November 6, 2025
Dean Baker
I have harangued reporters for decades over their failure to express big numbers in a context that would make them meaningful to their audiences. For example, when they report that we will spend roughly $100 billion this year on SNAP, relatively few people know that this is around 1.4 percent of total spending. They just hear a REALLY BIG NUMBER, to most of them the number would probably mean the same thing if it would $50 billion or $200 billion.
Dean Baker
I have harangued reporters for decades over their failure to express big numbers in a context that would make them meaningful to their audiences. For example, when they report that we will spend roughly $100 billion this year on SNAP, relatively few people know that this is around 1.4 percent of total spending. They just hear a REALLY BIG NUMBER, to most of them the number would probably mean the same thing if it would $50 billion or $200 billion.
It would be a very simple matter
for reporters to make a habit of including four or five words of context so
that these really big numbers would be meaningful to their audience. I
considered it a big victory when I worked with several groups to persuade Margaret
Sullivan, who was the New York Times Public Editor, to write a piece arguing
exactly this point. She also got a strong endorsement for this view by then
Washington Editor David Leonhardt.
This seemed like a huge victory, since if the New York Times made a practice of presenting big budget numbers in a context that made them meaningful, it is likely most other publications would follow. This would have led to a far better-informed electorate who would know that they did not have a high tax bill because of the 0.008 percent of the budget that went to public broadcasting.
Unfortunately, nothing changed. Even though I have never heard and literally cannot imagine an argument on the other side (it takes 10 seconds to do the calculation on a spreadsheet), it is still standard practice for reporters to write numbers in the millions, billions, or trillions that they know are meaningless to almost their entire audience.
And informing the public would make a difference. Elon Musk probably would not have been so proud to shut down PEPFAR, the AIDS program for Africa started by George W. Bush, if he knew he was sentencing millions of people to death in order to reduce federal spending by 0.09 percent (9 cents on $100).
In the interest of putting numbers in context in terms of the current budget shutdown, we can think about how much money Donald Trump and his family have gained since he was elected compared to the cost of SNAP. According to Forbes, the Trump family has increased their wealth by roughly $5 billion since the election, effectively doubling their prior fortune.
By comparison, the average monthly SNAP benefit is a bit less than $190 a month, or roughly $2,250 a year. If we compare the Trump family’s post-election windfall to the average SNAP benefit, it comes to more than 2 million SNAP-person years.
This comparison is useful since we can see that even while millions of people might be suffering from the loss of SNAP benefits due to the shutdown, at least Donald Trump and his family are doing well.
This seemed like a huge victory, since if the New York Times made a practice of presenting big budget numbers in a context that made them meaningful, it is likely most other publications would follow. This would have led to a far better-informed electorate who would know that they did not have a high tax bill because of the 0.008 percent of the budget that went to public broadcasting.
Unfortunately, nothing changed. Even though I have never heard and literally cannot imagine an argument on the other side (it takes 10 seconds to do the calculation on a spreadsheet), it is still standard practice for reporters to write numbers in the millions, billions, or trillions that they know are meaningless to almost their entire audience.
And informing the public would make a difference. Elon Musk probably would not have been so proud to shut down PEPFAR, the AIDS program for Africa started by George W. Bush, if he knew he was sentencing millions of people to death in order to reduce federal spending by 0.09 percent (9 cents on $100).
In the interest of putting numbers in context in terms of the current budget shutdown, we can think about how much money Donald Trump and his family have gained since he was elected compared to the cost of SNAP. According to Forbes, the Trump family has increased their wealth by roughly $5 billion since the election, effectively doubling their prior fortune.
By comparison, the average monthly SNAP benefit is a bit less than $190 a month, or roughly $2,250 a year. If we compare the Trump family’s post-election windfall to the average SNAP benefit, it comes to more than 2 million SNAP-person years.
This comparison is useful since we can see that even while millions of people might be suffering from the loss of SNAP benefits due to the shutdown, at least Donald Trump and his family are doing well.
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