look to the employee, especially with regard to deflation.

I get deflation, over time the Bitcoins I have become more and more valuable, ie. I am able to convert a single bitcoin into more and more products and services. The flip-side of that? The average employee won't get it. We've been conditioned our entire lives that we get more and more money in our paycheck, not less and less. In order for the company to stay solvent, they will have to pay less and less bitcoin over time as they become more valuable.

Could you imagine sitting down with an employee and telling them they are an "A player" and they are only getting 3% less bitcoin instead of 5%? As much as I love the idea of Bitcoin, it is a tall order to change the mentality of the entire world from an "inflationary" mindset to a "deflationary" mindset, and for that reason, Bitcoin will have a tough go of it.