Oh someone using eminent domain to kick an old lady out of her house for limo parking can definitely be presumed greedy and selfish.
Even worse, someone trying to use eminent domain to kick an old lady out of her house for limo parking, but failing.
It’s one thing to take candy from a baby. Sure, you’re a dick. But, it’s another to try to take candy from a baby and fail. Now you’re a pathetic dick.
Let me expand on this. If a poor, unemployed college graduate attempts to declare bankruptcy due to crushing student loan debt, it is an act of betrayal against the banks who were suckered into giving someone a few tens of thousands of dollars worth of loans. That’s why it is basically impossible to carry out this perfidy against our august financial institutions.
If a billionaire backs out of a deal and sticks others with tens of millions of dollars of bills, well, that’s just a fucking genius plan. What, do you hate America?
The same could be said for someone wanting to kick an old lady out of her house to put up a shopping center. There is no list of projects deemed okay to kick old people out of their homes for vs. those that are deemed inconsequential and and should not be allowed. They’re all legal and they all serve the same purpose and Trump did nothing wrong by trying to displace her and she did nothing wrong by fighting it. In Trump’s case the little old lady prevailed and good for her. But that’s what we have courts for…to decide in cases like this which person’s case has more merit.
It’s not illegal to fuck my buddy’s girlfriend either. Guess that makes it alright.
Well, in the first place taking a failing company into bankruptcy is not backing out of a deal.
Second, as I asked before what you have had him do instead? Keep the places going until the bitter end and the sheriff came to padlock the doors? What good would have come to the investors had he done that?
Taking a company into bankruptcy is a last resort. I’m sure Trump would have loved for all his casinos to keep ginning along cranking out money and profit for both himself and his investors for decades. Not only would he have realized more money at the end of the day, and the cache of his name would have continued to be golden rather than diminished by the stain of bankruptcy.
The reason Trump took his casinos bankrupt was simply to keep from throwing good money after bad, which was the only sensible and realistic thing anyone might have expected him to do.
The reason student loan debt isn’t dischargeable is because students typically don’t have much assets so a large number of them would be better off strategically if they could simply discharge their debt after they graduate. We’d have a lot of bankrupt young doctors about to enter some high earning years and the student loan market would dry up as a result. Accordingly, student loan debt is not dischargeable. Business debt under chapter 11 however is because as a society we’ve determined that it’s better when people are allowed to do this.
There’s a difference between doing something because it’s legal and widely accepted practice vs. doing something else simply because no one’s passed a law against it. One has the blessing of the legal community and the courts and has attained general acceptance among the populace, and the other might just get you a black eye. 
Come on. Using eminent domain to build a casino in no way has “general acceptance of the populace”. Like Martin said above, people accept it for highways and other public projects, most people think it’s utter bull for commercial projects unless you’re tearing down crackhouses.
So, it’s bad for students because they might be able to strategically walk away from their debts, when later they would actually be able to pay them?
I was talking about the concept of eminent domain when I made the comment about general acceptance. You were comparing doing something because it’s legal vs. doing something just because it isn’t illegal. Eminent domain doesn’t make moral discriminations.
And like I said above, if more people were made aware of the tax and employment benefits of allowing commercial projects through eminent domain they’d probably be more inclined to support them. Instead the media just plays it as rich, selfish, borderline evil businessmen eager to kick little ol’ ladies out of their homes in order to line their own pockets. It plays better that way with low information readers.
It should, it’s a government decision.
I can’t parse this question. Bad from whose perspective?
That’s pretty ridiculous. Eminent domain doesn’t happen accidentally. It’s a choice that has clear moral decisions that accompany it. You are forcing someone out of their home. Why you’re doing it matters.
Sorry, I meant it is not allowed because students might use it strategically? As it would be bad to allow students the ability to strategically declare bankruptcy?
I think I’ve pretty much done my Donald Trump Good Deed for the Day but before I move on to other pastimes, I have to say that I never cease to be amazed at the different ways people choose to interpret things that other people say on this board. I never once said or suggested (or even thought) that eminent domain was accidental.
And of course there are moral considerations, as well as governmental ones (and sometimes they overlap). Thus a builder (or the government in some cases) has to justify what they plan to do in order to obtain approval to put up their shopping center or road or highway or whatever. Often such decisions are predicated on an attempt to disrupt as many lives and move as few people as possible, even though this isn’t always the case.
But like I said, it’s a matter of perspective. On the one hand there’s a little old lady who doesn’t want to have to move, and on the other hand there are businessmen who want to undertake projects that will be a boon to the community, increase traffic and nearby property values, result in increased sales tax revenue and will create jobs providing people with livelihoods that didn’t exist before. This is how communities and economies grow and it is not without significance.
You seem to feel that the desires of the little old lady should always be paramount, but I think there are occasions when a much greater good might be determined to take precedence. We’re both entitled to our opinion. My only quarrel with you would be on your seeming insistence that your POV is the only one that has merit.
I don’t think you’ve actually disputed anything I wrote.
On the other hand there are businessmen who want to undertake projects that will be a boon to the businessman, reroute traffic and decrease nearby property values because of the new noise and commotion, result in no change to sales tax revenue because it’s just shifted from another shopping center nearby, and move some jobs from one store to another but not really create any new jobs that didn’t exist before, but hey, the businessman and his company got theirs so why should they care about the little old lady who lost her home?
Eminent domain in support of private enterprise is the government picking winners and losers, and the government is usually not better at that than the free market (accounting for externalities). The businessman gets to use the heavy hand of government to benefit himself, to make himself the winner; maybe the community wins and maybe it doesn’t, but there are very few businesses that undertake large-scale projects that aren’t primarily about benefiting the business first.
Government using eminent domain for a flood control project is an entirely different kettle of fish than government using eminent domain to build yet another shopping mall in a town that already has lots of vacant retail space.
Yes, we understand that Trump’s bankruptcies were a very shrewd move for him personally. And we understand that what he did was legal, and is considered standard practice by the moneyed class. That’s the problem. How about we elect someone who will actually do something about that, instead of being the poster child for it?
So would you argue bankruptcy should be disallowed? There are shady things that happen in business, I’m not sure that a “real going concern” like a casino, operated profitably for years, that then becomes unprofitable to the point of not being viable going bankrupt is an example of the “evils of the moneyed class.” What do you believe should have happened there? Should we abolish the concept of limited liability so that the casino’s debts would apply to Trump, without limit to scope? I’m curious how you think that would impact the economy.