No. The argument, based on simple arithmetic and statistics, is that Trump’s fortune should be far greater than it is if he is not so incompetent as to do significantly worse than a monkey with a handful of darts and the Wall Street Journal listings would have done.
Irrelevant, as none of them were given tens of millions of dollars to start with.
I haven’t misunderstood anything. All I did was quote directly from your source. As for your second sentence, I haven’t claimed otherwise. I only said that I would benefit from it, and quoted some of the numbers from your source to quantify the amount. You are arguing against a figment of your imagination, not a post by me.
Your version is slightly, but importantly, different. Your version has it that intellectuals “can sound” brilliant, but not “be”. His version has it that one can be brilliant but have no idea what’s going on. Also, you change the pronoun from the singular to the plural, which is important.
Allen identifies a group, and says that an individual member of that group (“you”)* might well have a weakness, your version implies that the group as a whole suffers from that weakness.
The other problem is Allen’s fault. How many people, brilliant or not, “have no idea what’s going on”? We are not advised. Are we to take it that intellectuals have no idea what’s going on? Surely, even the dullest of us have some idea what’s going on, however incomplete. Are intellectuals just as unknowing as any other group? Or do they know more, but do not have a complete understanding of “what’s going on”?
Well, shit! Who does?
Many of Mr Allen’s jokes have some heft, insight that goes beyond the chuckle. This, alas, is not one of them.
I take some pains to emphasize that my use of “you” is strictly a matter of specifying a grammatical construct. I do not accuse PCP of being an intellectual.
Not recognizing Reich isn’t really the point. The story works even if Reich IS seen as just another guy on the street. The actual point is that so much of Trump’s appeal to his supporters is this stupid idea that (a) we need a President who runs the government “like a business” and (b) that Trump is a mega-successful businessman.
The story points out the fallacy of B. He is not. He has, by the most advantageous and generous versions of the comparison, mildly outperformed the S&P 500. Mildly outperform is not what you would have expected out of someone with Trump’s rolodex and family connections.
The fallacy of A is another thread. This thread is about Trump.
Trump is really a miser that uses others people money to pay for his legal needs, and even his much heralded charities looks like if they are just as imaginary as Trump telling it “like it is”
