When he ran for president in 2016, Donald Trump bragged that he donated to politicians because that meant they would return his calls when he needed something.
His description sounded a lot like the quid pro quo of a bribe. “I’ve got to give to them,” he said, “because when I want something, I get it.”
In his second term, Trump has moved on to the idea of doing the same thing, but with voters. Since taking office, he’s floated several proposals that amount to paying people cash to do what he wants.
When he ran for president in 2016, Donald Trump bragged that he donated to politicians because that meant they would return his calls.
It started in January, with an email to federal workers offering to give them full pay and benefits through Sept. 30 without requiring them to work if they resigned immediately.
In April, the administration floated the idea of paying each resident of Greenland $10,000 per year if the island chose to become part of the United States. Later that month, it put forward a vague proposal to pay every American mother a $5,000 cash “baby bonus” after delivery. Then last week, it announced a policy to offer $1,000 and a flight home to undocumented immigrants who willingly leave the U.S.
In each case, Trump is trying to get something he wants: a smaller federal workforce, Greenland, a higher birthrate, fewer immigrants. But to get that, someone else has to give up something of value: their job, their sovereignty, their sleep, their home. And the alternatives for Trump to achieve those goals are less attractive, ranging from mass firings to mass deportations to war.
I’ve long thought that more government programs should involve direct cash payments, which cut overhead costs while giving recipients the freedom to decide how best to use the money. And such ideas aren’t exactly new: Democratic Sen. Cory Booker has long called for giving each newborn “baby bonds” that could be cashed in later in life, while then-candidate Kamala Harris pitched a $6,000 tax credit for parents of newborns during her 2024 run.
But those payments were framed as a way to help people who were already doing something, not to provide an incentive for them to do a thing in the first place.
Setting aside the wisdom of such policies for a moment, there’s something distasteful about the spirit in which Trump and his Cabinet of billionaires are making these proposals. It has the vibe of a man in an expensive suit slipping the maître d’ at a fancy restaurant a $20 to overlook the fact that he doesn’t have a reservation.
But it’s not just the idea that everything is for sale, that everything has a price — as Trump basically argued to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday. (“There are some places that are never for sale,” Carney said, leading Trump to reply, “Never say never.”) It’s also the idea that people can be bought so cheaply.
In 2017, the U.S. Agriculture Department estimated that a middle-class couple would spend $233,610 to raise a child through age 17, not including college tuition and without adjusting for inflation. In 2022, The Brookings Institution, a respected nonpartisan think tank, revisited those calculations and pegged the cost at $310,605 when adjusted for inflation. When you look at those numbers, Trump’s $5,000 bonus seems like a terrible deal. Imagine a salesman offers you the first five months free on a new car that will require you to pay $1,000 every month for the next 17 years, slapping the roof and saying, “If you sign a long-term contract, I’ll give you 1% off!” This is an offer that assumes you are too stupid to do the math. The other deals are even worse. The payments to Greenland would potentially come from the sale of the island’s rare earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium and oil. It’s as if Trump had offered to take your home, sell it for parts and then give you some of the money back, all while giving you the kind of treatment he gives Puerto Rico. It’s absurd to think people who risked so much to get our freedoms and opportunities would trade all of that for the price of a high-end laptop. As for undocumented immigrants, it’s absurd to think people who risked so much to get our freedoms and opportunities would trade all of that for the price of a high-end laptop. There are a lot of problems with Trump’s offers. For starters, these aren’t written into law, which means you’re relying on Trump’s typically unreliable word if you base a life-changing decision on them. From a policy standpoint, they’re also expensive without even getting the desired results. The baby bonuses alone would cost $18 billion a year, most of which would go to people who were already going to have kids, which is great for them but probably not sufficient to tip someone into parenthood. But the biggest problem is that Trump doesn’t seem to understand that people care about more than just money. That Trump seems to think anyone would give up a job they love or a country they’ve made their home for some cash shows how little he shares our values. And that he thinks we would do it for a pittance shows how much he underestimates our intelligence.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. 
