Rudy’s $100,000 Dinner Investment
Former mayor Rudy Giuliani owes millions of dollars in legal fees, so a fundraiser was held at Trump’s Bedminster golf club to help pay for them. The price for a single dinner? One hundred thousand dollars. A dozen people attended. This means that one million, two hundred thousand dollars was collected to pay toward Rudy’s estimated five million dollars in legal bills.
If you were going to spend $100,000 for a single plate dinner to help Rudy pay his legal fees, do you ever wonder if this a good investment?
$100,000 could buy:
At $1.75 for a child’s breakfast at school, 57,143 children could start their day with something to eat.
At $3.00 to pay for a school lunch, over 33,333 children could have lunch.
SNAP, or food stamps, allows $4.00 per day for people to eat. This means that one person’s Rudy dinner could feed 25,000 people.
With infant formula costing $400–800 per month, a dinner could allow for 250–125 babies to be nourished.
It could pay for 2,5000 children to have a new $40 pair of shoes.
Or a $50 winter coat for 2,000 children.
And 5,000 children could be given a new, inexpensive school backpack ($20).
Daycare conservatively costs $1000 per month per child, so one dinner would pay for 100 children to be cared for, to keep them safe, to help them learn, and so their parents can go to work.
So if we do simple math, the dozen people who threw their money away, a drop in the bucket for one guy’s legal fees that will pay for nothing for anyone else, could have accomplished the following with their investment:
685,716 children could get breakfast
400,000 children would get lunch
300,000 could get food each day from SNAP
Infant formula that would feed 1500–3000 babies
30,000 children would have shoes
24,000 children would get coats to keep them warm in the winter
60,000 children could be given a backpack
1200 children would have daycare
Maybe the dozen enjoyed their dinner. It was probably grande. But did it nourish their heart and soul? Was it a good investment of one’s legacy — did it show their real humanity worth? The fact is, hunger is a public health problem for children in our nation. While people were whining and dining for Rudy, we have to pause and consider what else a single $100,000 dinner plate would buy for the 11 million children in America who live in poverty, or the countless middle-class families struggling just to get by. A dozen people could shift the world for over countless children. Which way to spend your money do you think is a better investment?
For more information on good investments in children, visit my book Children’s Human Rights in the USA: Challenges and Opportunities.
Springer Publishers https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-30848-2