Leftmedia Displays Dismal Understanding of Basic Math
No, Michael Bloomberg could not have given everyone in America $1 million.
Why do so many in the mainstream media favor Democrats and their leftist policies? Well, a recent viral clip may help shed a little insight into their rationale. In the video clip from MSNBC, program host Brian Williams is speaking with political pundit Mara Gay who, referencing a social media post, erroneously asserts that Michael Bloomberg could have used the $500 million he spent on his campaign to instead give every single American $1 million dollars and still have millions left over.
MSNBC’s Brian Williams reads a tweet: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. U.S. Population, 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million”
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) March 6, 2020
NYT Editorial Board Member Mara Gay: “It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true. It’s disturbing”
It’s $1.53 per person pic.twitter.com/dIiwCESgh8
“Obviously, the math here is spectacularly off,” says National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke. “If Michael Bloomberg had divided the money he spent on his presidential run evenly among Americans, we would each have got $1.53, not $1 million. For Bloomberg to give $1 million to each American, he would have to be worth $327 trillion (in cash), which, for context, is around 17 times American GDP and about five-and-a-half thousand times what he’s actually worth. The scale of the error here is galactic.”
This explains why so many Leftmedia “journalists” fail to laugh out loud and call Bernie Sanders on his pie-in-the-sky plans like for Medicare for All and “free” college. The notion that simply taxing the rich more to cover the astronomical costs of these proposed government programs is so absurd that it takes the fantasy-math skills of Williams and Gay to believe it possible.
Furthermore, Williams himself earns in the neighborhood of $10 to $15 million annually. Based upon his mathematical computation, couldn’t he take just one year of his salary and make 10 to 15 million Americans millionaires?
But what about former Democrat presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s proposal to give every American $1,000 per month forever? It was a wealth redistribution scheme based on the dubious notion that future automation will eventually so limit the number of jobs available that it will be impossible for the economy to provide enough jobs to meet population demands. It’s not a novel idea, nor is it realistic or even possible, but many have bought into it.
Cooke observes, “If Michael Bloomberg were to try to achieve what Andrew Yang promised … he would be able to give every American about $183 in the first month before he’d have $0 left. To make it through a single month, he would have to be five times richer than he is. And, after that single month, even at five times his current wealth, his fortune would be completely and permanently depleted. Elizabeth Warren’s unconstitutional wealth tax topped out at six percent. Filter Bloomberg’s money through that tax and you get $11 per American per year.”
To put it bluntly, the Leftmedia has absolutely no realistic understanding of how economics or wealth creation works. They simply want the elites in government to control it all and distribute it as they see fit.
