“Everyone in Trumpworld Knows He’s an Idiot” (nytimes) is interesting to me because of the thousands of comments. Average Americans (in terms of achievement; nytimes readers are obviously not average in their political sentiments) just love to savor the idea that they are much smarter than Donald Trump. (Yet the supposedly vastly more intelligent Democrats selected as their best candidate a person who had funneled $2 billion, much of it from foreign governments, into a non-profit org controlled by her daughter?)
My Dad grew up in 1930s New York City where a common expression was “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” It is kind of interesting to me that this perspective has died out. People who cash a $100,000/year W-2 paycheck and spend 10 percent of their after-tax earnings on alcohol (then waste the other 90 percent?) are convinced that a teetotaler billionaire is an “idiot.”
After Obama’s war on the upper class liberals have concluded that being rich is stupid. Maybe they are right! Life may be better living carefree on food stamps, with an Obama phone, free housing and free health care.
Money isn’t everything. No amount of wealth can buy intelligence. Some people, including liberals, are turned off by people who’s primary concern and motivation in life is money.
The statement “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” only applies if you start out middle class or lower. If you inherit a large fortune from your family, like Trump did, then you already have a big advantage, intelligence very little to do with your wealth in this case, picking the right parents is more important. A large part of today’s economy is rent seeking, where luck is probably more a factor than intelligence. In addition in Trump’s case it can be argued that he should have just invested his inheritance in the S&P 500 and made more money than his “casino” style investing strategy.
“Ever wonder why fund managers can’t beat the S&P 500? ‘Cause they’re sheep — and the sheep get slaughtered.” – Gordon Gecko
Trump made a lot of money but it seems to me he essentially bet on black over with OPM and it happened to work out (except for when it didn’t, briefly in the 90s). He levered up on commercial real estate over and over. There are a bunch of guys like this, where high risk speculation paid off. The New York Times recently profiled a guy who used to work at Target and is now worth something like $40mm. He basically hammered a short VIX trade every day for five years and it happened to never blow up on him.
You place your high risk bets and it goes your way, sure, you earned it. But I’m not going to assume you’re really smart because your speculations worked out.
Pavel: I used to think that all of Donald Trump’s wealth came from inheritance plus S&P 500-style returns. But then I learned that he had four siblings, e.g.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryanne_Trump_Barry
and the siblings did not become notably wealthy nor are they on record as having given away a huge amount of wealth to charity. So unless Donald Trump’s father gave everything to him, rather than to, e.g., the sister, I think that the only reasonable conclusion is that Donald Trump actually did generate most of his current wealth. (Though as Bob said, he took a fair amount of risk in doing so and it happened to work out. Then on the third hand, Trump was smart enough to push most of the downside risk onto banks, as is typical in the real estate business (why don’t the banks ever learn and just buy all of the buildings for themselves?).)
philg:
It looks like the specific amounts of Trump’s inheritance is in question.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2016/mar/07/did-donald-trump-inherit-100-million/
The amount was probably $40 million at the start (a good amount to get you ahead of 99.9% of the population), in-addition he became the president of his father’s real estate company in1974. In 1982 Forbes estimated his net worth at $200 million. His sister was too busy with her law career to run the company, his older brother too drunk and his younger brother was a part of the Trump organization but not the president.
Trump is a risk taker and that greatly helped him in rent seeking real-estate speculation. It also caused him to almost go bankrupt, but if you own more money to the bank than it is worth then you own the bank 🙂
Where he has the most intelligence is in branding, more than real-estate it is the Trump brand that is generating the cash flow. His branding intelligence also helped him win the election. Branding the Hillary campaign as “crooked Hillary” and branding the news outlets as “Fake News” is branding intelligence. He knows how to increase the value of his brand, while lowering the brand of his competitors.
Trump is not your average guy. Be it he inherited money or not, he was born with risk-taker and aggressive DNA.
Watch “The Choice 2016” [1] and you will see how out-of-control he was at early age which is why his father put him into the “New York Military Academy” [2]
Those who think they are smarter than Trump, sure they are, but they don’t have the risk-taking and aggressiveness aptitude that he has — two important treats for successful people.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-choice-2016/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Early_life_and_education
Michael Wolff is making a fortune at Trump’s (reputational) expense, something all the friggin press corps could have done but didn’t have the nerve. Trump probably admires him for it.
Trump is not my cup of tea (I met two arrogant NYC pricks just like him on my first day at college), but I’m not convinced he is impaired. It is a risky experiment to run with the job he’s in.
Pavel: Trump did not “go bankrupt”. He had some real estate development projects, each a standalone entity, that got into trouble and/or bankruptcy. That’s an architecture where the investors understood that they were taking the downside risk. As noted above, I’m not sure why banks, especially, are willing to do this!
Trump got $40 million circa 1970? Why not the sister as well? If she had gotten $40 million in 1970 and put it into the S&P 500 (at 90 on Jan 1, 1970) she would be worth approximately $1.2 billion today (S&P 500 is at 2743 currently). Yet we don’t hear about Trump’s billionaire sister…
One thing that liberals (and me as well) don’t get, is that you don’t have to be highly educated or be very cultured to be a businessman (or woman) to make a lot of money.
I have a PhD in genomics, but I make no where near what friends and or acquaintances who run their own successful businesses. Some of these people I wouldn’t consider “enlightened” by my own criteria (eg. their have no strong grasp of science or medicine – hence they buy homeopathic medicine, don’t read books often, have no interest in history or geography or philosophy, or they are not very introspective about their lives and life in general – this makes them seem very shallow and unworldly). Are they missing something? Sometimes I think so, hence the liberal stance that life is not all about money.
Most liberals are just envious of the rich – especially the new money. They think, why does this idiot have so much money and I don’t? Wouldn’t I put that money to better use with all my intellect ? There’s a lot of projection and identification with the Clinton’s who made their billions using their talent and smarts from their law degrees (nevermind how questionable the Foundation is when it came to pay-for-play)
If you want to really piss off a liberal, have them watch Louis Theroux’s gambling episode. Amazing how much money some rich (and not so rich) people piss away:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60itsk
philg:
“BY 1993, with his casinos in hock, most of his real estate holdings either forfeited or stagnant and his father slipping into the fog of Alzheimer’s disease, Donald Trump, at the age of 47, had run out of money. There were no funds left to keep him aloft, and as the bare-bones operation he maintained in Manhattan started to grind to a halt, he ordered Nick Ribis, the Trump Organization’s president, to call his siblings and ask for a handout from their trusts. Donald needed about $10 million for his living and office expenses, but he had no collateral to provide his brother and sisters, all three of whom wanted a guarantee that he would repay them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/business/yourmoney/whats-he-really-worth.html
So is the above article correct or “fake news”?
Trump’s sister is a member of the elite with a net worth probably somewhere around $100mil? Now that is much smaller than what it should be if she invested it in the S&P500. My guess would be that she though she was smarter than the S&P500 and decided on other investments.
Forbes estimates Trump’s current wealth at $3.1 billion, so he is doing something right,
https://www.forbes.com/donald-trump/#784927732899
Another interesting article on Trump’s sister
https://www.wnyc.org/story/trumps-sister-judge-life-vastly-different-often-intertwined/
As for the banks doing with business with Trump, it is simple greed, banks are in the greed business. Greed is good, the bankers were thinking the in a deal with Trump, how can anything go wrong :). They also got sold on the Trump brand, which I would argue is the main source of Trump’s wealth and intelligence, he really knows how to promote himself.
I find it odd that people use the word inheritance so cavalierly. Fred didn’t die until 1999. Donald was rich and famous way before then.
“There’s a lot of projection and identification with the Clinton’s who made their billions using their talent and smarts from their law degrees (nevermind how questionable the Foundation is when it came to pay-for-play)”
It’s sad that even in the West the middle class bureaucrat mindset is to grow fat from corruption and bribes, and contemptible that they then turn around and pretend to be morally superior to the common man.
Someone should collect the Wit and Wisdom of Hillary Clinton from all those half-hour half-million speeches she had at the bulge bracket banks back in the day. It could for example make a nice graduation present for Harvard students.
Phil,
A friend of mine is a mid-level executive with a large bank and her bank sold Trump a vineyard that they had foreclosed. My friend was informed that she’d be dealing with Trump and or his adult son (I’m not certain which son) directly. She said she dreaded the deal, since all she’d ever read or heard about Trump was negative.
To her surprise, she said that although he drove a hard bargain, Trump was a complete gentleman and displayed more manners than most businessmen she encounters. Trump’s son was even nicer, according to my friend. She said not once did Trump or son display arrogance or greed, but rather great attitudes and even better manners.
She said her only regret was not telling elder Trump what a good job he’d done raising such a nice son.
PS
My opinion is most of Trump’s detractors would (secretly) trade lives with him in a nonsecond if they could.
Envy and jealousy are terrible emotions.
“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” – as a European who lived in the US, this still rings as one of the most stereotypical American “value”: if you’re good, you’re rich.
Being smart is not necessarily the same as being intelligent or educated, nor mutually exclusive. Trump is a hustler and in hustling street smarts are definitely on of your best advantages. Whatever Trump inherited or not, no one is denying that he is a successful real estate developer. I’d argue that “a small loan of $1 million” [1] and a name in the business is a good head start for a hustler. In any case, it doesn’t matter: he made himself richer and more successful in the work he chose for himself. He also has large failures, especially when he diverged from real-estate, but overall he’s quite successful. You clearly can’t be entirely halfwitted to achieve that.
Does that make him less of an idiot than his sister? Or those who make $100k and waste their money? * Who’s making the most on the road towards the “pursuit of happiness”? Or is someone contributing to the common good, yet making less of a personal fortune, less smart than someone enriching themselves?
You don’t, however, need to be a genius, stable or unstable, to make a lot of money. As you’ve pointed out countless times here, you just need a womb and the ability to select good sexual partners. Nor being Einstein is a guarantee that you are more capable of becoming rich, as he “lost much of his [Nobel] prize money in bad investments” [2] (although, to his credit, most of it was during the Great Depression). On the other hand you have someone like Amancio Ortega, 4th richest person in the world, left school at 14 and worked as shirtmaker for years before starting his retail empire at 36. He doesn’t claim he knows words or has the best ones, though.
Then there’s the fact that being an idiot and being smart are also not mutually exclusive: you can be extremely smart for some topics and show particular lack of intelligence in other ones. Having been at MIT I am sure you’ve met – I sure did – many people that are extremely smart and intelligent at technical topics, while lacking astonishingly on the emotional and social aspects. Why is it that someone good at making money can’t be lacking in common sense in other areas?
Furthermore, even if you are highly intelligent, if you lack basic knowledge about a subject, you can’t contribute intelligently to it. Most intelligent people acknowledge that fact, and refrain from being assertive on topics they’re not qualified for. Trump may be very intelligent, but his narcissism trumps his common sense in this particular area: he can’t acknowledge he’s not the best at something, and that puts him into a tailspin because he’s actually not good at pretending he’s knowledgeable. Example: no one expected him to be great at nuclear science, nor is anyone less smart if they don’t know about that topic. But if you don’t know the basic facts, or you can’t sound like you know them, saying something like “You know what uranium is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons and other things. Like, lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things.” [3] does make you sound like a total dumb idiot. So does saying “no one knew healthcare could be so complicated” [4], and so on, and so on.
Finally, and regarding the comments of other people: just because you’re criticising shortcomings doesn’t mean you’re better than them. I can criticise a movie and say it’s bad. Would I do it any better? Very likely not. I also don’t know anything about real estate, I can recognize Trump as my superior. I can still call find him an idiot.
The qualities needed to be a successful real estate developer and those needed to be a president don’t necessarily overlap.
For a political actor, a President of the United States, whose roots of modern political ideology are grounded on whether someone was born on American soil or not, comparing their rhetorical qualities to someone like Lincoln, Eisenhower, Obama or Roosevelt is virtually impossible. And while that does not necessarily translate into to good executive action, I do miss hearing someone that values knowledge, studiousness and culture, and someone that can convey complex thoughts with some conceptual and intellectual clarity and not as a verbose random-walk of half-concepts.
————————
[1] – http://uk.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-small-million-dollar-loan
[2] – https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/jul/11/internationalnews
[3] – https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-conference/
[4] – https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-national-governors-association/
* By the way, you tend to use this rhetorical gimmick of always comparing 8 to 80. Why not the people that make $100k and have a nice life, not wasting their money, but enjoying their time as it makes them happiest?
Anonymous,
Your link #4, to Trump’s speech given at the National Governor’s Association, was actually a pretty good speech. So you may wanna cherry pick a little better.
I’m amazed that someone can give a five thousand word talk and the press or other detractors can find one mistake and ride it like a mule.
There’s one distinct reason Trump was elected, and it’s not because we are a nation of fools.
My family and I vacationed recently at a posh golf and tennis resort and despite my wife’s misgivings, I wore a Trump visor to the pool one day. Although I didn’t get many pubic high-fives, I bet ten different strangers gave me the proverbial thumbs up.
I will take Trump and all his flaws over Hillary Clinton forever.
It has been a Democratic perspective for some time that Republicans are stupid — Eisenhower was thought to be a dolt by the people who thought Kennedy so clever, same for Reagan and Bush 2. So why should Trump be thought any different? Trump figured out how to make billions and become President. I doubt anyone on staff at the NYT has ever figured out how to make much money.
Yeats:
TOIL and grow rich,
What’s that but to lie
With a foul witch
And after, drained dry,
To be brought 5
To the chamber where
Lies one long sought
With despair.
It’s all about how you want to live your life:
Mony grubbin or something better.
It is no accident that the kids of rich people tend to
be artists and scientists. They have the luxury to choose.
“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
Whoa. Are you really arguing that “A implies B, therefore B implies A”? Being smart makes you more likely to be rich – so being rich must mean that you’re smart? Isn’t that an extremely basic logical fallacy?
Of course intelligence is an asset, so being smart makes you more likely to be rich. But it’s not the only such asset. Fame, for example: there’s plenty of celebrities who are rich without necessarily being smart. (Also athletes and actors.)
Capital grows over time. So older people tend to be richer, although they’re not necessarily any smarter than younger people – after a certain point, intelligence declines with age.
Similarly, if you start out with a large amount of capital at a young age, it’s not that impressive if you have a lot of capital 30 or 40 years later.
Unfortunately, being rich and famous for a long period of time can actually be a major handicap, if you tend to surround yourself with sycophants.
David Frum summarizes:
To me, Trump’s election as President reflects the widespread loss of faith in American institutions. Believing that the system and the elites (whether Democrats or Republicans) have failed, Trump supporters (like yourself) have instead put their faith in an individual savior. So they cling to the belief that Trump must be far cannier and more intelligent than people think. (He’s a billionaire, after all!) If Trump fails, they’ll just look for another savior. You can see the same effect on the Democratic side, with the speculation about Oprah 2020.
Scott Gilmore: The health of a democracy is inversely proportional to the likelihood a celebrity will win the next leadership race.
Money isn’t everything. No amount of wealth can buy intelligence. Some people, including liberals, are turned off by people who’s primary concern and motivation in life is money.