518 Comments
User's avatar
Pam Sibley's avatar

GodDAMN he’s dumb!

Alan's avatar

Trump is an idiot, but you do yourself no favors by not understanding math yourself. 1500% as a decimal is 15. In your example 10 times 15 is $150. If you pay for the 10 med you would get back $140 in cash. Remember you must move decimal point two places to the left. For example, 1500% the decimal point is at the end, 1500.00%. Moving it two places to left gives you 15.00 as a decimal.

kmblue187's avatar

Re: "Cutting drug prices by 1500 percent..." What a moron.

simpledinosaur's avatar

It's Trump's "dumb salesman" talk. It's the only kind of salesman he can do, really. I guess it goes along with just firing the person who tells you the truth about how the economy is doing.

Stephanie Hobbs's avatar

And yet, they still believe him.

Elmbutcher's avatar

Then how can they short stock by %125 (BlackRock)( GameStop )

Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

You know what would really help bring our drug prices down?

Releasing the Epstein Files.

simpledinosaur's avatar

That would bring them down eleven thousanty percent.

Stephan's avatar

You’re right about not being very good at math. $10 x 1500% = $150.00, not $15,000. In fact, as I typed the equation my keyboard automatically answered it correctly. My comment does better math, by itself! lol

Regret's avatar

Plus the first 100% goes towards the cost of the product, so you actually receive medicine + $140.

Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

Since comments are not allowed, the only thing we can give you for all your hard work is this commemorative tin of canned clams.

Robert Eckert's avatar

Borowitz is suggesting George Santos for Trump's pick as new BLS statistician

John Thorstensen's avatar

Stock traders and finance seers like a degree of stability and predictability, and depend on economic statistics in designing strategies.

My understanding is that they're alarmed that it's going to be really hard to get reliable readings on what's happening. They really, really don't like uncertainty.

Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

They aren't going to do anything about it, so no one cares what they think.

Maybe's avatar

In truth, trumpy does do math like no one does math.

Either that, or drug manufacturers are now going to pay us lots of money to "buy" their products.

JW's avatar

BLS economists are known for aggressivly NOT spinning the numbers they report. As a joke put it, if you ask them if the glass is half full or half empty they’ll tell you that there are four ounces of water in an eight ounce glass.

Now they’re all on notice that the truth will get you fired. Going to be hard to trust any data coming out of this administration. We’re in Soviet territory here.

Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

A single person doesn't control that information. Forty people put those numbers together, and the Chump administration leaks like a sieve.

Maybe's avatar

trumpy's economists are more like this"

If you ask them what 4 plus 4 is, their answer is "What do you want it to be?"

Teresa Allison's avatar

Tariffs are proof the big orange idiot doesn't understand even basic math.

KEITH TAYLOR's avatar

Nobody can make Donald Trump look bad more effectively than he does it himself.

John Thorstensen's avatar

I'm sure some other nerd pointed this out downthread, but a 1500% discount on a $10 item would be a $140 check, not $15,000. Every hundred percent is the full cost; the first hundred drives the price to zero, and the next 14 hundred count fot 14 x the price, so $140.

Math wasn't my best subject in school either, but it was close, and I *did* major in astronomy.

Pexas Teat's avatar

astronomy = theology

Not really, but the cosmology comes close.

John Thorstensen's avatar

Yeah, I just retired after 44 years as a professor of astronomy at Dartmouth, and have soaked all my life in the incredibly rich empirical foundation of this ancient science. Would you like me to explain why every credible scientist thinks the observable universe expanded from a very hot, dense state, starting around 14 billion years ago?

Pexas Teat's avatar

No need. You've long provided rich commentary drawing from your academic background.

I've gotten really tired of all the headlines that scream "this new observation violates the laws of physics!" I know the scientists aren't responsible for that stuff, but it gets really tiresome. Plus, all of the unproveable postulates that seem to fascinate a subaet of physicists: we're in a black hole, this is a simulation, etc.

John Thorstensen's avatar

By the way, Pexas, the answer to the question I posed is (a) the Hubble expansion, which gives a rough age simply by interpolating backward; (b) the cosmic background radiation has exactly the right spectral distribution for thermally-generated radiation in equilibrium -- naturally explained by an early hot phase, and so far impossible to understand otherwise; (c) the abundance of the light elements matches very well with that generated by the temperature/density development of a radiation-dominated universe cooling from an arbitrarily high temperature; and (d) the angular fluctuation spectrum observed by the Planck satellite is exactly as expected for flat initial density spectrum evolving under gravity and radiation pressure.

There's a lot of ferment these days over the "Hubble tension", and no one knows that dark matter or dark energy are. Even so, their characteristics have been narrowed down pretty well. They're fudge factors, but the speculation is tightly constrained.

Pexas Teat's avatar

I lost you at (d). My knowledge of astronomy is basically that of an interested layperson with a lot of distractions.

I'm a geographer by training, and my native tendencies are for shallow breadth in terms of natural history. So on hikes, I know a few plants, a few minerals and rock types, a few birds and mammal tracks/scat, etc.

John Thorstensen's avatar

I COMPLETELY agree about the sensationalistic speculation. There's a subset of physics/astro folks who are really, really into self-promotion - a little bit is healthy, especially when backed up by real substance, but the razzle-dazzle stuff is counterproductive, I think.

My own work tends to be very empirical.

Patricia's avatar

Living his fantasy life