There was some breaking news from Iowa today:
“Donald Trump is willing to fork over a billion bucks if that’s what it takes to win the White House…
Trump answered: “I would do that, yeah, if I had to.”
He added: “I make $400 million a year so what difference does it make?”
Ugh. The chutzpah on this guy, I swear.
I can’t get any of this out of my head. It’s like brain-tar…it just sticks onto your brain and rots it into a toxic goo just thinking about it.
Money is clearly not an object to Donald Trump; but that isn’t big news. He has been loaded ever since, forever. And he isn’t royalty, like Prince Albert II from Monaco, who is estimated to be worth 1 billion, himself. Even the Queen of England has a personal net worth of $500 million (not counting her government stipend of $12million per year, nor the property she owns, which comes out to something like 20 billion; and probably a few other things, like countries/planets).
But just the notion that Trump would pay 1 billion dollars, like it was a drop in the bucket, to buy…I mean win…the presidency is just disturbing.
At a time when the middle class is being threatened, food prices are skyrocketing, unemployment is a serious problem for people, education budgets are out of whack, Social Security is being threatened and the national debt, alone, is somewhere around 19trillion dollars….
There are so many things families forgo in order to make a home for their kids, and Trump is basically taking a $1billion vacation by running for President. A trip to the Bahamas? Nah. Too much sun. A Mediterranean cruise? Nah, there is no yacht big enough for his ego. But a helicopter trip around the USA, running for President? Oh, sure. Why not? YOLO, amiright?
“I’m fairly certain that YOLO is just Carpe Diem for stupid people.”
― Jack Black
But this entire brain-tar thought train has me thinking.
What else could a billion dollars buy you?
- Cars– For 1 billion dollars, you could buy 56 of the most expensive Ferrari. “The top car by sales price was a 1964 Ferrari 250 LM that went for $17.6 million.”
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- Property- The most expensive castle in the world is not located in Transylvania, Austria or even Itally. It is actually Ashford Castle in Ireland, and is valued at $68million. So, for 1 billion dollars, you could buy 14 of these, no sweat!
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- Teachers- According to Forbes, the “average” salary of a teacher is $56,740. So, for 1 billion dollars you could pay for the salaries of 17,724 teachers. Maybe in North Carolina, perhaps?
As we can clearly see here, there is nothing on the budgets for teachers! Next question?
- Food- Let’s get more real, though. Food prices are skyrocketing, and all of us are feeling it at the store. So how much does the average family spend on food every week? According to Gallup, it ranges between $146-$289. So, let’s just say it is on the high end at $289, which would be $1144 a month. How many homes could 1 billion dollar feed? 874,125 homes.
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- The Presidency of the United States of America- According to Politico, “Barack Obama, Mitt Romney both topped $1 billion in 2012. That’s the final fundraising tally in the most expensive presidential election ever, according to reports filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission by the rival campaigns and party committees.”
Straight outta corporate.
So, there you have it, folks.
1 billion could, actually buy you the White House!
Hi Tamarah – I’ve been shirking in my Spark blog challenge for some time now, but I do still get and read a lot of blog posts from those I met there. This is an excellent one – I’ve thought a lot about what the Trump run for the presidency means myself (and blogged about it a bit). But I think you’ve captured it with one word: ‘Chutzpah.’
By the way, I also wanted to comment on how beautiful your blog has become over the years (? – at least months, could it be years?) Great job, and keep on blogging.
This has been so encouraging to read…I have re-read it a few times. Thank you so much 🙂 Yeah, I keep trying to wrap my head around Trump, and I think I finally get it.
I am such a bad designer, I have had no idea how to design my blog…but I thought this worked okay! It’s great to hear that it worked out well…thank you for the feedback!! You’re awesome 🙂