I am not. I’m just noting that given Trump’s inherited advantages, the fact that he went from being a multimillionaire to being an (alleged) billionaire doesn’t necessarily imply any very exceptional talent or achievement on his part.
You are right that my cite was somewhat OT as it focused on how Trump could potentially have gone from being a multimillionaire to being a billionaire without really working at it at all.
Personally, my guess would be that the factors underlying Trump’s current wealth (assuming for purposes of argument that it’s within about an order of magnitude of $1 billion) are about 50% from his inherited wealth and connections, about 20% from a competent but not spectacular level of business acumen, about 20% from his showbiz self-promotion ability and charisma, and about 10% mere ruthlessness in cheating and stiffing other people associated with his ventures.
That is an accusation that should be thrown at Hillary Clinton. For the past decade, at least, she has repeatedly shown that she is nowhere near as smart as she thinks she is. She tried regime change in Iraq and ruined everything, she tried again in Libya and ruined everything, and was in the process of trying again in Syria. Hell, she even tried it in the Republican party and then the unelectable millstone around the Republicans’ neck got elected.
Well, no. Clinton’s campaign had a much more detailed platform outlining economic strategies that are a lot more realistic than Trump’s. It’s true that Clinton’s plan resembled Obama’s far more than Trump’s did, so people who dislike Obama’s plans wouldn’t like Clinton’s; but it’s also true that Obama is very popular right now, far more popular than Trump, and this was true during the election.
It’s very silly to blame Clinton’s loss on her adherence to Obama-style economic plans.
:dubious: It is kind of astonishing that Clinton gets saddled in this way with the whole responsibility for decisions made when she was merely one of a hundred US Senators.
I can sort of see some validity to this wholesale-blame approach in situations where Clinton was actually Secretary of State (although even then, she wasn’t actually running all of US foreign policy entirely independently), but it’s just ridiculous to apply it to the mere fact of her having voted, along with 76 other senators, for the Iraq invasion.
I think we can all agree, however, that Clinton’s economic plan did not include the promise of a magic unicorn that farts diamond dust and shits rainbows delivered personally to every American’s doorstep by Trump himself in his Prize Patrol van. So major disadvantage, right off the bat.
It is like no one knows anything about investing. The rule of 7 applies. At 7% return your money doubles in 10 years. At 10% return your money doubles in 7 years. If the market did 7 % and Trump is 70, that is 3 doublings from age 40. That is 40 million to 80 to 160 to 320 plus some change. If Trump is a billionaire, he outdid the market by a ton. At 10% you are to 600 and change so he still beats the market.
:dubious: It’s more like you evidently don’t know anything about the particular assumptions in this hypothetical alternative scenario.
[QUOTE=sleestak]
The rule of 7 applies. At 7% return your money doubles in 10 years. At 10% return your money doubles in 7 years.
[/quote]
But those piddling rates of return are for the little people like you and me. The abovementioned estimate of Trump’s possible wealth is based on the scenario described in my linked cite:
There’s more than enough blame to go around with a six digit death toll, but that’s beside the point. I was responding to the specific idea of a candidate being “too arrogant to learn.” Even if you do not blame Clinton for voting in favour of launching this illegal war, she should still be smart enough to not repeat the mistake.
Actually, the resolution contained several escalating steps before going to war. She was not voting for war alone. Her mistake was trusting Bush/Cheney to not skip all those steps.
The point is not whether or not one blames Clinton for the way she chose to vote. The point is that one shouldn’t try to hyperbolically inflate that blame to insinuate that she somehow bears the whole responsibility for the war.
No, the Bush administration tried regime change in Iraq and ruined everything. I agree that Clinton was in fault for going along with their decision, but it’s completely misleading and disingenuous to describe the situation as though it was all Clinton’s doing.
If Clinton had been President on 9/11, I very much doubt that she would have even seriously considered invading Iraq. (Although I’m sure she would have gone into Afghanistan.)
To be fair, the earlier reports that Trump wasn’t attending daily briefings now have to be called into question. It now appears possible he was just choosing to get his daily briefings from a different government.
What are the “qualifications” for this job? What is legally required for me to be qualified to get this job? Answer: pretty much just one thing, I have to be 18 years of age to get around child employment laws to be able to put in the hours needed. Do you think Microsoft would hire an 18-year-old straight out of high school for the job just because they’re “qualified”?
Stop pretending that when people criticize Trump for being “unqualified” they are claiming he can’t be president. He’s unqualified for the same reason I am unqualified to be the CEO of Microsoft: I don’t even know what the job entails, I’m woefully unprepared, and I don’t have any prior experience in the field that I can call to. Trump has all of that, plus the kind of arrogance that says, “I’m a smart guy, I don’t need to go to intelligence hearings”.
There’s a lot more wrong here, but it basically all boils down to this: Trump is facing extreme pushback because Trump is something legitimately new and different to modern American politics. He’s facing investigations on his ties to Russia because Russia broke the law to help get him elected and he shows bizarre ties to Putin. He’s facing criticism for conflicts of interests because he is the first president not to put their business holdings in a blind trust, and you can already see foreign powers trying to suck up to him using his business ventures.
Stop.
Trying.
To.
Normalize.
Donald.
Trump.
This would all be outrageous if Trump was a normal politician. He isn’t. He in no possible way qualifies as “normal”, and the ways that make him different from your Clinton or your Romney or your McCain are pretty serious, pretty substantial matters that should have been utterly disqualifying - much in the same way the fact I know nothing about business should disqualify me from running the company I currently work at. Somehow it didn’t. And that’s a very scary thing.
Normalize is overused. He’s going to be president in under a week. See, that’s what people don’t understand about having a democracy in which 1/2 the populace has a double digit IQ. Sometimes, the wrong people vote.
We all know this. But we won’t shut up about the fool–from high level criticism of his “policies” to low level mockery of his idiocy.
The OP expressed concern that we’re criticizing Trump incorrectly. But the effort to impeach will come from how own party. (They have Pence in the wings.)
It’s not about intelligence. Many Trump supporters are extremely intelligent. It’s about which narratives you buy into unquestioningly.
Trump promised to Make America Great Again. He promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. He promised to bring back coal jobs and bring overseas factories back to the US. He promised he was going to stop ISIS in its tracks. Many of his supporters believed these things without ever trying to understand how he was going to do them, nor noticed that every time anyone asked him how he only ever gave vague assurances. He told them what they wanted to hear and they didn’t want to ruin the illusion.
One wonders what it will take for those people to understand how many lies they’ve bought into, and how much it will cost them.
That day of reckoning can be postponed indefinitely, as long as there’s an available excuse or, better yet, an available scapegoat. And there always is.
That doesn’t contradict what I said. He was empathetic on the one hand but arrogant and condescending on the other.
He was empathetic in saying that these people were bitter because of hardships they’ve suffered, as you say. But he also then attributed their religion and (gun) lifestyle to this bitterness. That was arrogant and condescending.
Yes, something can be true and it’s still arrogant and condescending to say it.
I agree with that, subject to “very exceptional” being in comparison to people running S&P 500 companies.
Leaving specific numbers out of it, this seems more or less correct.
[I’m not sure how much to attribute to his ruthlessness etc. I’m aware of allegations that he’s done all these things and they’re probably true, but I don’t think these things really get you a lot in the long run. You rip off a few people here and there but then you get a bad rep and people start dealing with you differently. I could be wrong and I’ve not looked at the details of his business career, but I wouldn’t just assume that just because he took advantage of some people here and there that this contributed measurably to his success.]
That scenario is not realistic. Everyone pays some sort of investment fees and taxes on dividends. The more realistic numbers in your link allow for taxes and fees and gives $2.3B as the number.
And that number is for “little people like you and me”. Anyone who wants can open an investment account linked to the S&P 500.
Leaving aside the details of these issues, you’re talking about a different type of learning.
I don’t think there’s much doubt that Hillary Clinton worked hard at educating herself about the issues, and has a much deeper level understanding of them than Trump has. What you’re saying is that she didn’t change her policies, but that’s something else. The issue with Trump is that he has never been deeply involved in politics and by all indications has a very simple-minded understanding of the issues of the day, and since he won’t acknowledge that, he’s limited in the extent to which he can educate himself.
There are geniuses and fools on either side of every major issue. I’d much rather have someone who agrees with me on the issues running the country, but I’d also much rather have one of the genius types than one of the fools.