I’ve previously shared that cartoon on both of my Farcebook profiles.
can you explain this bit?
The old “Trump is playing 4D chess” argument that says he only does things that appear stupid in order to secretly move ahead on some secret intelligent agenda.
But the evidence doesn’t support this. Trump has done too many things which harm himself and never produced any advantage to him in the long run. So we should conclude that what we’re seeing is the real Trump. Trump says and does things which appear stupid because they are stupid. And Trump says and does stupid things because he is stupid.
This is a man who last month publicly revealed he doesn’t know how magnets work. My seven year old grandniece knows how magnets work. Trump knows less than a first grader.
I agree that Trump isn’t masterminding anything. But I wouldn’t put it past the Republicans to take advantage of his antics to get other changes in place.
I agree. I don’t feel they’re acting directly on Trump’s antics. You can’t make rational plans based on irrational actions. But I feel the Republicans are using Trump as a useful distraction while they quietly work on undermining democratic rule.
Yeah, that’s also why I’ve never bought the argument that he’s a puppet; he’s too erratic and stupid to be a puppet. A puppet who acts unpredictably is useless as a puppet.
He’s a grenade, thrown into the middle of America’s government to do as much damage as possible while America’s enemies both foreign and domestic try to take advantage. Stupid, short sighted enemies given the dangers and long term effects of giving somebody like Trump that sort of power, but it’s paying off for them in the short term even if it all ends in nuclear fire in the long term.
Am I misguided to be kinda rooting for the nuclear fire?
No. We’re currently hellbent on proving that ‘’‘intelligence’‘’ is an evolutionary dead end.
Sure. Gonna put it in a detail tag because it’s off-topic - if you want to discuss further, I already have a thread about this subject.
Summary
A franchise is an arrangement where the franchisee agrees to perform a capex expenditure on the franchisors behalf - building out a new business location - for the right to capture revenue and, hopefully, profits on that location for a period of time.
If you “buy” just one or two locations and you’re not capitalized to the tunes of millions of dollars, as many do (including the FB guy above), you effectively go into debt (via SBA loans, family loans, etc) and take on a job to manage somebody else’s business for 5, 10 years. At the end of the franchise term, the franchisee has a risk to lose their entire investment if the franchisor decides not to renew (it happens), or if the franchisee wants to sell their successful business, they have to do so at a price the franchisor agrees-to - and many times, the franchisor will scuttle a deal saying the purchaser is paying too much (IT HAPPENS).
You pour your life savings and 5-20 years of your life to build a business in which you own zero, zilch, nada, equity, and you can lose everything due to the whims of those you signed away your rights to.
… hence the “indentured servitude” portion of my comment.
The “Spousal Liability” means two things: 1. The purchaser needed to sign a personal guarantee on the franchise (implied), and 2. Their spouse needed to sign a personal guarantee in case of the primary party’s incapacitation due to death, illness, or bankruptcy. So if he dies, she has to run the business even if she has another job.
So this guy signed into two business leasing arrangements where he has to use his own money to build out two retail locations, hoping he can capture more than $150,000/year per location (because that’s what he would have earned had he just thrown that money into the stock market), he is stuck with this arrangement for the next decade, he voted for Trump and is in complete denial as to what a 5.2% GDP contraction will do to this businesses’ prospects…
… and he got his wife to sign up to this too so she’s just as much on the hook as he is.
Can you tell why I hate these things, especially for middle-class investors?
I’m hearing more and more talk about bringing PE to affluent but still middle class investors. I’ve worked for PE. It will not end well for the smaller investors. A PE fund is absolutely one of those “if you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s you” things
Do you know if they still require binding arbitration?
At arbitration, the franchisee presented undisputed evidence that the franchisor had failed to disclose its vice president’s prior felony conviction for grand larceny.
Taps sign…
I honestly don’t think that Trump wants to “watch the world burn” – he has to live here still.
His motivations are pretty clear:
- Preening his own overdeveloped ego, and getting people (powerful people, in particular) to bow down to him. As was noted many times in his first term, he didn’t really want to be president, he wanted to be emperor.
- Getting out from under the various legal problems he faced after leaving office in 2021, and ensuring that he will not ever face legal consequences again.
- Making as much money as he can.
- Punishing people and groups who have opposed him.
Trump’s supporters, especially those who are not insanely wealthy, have mistakenly assumed that, by supporting him, they will be in some sort of “protected class,” and be unaffected by his actions in pursuit of his actual goals. As the various stories in this thread demonstrate, they were incorrect in their assumptions.
^ Very well put.
Trump himself may not; although I wouldn’t lay bets as he has a lifetime telling him that he’s beyond any consequences for his actions, and old to boot. So he might simply refuse to believe wrecking the world would hurt him, and all bets are off if he gets diagnosed with something terminal.
But plenty of his supporters do want the world to burn, either out of sheer hate or Christian apocalypticism.
ism.
That’s the part I can’t figure out , why they thought they were in a protected class. When people are talking about getting rid of the unelected bureaucrats, why wouldn’t you assume that your government job would be included? Even if he said only criminals would be deported ( which he didn’t actually say ) why wouldn’t you assume that they wouldn’t consider your husband a criminal simply for living in the US with no legal status?
My guess: they heard what they wanted to hear.
They “heard” that Trump would get rid of illegal immigrants, brown people, “woke” DEI hires, and lazy fraudulent government employees (all of whom Trump’s fervent supporters likely also hate) and reasoned, “well, I’m not any of those! So, I’ll be safe!”