So, interesting thing.
Peter Thiel, who with Elon Musk founded Paypal, and then without Elon Musk invested in facebook, was, according to Forbes, worth 2.2 billion dollars in 2014. Peter Thiel just announced that he is going to give 1.25 million dollars to Donald Trump’s campaign. So as a percentage, 1.25 million is .000568% of Thiel’s net worth of 2.2 billion. If you have a million dollars and gave $568 to your candidate, you are doing better than Peter Thiel. In June 2014, median net worth of an American adult was said to be, by Money magazine, $44,900 (average was $301,000, thank you, income inequality). So any average american, with a net worth of $301,000 who gave $171 or more to his or her preferred candidate would have been more generous, in terms of percentage of total net worth, than Peter Thiel. And an American who made the median income of $44,900 would have been more generous to his candidate if he had given only $25.50 or more. And in fact this understates the discrepancy, because an American who is worth only $44,900 probably hurts more giving $25.50 than Peter Thiel does when he gives $1.25 million. After all, both men have to eat, clothe themselves, and pay for shelter. Those basic costs take a bigger bite out of poorer American’s income. Expenditures of $26 hurt Americans in the median category more than an expenditure of 1.25 million hurt Americans (those 400 or so of them) in the Peter Thiel category.
This really emphasizes how totally fucked up America is, when Peter Thiel’s his afterthought donation, which requires a negative power of ten (10-4 to be exact) to come up on my calculator when I attempt to render that donation as a fraction of his total net worth, is 49,020 times greater than the equivalent fractional donation of an American earning the median income.
So Peter Thiels idiot speech is equal to that of the speech of 49,020 Americans earning median income? How obscene.