Cards Against Humanity
In order for Cards Against Humanity to truly save America, we realized we would have to tackle the biggest issue in the world: wealth inequality.
Here are some crazy facts: Today, eight men own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of humanity (almost 4 billion people). Most Americans can't come up with $400 in an emergency, and one in five American households have zero or negative wealth.
That is truly fucked. But none of us feel like we can do anything about it.
Every idea has to start somewhere. Our lawyers advised against our first choice—a campaign to eat all the rich people and live in their houses—so we settled for something more achievable. Last month, 150,000 people signed up for Cards Against Humanity Saves America. Today, we’re redistributing their money.
When they signed up, subscribers filled out a survey with a mix of demographic questions and red herrings. We ranked everyone based on their survey responses and geographical census data to figure out who most needed money.
Here’s what some of the recipients of $1,000 checks told us about themselves and what they’ll do with the money.
“I'm just....astounded. I definitely try to stay positive and practice the law of attraction, and this was such a boost. I was definitely a little stressed because I was sick all summer (short term disability, in the hospital getting emergency blood transfusions, having surgery) and we were living on half our money with the same bill amounts. We burned through most of our savings and are trying to catch up. This helps so much and I hope we might just be able to catch up.”
“This is the nicest thing that has ever happened to me. I will use a portion to pay bills and a portion to buy Christmas gifts for my mom and siblings that I didn't think I would be able to get otherwise. It means the world.”
“My fiancee and I are both transgender, and I plan to use that money toward mine and his name changes, with any leftover money going toward our transition / wedding fund. I literally started crying when I read this email; thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Oh. My. God. REALLY?!!!! $1,000 would mean so much to us right now, you have no idea. My husband and I are taking care of my niece for the foreseeable future because her parents aren't capable of doing so. We are in the process of becoming licensed foster parents.
What this means to us is that we need to find a bigger place to rent. Our credit is shit, I'm unable to work for various reasons (my mother also lives with us, I help take care of her too because she has stage IV lung cancer), so moving will be expensive.”
“I will use this money towards paying off college debt/education expenses. I am a disabled/special needs student so it means the difference between having supplies/time to "barely pass" vs. having what I need to be ahead, or at least at equal vantage point.
It’s genuinely the difference between living off of ramen and paranoid-checking of the bank account daily to be sure it has enough to pay our bills, vs. having a small amount of leeway.
It means I will feel more free to visit my family, if I so wish, instead of working through the holidays to survive. This would be amazing for me, as I haven't seen my family in three years!”
“I don't know what to say. I am numb. I was laid off on August 1st and have been trying to find a job that I can afford to live on, which is impossible right now. I hadn't really bought anything but necessities with my unemployment since then. I have always wanted to do the holiday specials you offer but never get to them in time. Even though money is tight this year I decided to splurge for myself. With $1,000 I can pay off my car and get the new tires I've needed for a while but couldn't afford. This will allow me to look for jobs further out that need a longer drive. I can also buy Christmas presents for this year, not just from thrift stores. This makes a huge difference in my life. Hopefully it can help me get my life back to where it was. This won't completely change my plans for Christmas but will make it easier. All I can say it thank you all.”
“I have hemophilia A factor 8 deficiency. My worked slowed down. Last December, I proposed to my girlfriend. We’ve been together for 10 years. We don't have a specific date yet, but we did agree to save up to $10K, a small part for the honeymoon, and the rest to help towards a down payment for our future home. The $1,000 dollars will go towards our $10K goal. It will make us 10% closer to a small wedding, but a big future together.”
“I've changed jobs several times this year, trying to find a good fit that pays enough to afford rising rent costs and also allows me to go to school. I've fallen behind on my bills, I'm just now coming around to be able to make payments again. It's been incredibly stressful any small amount of help financially would be just the small step I need to get back on track.
Receiving $1,000 may change the way I will spend the holidays. I might be able to spend a little more on gifts for my loved ones.”
“It's hard enough making ends meet living on your own in the big city as a young person, but adding in medical issues and the costs of a gender transition and paying my way through college makes the stress nearly unbearable sometimes. I've taken on so much debt trying to make it work on my own that I'm not even sure if I have a future anymore. Like everyone else who struggles, I try to push all this to the back of my mind and just focus on getting by day to day, but the possibility of one little emergency being able to completely derail my whole life can be hard to ignore. The worrying becomes a cycle where it becomes hard to think about the future or plan for a better life. It's always looming in the back of my mind, ready to rear its ugly little head whenever I feel down or hopeless. I don't make much more than $1,000 a month; receiving that much money is almost like giving me a month of my life back. It's like giving me my thoughts back. For once, if only for a short while, I can think about something besides my stupid bank account balance. I can breathe.”
“This is too good to be true, man. I am floored. I will be spending the $1,000 to pay some medical bills I have going on, and to be able to travel for Xmas to see my sister and her kiddos, which I haven't been able to do in years.
My plans for the holidays were going to be see a movie and maybe play some games with some friends. But I will be able to travel to Washington to see my family and spend Christmas with my niece and nephew for the first time since I moved away three years ago. It means a lot to me. I miss those adorable little bastards.”
“My first purchase would be a plane ticket for my ten-year-old son to come spend spring break with me. He lives in Las Vegas with his dad and I can't ever afford to see him more than twice a year. The rest would probably just spoil him as he deserves. He's a bright kid and I just found out that the school wants to skip him a grade. Super excited.”
“I've been falling behind on paying back my student loans and this money would really help me out. It's been a tough year. I quit my job a few months ago because it wasn't where I wanted to be. It left me feeling stuck and more stressed as the year went on. I'm currently doing freelance work as a graphic designer and tutoring on the side, but it’s been tough for me to keep up with the payments. This would be a huge weight off my shoulders and even leave me with some spending money to splurge on my family for the holidays.”
“$1,000 will help ensure that my bills are paid, strengthening a cushion/emergency repair account I've been trying to build all year, and it means I get to splurge a little on my family's gifts.
This kind of financial help, this type of unsolicited kindness from strangers, it means a lot of things right now but they probably all translate out to happy crying.
Extra money this holiday means I can buy a theme park ticket for my mom so we can have a vacation for the first time in a bunch of years, and that I won't have to feel guilty about that.”
To rank all 150,000 Cards Against Humanity Saves America recipients by wealth, we asked them some questions about their background. We also asked them about their food allergies and favorite pizza toppings so they might think we were sending them pizza. (Sorry. There’s no pizza.)
We then combined those responses with information about where they live to get a wealth estimate. The weighted factors that went into our metric are:
33%: Census Information Since we had everyone’s addresses, we looked up their Census Tracts (and/or ZIP Code Tabulation Areas). This gave us information about the median household income, the per capita income, the labor force participation rate, and the percentage of people below the poverty line in their neighborhood.
15%: Race, Gender, and Education We used recipients’ race, gender, and education levels to estimate incomes using Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2015.
15%: Occupation We asked recipients what field they worked in and used the median salaries of those professions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
10%: Health We gave extra weight to people who said they were in “poor” or “fair” health.
10%: Debt We gave significant extra weight to people who had medical debt or credit card debt. We also gave a bit of extra weight to people with student loan or other debt.
10%: Stressed About Money We asked people whether they were stressed about various things. We gave them extra weight if they said they were stressed about money and a lower weight if they said they weren’t worried about anything. Everything else (terrorism, alligators, etc.) we ignored.
5%: Smoking We gave extra weight to people who said they smoke or used to smoke. Smoking is highly correlated with poverty.
2%: Ordering In and Eating Out People who ate out more often were considered to be slightly better off.
We turned all these factors into z-scores and combined them with relative weights to make our initial ranking. Here’s our estimated income distribution histogram:
Finally, we did a little filtering:
The method is not perfect and there are likely some deserving recipients who did not get checks. We’re sorry about that.
The most important thing you can do is support candidates who are working to fight inequality and are not turds. In the meantime, here are some organizations that are working to fix the problem from the ground up: