WHy is it obvious he "beat" the market? The amount he inherited is contested. The amount he currently has is contested. The benefits he realized through his family connections are uncertain.

But fine, I mean, I said I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. It's still pretty shaky to credit him with the real estate business acumen when he was clearly mentored by his father in some capacity, but let's just ignore that.

It has nothing to do with my judgment of whether he lived a good life.
You would have to basically be ******ed to not live a great life given the hand he was dealt.

What I'm arguing is that wealth accumulated is a piss poor measure of greatness (as was suggested earlier in the thread) for someone in his shoes. And to think that growth in net worth is directly linked to value added to society is requires you have a really, really ****ty understanding of welfare economics.

Cherry picking is obviously a problem. But there's also the big issue that comparing starting and ending net worth ignores all the money he's spent on things for his personal utility.

The stock market return requires Trump to have nothing to live off of and reinvest everything.

Further, I read a great article that points out the valuation of companies is based on their ability to produce future earnings (on top of book value). So looking at Trumps net worth ignores things like the value of his brand which is extremely unfair when comparing him to the valuation of companies in the stock market.

This was a conversation about intelligence.

And we were specifically talking about the claim he beat the stock market (actually it was originally just bank interest - which is even more absurd). It is obvious he beat it. It's honestly not even close with any reasonable metric - even taking into account that his net worth at any point in time is unclear.

These arguments have all been had. It doesn't make sense what you are saying. Should he have taken every dollar he had when he was in his 20s and fired it all into the stock market, and sit around for the next 40 years and did nothing? Of course not, but that is what you are suggesting by pulling out this arbitrary figure he "should" have today. If you had 200 million dollars today, would you take every dollar and invest it into the S&P 500 fund? Would you consider that a "wise" investment?

I disagree that it'd be ******ed for him to lead anything but a "great life". He lived his life, he did what he wanted to do, and it seems like he wound up being pretty successful at it.

As far as your last sentiment, I still see no reason why your judgement of how he should have used his wealth means anything. Yeah, he didn't take his wealth and maximize benefit to society. What does that have to do with anything? Many many wealthy people don't do what you are suggesting either. I would say the vast majority of people fit that category. What's that mean? That they have lived unfulfilling, worthless lives?

Bill Gates & Warren Buffet, two of the wealthiest guys around, run counter to your claim actually. Tell us what in your view what adds value to society IE what adding value to society means to you?

Regarding his real estate acumen being acquired from the mentoring of his father, people learn things from other people. How do you think Gary Kasparov developed his skills in chess?

Hah, I didn't catch the comment about his Dad mentoring him.

I don't see why Trump's financial savvy or lack thereof is even germane to the question of whether he would make a good president. He clearly wouldn't, for several other obvious reasons. Even if he was a financial wizard, building a winning company has next to nothing to do with understanding macroeconomics, let alone managing it.

I must be missing a bunch of posts. Are there a lot of people ITT arguing that his financial savvy will make him a good president? I think 1 maybe 2 people, and not recently, have said something related to Trump's ability to be a good President based on his financial success.

The topic under discussion was whether Trump's 'financial savvy' relates to his intelligence. And I think its pretty obvious that a financially savvy person is likely to have above average intelligence. (This is not to say that increasing financial success indicates an increasing intelligence. I could go either way on that.).

Oh, well I think he's intelligent, sure. Just not well informed. Or honest. Or kind. He's intelligent to the extent that he knows how to manipulate people very effectively.

This thread is kind of interesting. Seems like theres a bunch of people that refuse to say anything even remotely positive about Trump. Or at least if they do say it they have to be sure to include a whole bunch of non sequitur negative comments about Trump.

In the very first sentence where i addressed the issue i said that i'd concede that he did beat the market.

It's far from obvious though. How do you estimate inheritance? People don't all just pass generational wealth down on the books when they die. His entire career is staked on taking advantage of loopholes. There's also the question of when you want to start attributing gains to donald as opposed to his father. If the first X years of his career he basically was just consulting with his dad over all the big decisions, does that really count?

But, yea, this is pointless and has nothing to do with his intelligence.


He can do whatever he wants. He can go put it all on red.

I don't think trump has done anything obviously unethical. He just hasn't done anything particularly innovative or creative that would be evidence of his superior intelligence.

Oh come on, there're a lot of ******ed people living pretty kick ass lives.
I've known a couple. Mostly from drug use and ****ty parenting. As it turns out being filthy rich doesn't mean you know the first thing about developmental psychology.


It means that their quality of life isn't evidence that they're of a superior stock.

Contrary to the sentiment of my posts I'd probably rank trump as having the highest "native intelligence" if that means what I think it means. I just don't think that corresponds to competence in any meaningful way. Not that it matters, because realistically democracy in the west is more about making people believe that their opinion counts than actually choosing a leader and the real work is done behind the scenes. It's a symbolic role more than anything. And the symbolism behind having a person born to privilege inheriting the role of president by what i think can reasonably be interpreted as birthright sends all the wrong signals.

Do you believe Obama and Clinton did a good job of handling the economy or macroeconomics of the country? To most people that like Trump, this is the reason why we like him. Clinton tried to balance the budget, was a budget hawk, and even David Stockman praised him in his book. Obama is clueless. If you agree with his economic policies fine, but they are unfair biased disgusting evil and wrong. Obama got lucky he inherited Bush's bad economy.

By your posts, no, he can't put it all on red. You criticized him for not maximizing his "value add to society". He as X amount of money. He can either help humanity, or gamble it. They are nothing in the remote vicinity of the same thing.

That is your opinion. He did what he wanted to do. If you want to give up all your material possessions and wander the world like Cain from Kung Fu, then by all means, do it. Don't disparage others for not choosing that path.

No, i criticized people for lauding his lifes work as being demonstrative of superior intelligence.

Are you even reading what you're quoting? Nobody is saying he's an inadequate human being.

What does life's work indicate about a person's intelligence to you? Put another way, how do idiots build highly successful businesses?

Why don't you show me a case with numbers where he wouldn't have beaten the market?

If it's far from obvious then it should be easy to show some reasonable numbers and make your case.

Look, I started off looking for the evidence that Trump wasn't financially successful - but it became pretty clear that he's been quite successful by any reasonable definition. Sure, not as successful as Trump would have you believe, but easily better than a passive investor would have been.

Ok forget the ROI claims. What about the bankruptcies? Is the intelligence displayed in his gambits involving loading up projects with debt and then squirming out of repayment by employing good lawyers?

I can see someone early on in the campaign thinking Trump is "impressive". Our media does a crap job at vetting candidates. But at this point, with the establishment against Trump, there has been something scathing, detailed criticism of Trump's business acumen made by reputable outlets. One back in January said that, at one point, Trump's creditors could have forced him into personal bankruptcy if they wanted. Between that and his other bankruptcies, it would seem like he has continually put himself in bad situations. He has been sued countless times for all sorts of shady practices. His bad judgement is backed in other examples, like associating with the mafia early on. It looks like the general pattern lawyers have used the bankruptcy, and the threat thereof, to avoid managerial accountability for Trump.

Or, if not, show me what exactly he did that is so "impressive". There are any number of infamous people who, despite my despising them, I will recognize as highly intelligent. You can see it in what they did, and others will break it down for you. Enron, Goldman, Madoff, and countless others are bad while their intelligence is recognized and analyzed. Where is the scholarly praise for Trump? He seems to better fit into a mold like W Bush, someone who turns the wealth and privilege they inherited into more wealth (very debatable as to the more in Trump's case) despite drastically mismanaging almost everything they touch. Wealth is good like that- it's not always the person.

That is disputed. David Cay Johnston, formerly a tax reporter for the NYT and someone who has been covering Trump for a long time, says Trump's net worth is about 1B. You will get no better estimate than that until Trump releases his taxes. My guess is that Trump will never release his tax returns because he is just that narcissistic in protecting his business magnate narrative that he will reach new levels of stubbornness on that for republican nominees.

It's interesting that so many people think that making large amounts of money is so incredibly easy, like, if you start with capital it's a guarantee to turn into a multi-gabillionaire.

You're much more likely to turn 1 million dollars into 2 million than you are to turn 1 dollar into 2 million, how are you questioning that?

Outside of sports jocks and people with intense gambling addictions, I don't think you see large cash fortunes being lost in the modern era too often. They just grow. Social upheaval is the only thing that has been shown to halt wealth concentration. I would like to think policy changes could also achieve that, though I don't know that there is any hard example of that happening (outside the abolishing of private capital altogether which were disasters wrt everything else).

I think this does show a decent amount of intelligence, yes. Intelligence itself is amoral. So me saying that Trump is probably intelligent doesn't mean I think he's a good person or that he's used his intelligence wisely.

None of this shows a lack of intelligence. If anything, his ability to keep doing business and navigating these pitfalls is probably more proof that he is at least above average intelligence.

I don't know enough to know if what Trump did was "impressive" (assigning that a meaning like "< 5% of people could do this"). I'm just saying I think it clearly shows he has above average intelligence (meaning > 50% of people).

I don't know how you can say this? It seems extremely unlikely that Trump could have the net worth he has today if he drastically mismanaged almost everything he touched. It's extremely unlikely.

None of this is to say that he managed his wealth/businesses in a morally responsible way.

I'm a pretty big believer that inheritance / death taxes are the best way to avoid large wealth concentration and social inequality.

But its a very tricky thing to do in a morally acceptable way, imo.

Is that right? I didn't know %s change when you have more money. Please, explain to me how it's easier to turn 1 million into 2 million than it is to turn 100k into 200k?

We weren't talking about percentages we were talking final value. Pick whatever number you want as the finish line and of course it's easier to get there when you're 100's or 1000's times closer than someone else.