DUmmies are worried about the upcoming war with Iran, yeah there are plenty threads on it today but this one is a bit different.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287405409As we all know DUmmies and math do not compute. 1+1 = potato or what ever else the others in your group all feel like it should be.
So, when a thread comes up on credit card fees it has to be worthy of a glance.
Fri Jan 3, 2020, 03:32 AM
Star Member SidDithers (43,325 posts)
How Bernie's Small Donors Are Making Credit Card Companies Rich
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/25/small-dollar-online-donors-politics-credit-card-processing-072949
Low-dollar, repeat contributions are a great talking point for campaigns. They’ve also resulted in a massive financial windfall for credit card processors.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have eschewed big-dollar fundraising events to support their 2020 campaigns, instead turning to their grassroots supporters for small-dollar contributions. It’s central to both candidates’ appeal: the idea that everyday people, not big financial institutions or wealthy and powerful interests, are financing—and benefiting from—their efforts.
Donors have responded in droves— donating tens, hundreds or even thousands of times, in amounts as small as $1. But what these grassroots supporters may not realize is that, in making small, repeated contributions, they have, in aggregate, delivered a huge payday for the middlemen, often large banks and financial institutions that process those payments.
snip
When you give a dollar to a political campaign using your credit card, a portion of that money is paid to a range of companies—the bank that issues a donor’s credit card, the campaign’s bank, the credit card company, etc.—and is generally taken as a percentage of the donation, plus a fixed amount per transaction. Even ActBlue, which advertises a flat fee of 3.95 percent, gets charged a per-transaction fee behind the scenes, though the organization would not give exact amounts.
And as contributors make smaller but more frequent contributions, those per-transaction costs have a disproportionate impact.
To illustrate the point, Zucker gave a commercially reasonable rate—similar to Stripe's or PayPal’s—of 3 percent plus 30 cents per transaction. Imagine a single donor makes a $1,000 contribution to a candidate under that scenario: The campaign would get $969.70, and the processing middlemen (Visa, Wells Fargo, and so on) would take $30.30. But that balance changes radically if the campaign has a thousand different supporters make tiny online donations of a $1 apiece. In that case, the existence of per-transaction fees means the credit card processors would take $330, while campaign would get only $670 — even as it would be able to tout a low average donation size.
Sid
8
Tweet
Sid, Sid, Sid, why??? Why bother??
dansolo (4,853 posts)
8. So it is an empty gesture that results in less money going to the campaign
I don't think this point is emphasized enough. What is especially galling is that Bernie is encouraging this behavior just so he can pad his donation numbers.
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
JOE BIDEN
Response to SidDithers (Original post)Fri Jan 3, 2020, 07:18 AM
Humanist_Activist (7,274 posts)
9. Not sure of your point unless its simply that poor people shouldn't participate in contributing...
at all.
All candidates ask people to donate what they can, and unless you are discussing how the credit card companies fleece the public, which is true. What is your argument?
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
ELIZABETH WARREN
Response to Humanist_Activist (Reply #9)Fri Jan 3, 2020, 07:35 AM
Hassin Bin Sober (22,168 posts)
11. It's a Rovian attempt by Politico at taking a strength and turning it to a perceived weakness.
Anyone who runs a business - wether it’s a charity, not for profit, or for-profit - knows people will spend/donate more and more often when you make it quick and convenient.
Banking/transaction fees are a cost of doing business. They more than pay for themselves in increased donations.
You know what else costs money? Wine caves and expensive fundraising parties. Our own local popinjay likes to brag about how candidates wine and dine him all the time with hotels and flights included. Fundraising costs lots of money. I have a friend who runs a fundraising company that caters to schools and other not for profits. It’s big business running parties and charity auctions. They don’t do it for free.
You know what else costs US ALL the most money? When our elected officials have to pay back bundlers, like the CEO of Comcast, for their bundled contributions. We pay through the nose for decreased regulation, fast-tracked monopolies, and weakened consumer protections.
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
BERNIE SANDERS
Response to Hassin Bin Sober (Reply #11)Fri Jan 3, 2020, 08:36 AM
beastie boy (1,967 posts)
14. This is the classic "everybody does it" defense, followed by a deflection.
But everybody else has not made the millionaires and billionaires their main target. And you are welcome to start your own thread on how bundlers cost us money, hopefully completre with facts and figures showing exactly how much money they cost us. But you cannot deny a simple lesson in Finance 101 which the OP brought up.
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
JOE BIDEN
Response to Hassin Bin Sober (Reply #11)Fri Jan 3, 2020, 10:36 AM
LanternWaste (34,537 posts)
24. A week's pay says you'll be unable to see the irony in your having said that.
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
JOE BIDEN
Response to Humanist_Activist (Reply #9)Fri Jan 3, 2020, 09:07 AM
Star Member NYMinute (2,093 posts)
18. Encouraging donors to break up their donations into little pieces
only to raise the "total number of donations" hurts the campaign. Sometimes, record breaking with "we have 5 million plus donations - more than anyone ever" means the people's money is wasted in making the bankers rich.
The math is irrefutable. Make peace with facts.
Make peace with the facts? DUmmies? Really?? The irony is thick in this thread but DUmmies are too blind to see.
