Song of the Day 4/24: Spoon, “My Mathematical Mind”
Donald Trump, who likes to brag about going to Penn’s Wharton School, is obviously bad at math – how else could he go bankrupt running casinos? He has repeatedly demonstrated his innumeracy by proclaiming that drug prices have dropped by impossible percentages well in excess of 100%.
The media have mostly given him a pass on this, I suppose because it’s less destructive than all his other fuck-ups, but it burst into the headlines again yesterday when Trump proclaimed there were “two ways of calculating.” Sure, Jan, but only one of them provides a correct answer.
To compound the absurdity, RFK Jr. actually defended Trump’s reasoning. AP provided this account:
Kennedy noted that he was reminded of his exchange the previous day with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at a congressional hearing when she said that claiming price cuts exceeding 100% might suggest “companies should be paying you to take their drugs.”
Kennedy said during that hearing that Trump “has a different way of calculating.”
On Thursday, Kennedy argued that drug manufacturers had raised prices on popular medications by more than 100% and that Trump was then cutting the price down substantially – meaning he was wiping out percentages of costs worth more than 100%.
“If the drug was $100, and it raised the price to $600, that would be a 600% rise,” Kennedy said – even though that’s incorrect. Six hundred is indeed 600% of the original 100 value, but the increase from one to the other is actually only 500%.
Kennedy then continued, “And the president used that mathematical device.”
But no such device exists for the way Trump characterizes it, at least not when math is done correctly.
Something can increase in price by more than 100%. A product that increases from $1 to $2.10 has increased by 110%. But prices cannot be reduced by more than 100% without being pushed to a value of $0 — or reduced 100% of the full price — and then into negative territory, where consumers presumably would need to be paid for using a product.
Emphasis mine, to highlight that Trump isn’t the only innumerate in the administration. Of course, a large segment of the public shares this deficiency, so they probably think this “different way of calculating” makes perfect sense.
“My Mathematical Mind” appeared on Spoon’s breakthrough LP, 2005’s “Gimme Fiction.” That’s fitting, because fiction is a large portion of what comes out of Trump’s mouth. Sometimes it seems like more than 100%.
