Donald Trump at Great Gatsby Halloween Party at Mar-a-Lago on October 31, 2025
It would be a very simple matter for reporters to make a habit of including four or five words of context so that these really big numbers would be meaningful to their audience. I considered it a big victory when I worked with several groups to persuade Margaret Sullivan, who was the New York Times public editor, to write a piece arguing exactly this point. She also got a strong endorsement for this view by then Washington editor David Leonhardt.
This seemed like a huge victory, since if the New York Times made a practice of presenting big budget numbers in a context that made them meaningful, it is likely most other publications would follow. This would have led to a far better-informed electorate who would know that they did not have a high tax bill because of the 0.008 percent of the budget that went to public broadcasting.
Unfortunately, nothing changed. Even though I have never heard and literally cannot imagine an argument on the other side (it takes 10 seconds to do the calculation on a spreadsheet), it is still standard practice for reporters to write numbers in the millions, billions, or trillions that they know are meaningless to almost their entire audience.
And informing the public would make a difference. Elon Musk probably would not have been so proud to shut down PEPFAR, the AIDS program for Africa started by George W. Bush, if he knew he was sentencing millions of people to death in order to reduce federal spending by 0.09 percent (nine cents on $100).
In the interest of putting numbers in context in terms of the current budget shutdown, we can think about how much money Donald Trump and his family have gained since he was elected compared to the cost of SNAP. According to Forbes, the Trump family has increased their wealth by roughly $5 billion since the election, effectively doubling their prior fortune.
By comparison, the average monthly SNAP benefit is a bit less than $190 a month, or roughly $2,250 a year. If we compare the Trump family’s post-election windfall to the average SNAP benefit, it comes to more than 2 million SNAP-person years.
Source: Forbes magazine and USDA
This comparison is useful since we can see that even while millions of people might be suffering from the loss of SNAP benefits due to the shutdown, at least Donald Trump and his family are doing well.
Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the 2016 book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.
Reprinted with permission from Dean Baker.
- How Criminals' Most Favored Currency Became A 'Trump Trade' ›
- Trumps Grifting Off New Saudi Golf Deal While America Isn't Looking ›
- CBO Report: Trump's Big Ugly Bill Robs The Poor To Grease The Rich ›
