It kinda just depends on the agenda, one source says it’s nothing, another says it’s a trillion, and that huge gap usually means someone’s trying to push something, like tougher laws or justify some policy shift. Half the time it feels like the facts don’t even matter, just the story they wanna sell.

Half is being generous. Too much damn policy takes the form: I want policy action X for reason A, but people would be pissed if I said that's why, so I worked backwards to fabricate problem B which I will pretend to be deeply passionate about and plausibly has solution X.

It's god damn maddening. At least one side effect of the new GOP is they're partially dropping the pretense of needing B so we can at least not talk past one another sometimes.

It's a pretty ridiculous number, total US GDP is only $27T. That would mean scams are ~1% of the US economy, which is non-sensical.

This. That number just doesn't make sense. Nations get regime changed over far smaller slights.

Wouldn’t $1T be close to 4% of US GDP?

Yes, but it says "mostly from Americans", so I cut it in half, then halved again just to be conservative. The argument holds at 2% and 4% as well as it does at 1%.

the fundamental reality is that money itself is a construct, and all of the values attached to goods a services are arbitrary, so there is no basis to diferentiate beween scams, and entertainment

it's all pay per view, and any dissastisfaction could fall under buyers remorse gambling is perfectly legal....as long as it gets taxed I have never had any account with apple, yet a charge to my credit card from apple appeared , I disputed it, but my bank refused to stop payment, and instead issued me a "credit", rather than go after apple, where as, anyone like me doing the same, would be a "scammer" and be prosecuted this impossible breach of law therefor is absolute proof of the complete falsity of our financial system. some are designated "scammers" others are empowered to take and I am personaly happy to live with that, and do what I can to protect my own tiny patch, from the marauding grabbers and muckers