James Joyner mentioned the following figure in passing in his post, but I think it is worth noting directly, via Politico (emphasis mine), concerning the $130 million donation to help cover pay for the armed forces.
White House officials said that covering the cost of military pay for the first half of October totaled about $6.5 billion. Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said that based on that figure, the new donation will cover about one-third of one day’s pay for the force.
So, for all the adulation about the generosity of a shadowy great American, I think that the technical political science response to all of this is: whoopee-damn-do.
I know that $130 million sounds like a lot of money, and it is if, for example, a married couple is looking to live the rest of their lives in comfort. But, when it comes to bankrolling the compensation for the most powerful military the world has ever seen, we encounter yet another polisci term used mostly by devotees of obscure philosophes: chump change.
By the by, if billionaires want to contribute to the general welfare, there is an obscure institutional function that could be deployed. It’s called paying higher taxes.
The likely donor is, according to the NYT, Timothy Mellon, grandson of the founder of Mellon Bank and a multi-billionaire. Mathematically, this is probably like most people giving a few thousand dollars, but in terms of any impact on his spending, savings, investments, or ability to transfer wealth to his family, it is tantamount to leaving a very generous tip on an expensive restaurant bill.
And yet it sends a terrible signal to the masses, who should say “thank you, sir!” and be impressed at the largesse, all the while allowing innumeracy to get in the way of a real assessment of what it actually means.
