Day 1

In what will likely be known as the most timely post of all time,

I'd like to talk about Trump's record as a business man:

On this, the first day his wondrous reign, it would be more prudent to post various tips and tricks on surviving authoritarian con-men but I find myself distracted by things I have procrastinated upon too long. Namely, whether or not Trump is a good business man.

Method:

* Establish Criteria

* Do some research.

* Draw conclusions

Criteria:

There are many ways to judge a businessman (height, weight, bikini contest), but I will be focusing on two main aspects:

* Success as compared to the market

* Success as compared to other individual businessmen

* Moral good, in terms of ethical practices and improvement of community.

I know this last one may not be important to others, but I think it is relevant if he is going to be running the country as a business (Our product will be bigotry and Russian nesting dolls. They will sell like hotcakes.).

Success as compared to the market:

For this metric, I was just going to compare his claimed worth that is the result of his actions versus what we would expect his worth to be had the market taken care of it.

If you measure the value of the money he received from his father and what it would be if he would have invested it in some conservative growth funds, then no. He lost 10 Billion.

Now, it could be argued that the media exposure and political connections he made while mismanaging his businesses have greater value than the 10 BILLION he would have had if he let the market handle his money. But I would argue that social and political capital, while very much tied to business, is not what we are discussing.

And it could be said that maybe he wished to take a more active role and we shouldn't criticize his attempts that failed because failing is always the first step and that is true. He did try and tried again and the fact that he still has a company and lots of money (Probably. Tax returns, anyone? Tax returns?) would lead me to believe he has at least a modicum of competence or the wisdom to hire someone else to run things while he collects an allowance.

And so, perhaps we should compare him not to the market but to other innovators and entrepreneurs and businessmen.

Other successful businessmen

There are many self made billionaires (many compared to zero, anyway, not as a relative value to the population) that started off with far less than Trump and did way more! Trump started out with 14 million (31 million today) and grew that into 3.7 Billion (Or more... or less. Tax returns?). That is 250% (check my math, please, it's been awhile edit: I totally fucked up the math! It's 25600% or 11900%. Way more impressive!)). This is an impressive number.

Of course, my daughter did the same thing when she spent $10 (roughly, it was awhile ago) on lemonade supplies, sold $25 worth of lemonade, and repeated that process until she had the $300 she needed for a new phone... Is she a great businessman? And she didn't have the political and commercial connections that Trump was given. She didn't have the mentorship that Trump would have.

Meanwhile other billionaires who actually earned their billions started with way less and earned way more ('way' is the professional economists measure of intensity).

And they did far more good with their money.

Moral Good:

It has only been recently that anyone has been able to indicate any "good" Trump has done (my own cursory searches did not turn up much). Doubtless this is a result of the 'unfair' media who is working against him while giving him free air time on a regular basis (?).

I had simply assumed there wasn't much to say since it was never talked about. What we did hear regarding his charitable acts involved scandal.

But, as the brave redditor pointed out, he has done some very flashy good by giving away so many rounds of golf and helping out headlining tragedies.

So, if we value his giving at (very roughly) $200-300 million dollars (and we assume that all of that benefited good causes) we can say that the man has (probably) given his 10% (TAX RETURNS?) tithe to the community (in addition to paying taxes, maybe?).

Conclusions:

I don't know. Maybe I should stop using 'failed' to describe his businessman acumen, but it hardly looks impressive when you compare it to other billionaires. He earned more in trying than he would have had he done nothing, he showed no innovation in the businesses he started up so it isn't a matter of trying something new and failing. He entered into some very established markets and failed several times.

Elon Musk tried something new and then continues to try new things. They are not all successful yet but he is definitively trying new things.

This is why I don't consider Trump to be an effective businessman. In a field ripe with cronyism, given a good chunk of money, mentorship, and a rolodex of connections, he underperformed the market, declared bankruptcy several times, and brought nothing innovative to the market (apart from his presidential campaign, that shit was wild! I am excited for more of this going forward.). In other words, while I should refrain from saying 'failure', I will also withhold the term 'succesful'.

And I still lack that for which I am most hungry: Some reason to think he is not an authoritarian with no clue how to run the country well. A puppet or at least an easily manipulated useful fool with little hostages with his name all over it scattered through the world.

I really hope this is the first day of 4-8 years of being proved wrong.

A few indicators we can look at over the coming months are:

* S&P 500 is valued at 2,269.50

* Total Uninsured Rate: 8.6% (exceeded 10%)

* Median income is around 55k/yr

* We are still (barely) in the top 50 for most free press.

* An estimated 1.2 million violent crimes are committed per year.

Now, much of this is old data for 2015 or earlier. As more current data becomes available, I will try to keep things updated.