This is almost as good a scam as Trump’s legal fund to fight election fraud back in 2020. He fleeced his rube followers many millions of dollars with that one. This newest Trump GoFundMe is a bit more audacious. It requires you, me, everybody going through the couch cushions to find almost thirty-six trillion bucks. I did the arithmetic. $36,000,000,000,000 divided by 330,000,000 (representing 330 million of us. Are my zeros right? Math is not my strong suit) and the result was $1,110,000. (Actually, this is billions off, so somebody who works with big numbers can figure out the exact figure. But you get the idea.)
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an extra million bucks to give to Trump via Venmo (or PayPal, he’ll take that, too.) And what’s comical about this, is that the people who do have billions of dollars are the ones who pay no taxes so that the yous and mes carry their burden as well as our own. We’re paying for the airports, they just land their private jets there, leaving a huge carbon footprint. I think the justification for all that was articulated by Ronnie Raygun, his trickle down theory. That was some real gaslighting back in the day. This is just as nutty as that.
The Treasury has run this program for years, and people have donated $67.3 million since 1996, a minuscule amount of the total debt. But the options to use Venmo or PayPal are new.
This is an absolute joke. Leaders on both sides of the aisle harangue Americans every day about the specter of the national debt while throwing billions of dollars at funding the military, funding Israel’s military, and funding Trump’s brutal immigration campaign. To even create this option when the majority of the country is working/middle class appears deeply unserious and tone deaf.
And even if people were feeling generous, it would be virtually impossible to make a dent in the debt given its current size and the fact that it is set to keep growing, and fast.
This is vintage Trump mentality. Create an insane situation and come up with an even more insane and undoable solution. I’m surprised that he didn’t try a new line of National Debt Sneakers or maybe Melania can sell National Debt Xmas Ornaments this year. Who knows? And of course including PayPal puts the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel into the equation. So they would be nothing short of totally delighted if you will fatten their coffers yet some more.
Since we’re talking about fattening coffers, I will pass the hat as I usually do. We don’t need big money, we just need some money, a few bucks. And we’re not asking for money because we got insanely in debt, we’re just trying to survive the national tune out from politics that happened post-November 5 and survive until we see more tuned in days. I have faith it will arrive, it’s the when I don’t know. And traffic has been much lower this year compared with last. If you can donate, thank you. Ursula
These numbers are hard to imagine, how big is a trillion?
Why not think of it in terms of seconds. A 1,000 seconds ago was equal to almost 17 minutes. It would take almost 12 days for a million seconds to elapse and 31.7 years for a billion seconds. Therefore, a trillion seconds would amount to no less than 31,709.8 years.
A trillion seconds ago, there was no written history. The pyramids had not yet been built. It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun, and saber-toothed tigers were still prowling the planet.
So a trillion is a very big number.
What the holy hell??!!!! This is nuts. Just. Plain. Nuts. I think tRump would find a way to grift the money over to himself, but then I’m a cynic.
“I did the arithmetic. $36,000,000,000,000 divided by 330,000,000 (representing 330 million of us. Are my zeros right? Math is not my strong suit) and the result was $1,110,000. (Actually, this is billions off, so somebody who works with big numbers can figure out the exact figure. But you get the idea.)”
Um, actually, no. You’re over with your calculations. 36,000,000,000,000 divided by 330,000,000 results in “only” $109,090.91 (rounded up). Written out, that’s one hundred nine thousand ninety dollars and ninety-one cents.
Basically, the ratio of 1 trillion to 1 million is just 1 million (i.e., “1 trillion = 1 million millions”) but, since the first number has a smaller leading series (i.e., 36 compared to 330), the ratio will be a fraction of that normal million (in this case roughly 1/10th of a million–or a hundred thousand).
Why not try what many other modern economies have in place. Tax rich people an appropriate amount.