Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Zelandakh]

I cannot vouch for the quality of this information. It appeared on a site called Alternet. If accurate, it could go a long way to explaining why Trump does not want to release his tax records.

There's a large difference between what you make in terms of adding personal wealth and your taxable income. Tax avoidance is big business and for the most completely legal.

[Winstonm]

There's a large difference between what you make in terms of adding personal wealth and your taxable income. Tax avoidance is big business and for the most completely legal.

 

Still, it is hard to imagine a billionaire earning less than $500 K income in a year.

[Al_U_Card]

Still, it is hard to imagine a billionaire earning less than $500 K income in a year.

AFTER expenses...tax lawyers and accountants make sure that you pay the minimum legal tax payable. Loopholes and incentives are designed to ensure this.

[Zelandakh]

Still, it is hard to imagine a billionaire earning less than $500 K income in a year.

Apple's tax rate is reputedly less than 2%. If Trump achieved something similar that still leaves room for $25mil of profit in the year. That does not strike me as too bad a return given the current economic climate. ;)

[Winstonm]

Here is the Flim-Flam man in deposition:

The limited public record of the lawsuit includes interesting revelations. One is Trump’s admission, under questioning from O’Brien’s attorneys during a deposition, that he relied on his own “feelings” to assess the value of his holdings.

 

An attorney asked: Feelings?

 

“Yes, even my own feelings as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day,” Trump said, according to the court record. “Then you have a September 11th, and you don’t feel so good about yourself and you don’t feel so good about the world and you don’t feel so good about New York City. Then you have a year later, and the city is as hot as a pistol. Even months after that it was a different feeling. So yeah, even my own feelings affect my value to myself.”

 

In the book that prompted this Trump libel suit (which was thrown out), O'Brien estimated Trump to be worth $150-$250 million.

 

Trump went to court in early 2006, claiming that he had been libeled in the book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald,” by Timothy L. O’Brien, then a business reporter at the New York Times.

[barmar]

Still, it is hard to imagine a billionaire earning less than $500 K income in a year.

Probably the vast majority of his earnings is in the form of stock options, goes to corporations and trusts, is unrealized capital gains, or some other way of keeping it from being included in taxable income.

 

This is one of the likely problems with some of the "millionnaire tax" proposals -- you can be very wealthy without it actually showing up on the income sheets.

[Winstonm]

Probably the vast majority of his earnings is in the form of stock options, goes to corporations and trusts, is unrealized capital gains, or some other way of keeping it from being included in taxable income.

 

This is one of the likely problems with some of the "millionnaire tax" proposals -- you can be very wealthy without it actually showing up on the income sheets.

 

Do you think O'Brien may have been right when he wrote that Trump vastly overstates his personal wealth?

[mike777]

It will be interesting to see what issues really matter at this point for undecided voters. I am guessing the few truly undecided voters between trump and clinton or stay at home...will not care about or read his tax returns.

[Al_U_Card]

Appeals to reason and logic work in Debate Club.

Elections are won by visceral appeals to fear and insecurity. "Make America great, (again?)" "Hope and change" " The great society".

 

DT is pandering but he has sensed the riled-up, dissatisfaction with current politics/economy/society that inhabits and provokes the man in the street. He may well ride that wave into the WH.

[awm]

Do you think O'Brien may have been right when he wrote that Trump vastly overstates his personal wealth?

 

Trump supposedly has a lot of money in real estate holdings (although he doesn't own every building with his name on it). These holdings can be difficult to value accurately. While it sounds dumb when he says his net worth "depends on how he feels that day" it's really anyone's guess what his buildings are worth when they're not up for sale.

[barmar]

Trump supposedly has a lot of money in real estate holdings (although he doesn't own every building with his name on it). These holdings can be difficult to value accurately. While it sounds dumb when he says his net worth "depends on how he feels that day" it's really anyone's guess what his buildings are worth when they're not up for sale.

Now I'm trying to imagine the job of the city assessor trying to put a value on something like the Empire State Building. What are "comparables"?

[barmar]

Now I'm trying to imagine the job of the city assessor trying to put a value on something like the Empire State Building. What are "comparables"?

To answer my own question, for an office building you don't have to find similar buildings, you add up the values of the offices. So he just finds out how much the building owner is leasing the offices for, or looks at lease rates for similar offices in other buildings (with adjustments for extra "prestige" of higher floors).

[Winstonm]

I think the answer is fairly simple - if you liquidated your assets and paid off all debt, would you have $1 billion or more in cash? If the answer is no, then you are not worth $1 billion.

[barmar]

I think the answer is fairly simple - if you liquidated your assets and paid off all debt, would you have $1 billion or more in cash? If the answer is no, then you are not worth $1 billion.

Easy to say, hard to calculate in practice.

 

Just consider a simple example like Bill Gates's shares in Microsoft. On paper he can value them based on the current share price. But if he actually tried to sell them all at that price, he probably couldn't, because there wouldn't be enough buyers at any one time. If he were really desperate for the cash, he'd probably have to lower his selling price significantly to get more buyers into the market for them.

 

And that's for something where there's a public market that sets prices. When you get into real estate, which is Trump's main business, it gets much trickier. How can you know how much a Trump casino will sell for until you actually try to sell it?

[Winstonm]

Here is a remarkable article that may explain not only Trump but many other political mysteries.

 

Together, those three insights added up to one terrifying theory: that if social change and physical threats coincided at the same time, it could awaken a potentially enormous population of American authoritarians, who would demand a strongman leader and the extreme policies necessary, in their view, to meet the rising threats.

 

Fascinating but also a little spooky.

[Cyberyeti]

Saw this, felt the need to share, made me laugh.

 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/b7/61/3c/b7613c0e3e1f1a286bc0cec6ff10087a.jpg

[mike777]

Easy to say, hard to calculate in practice.

 

Just consider a simple example like Bill Gates's shares in Microsoft. On paper he can value them based on the current share price. But if he actually tried to sell them all at that price, he probably couldn't, because there wouldn't be enough buyers at any one time. If he were really desperate for the cash, he'd probably have to lower his selling price significantly to get more buyers into the market for them.

 

And that's for something where there's a public market that sets prices. When you get into real estate, which is Trump's main business, it gets much trickier. How can you know how much a Trump casino will sell for until you actually try to sell it?

 

 

There are several very commonly accepted ways to value real estate in for financial statements or tax statements. I agree none are perfect but they do offer a reasonable start to answer the question. As usual i think the problem is more in understanding the question, the limits and parameters of the question rather than the answer.

 

Please allow me to use a real world example when it comes to a question: I am looking to buy a laptop this next week, what laptop should I buy?

[blackshoe]

Two trials, the first 11-1 for acquittal, the second 12-0 for acquittal. A huge waste of the time I wanted to spend studying and playing bridge!

Not to mention our (US taxpayers) money.

[Winstonm]

This, from the article I linked to above, makes me rethink my entire thinking process about Trump supporters. There is also new study that indicates that people with anxiety disorders have brains that are hard-wired in a certain way. Perhaps when the anxiety levels get too high something similar kicks in for the authoritarian personality type?

 

Feldman developed what has since become widely accepted as the definitive measurement of authoritarianism: four simple questions that appear to ask about parenting but are in fact designed to reveal how highly the respondent values hierarchy, order, and conformity over other values.

 

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders?

 

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance?

 

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: to be considerate or to be well-behaved?

 

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: curiosity or good manners?

 

 

Feldman's test proved to be very reliable. There was now a way to identify people who fit the authoritarian profile, by prizing order and conformity, for example, and desiring the imposition of those values. In 1992, Feldman convinced the National Election Study, a large survey of American voters conducted in each national election year, to include his four authoritarianism questions. Ever since, political scientists who study authoritarianism have accumulated a wealth of data on who exhibits those tendencies and on how they align with everything from demographic profiles to policy preferences.

[kenberg]

This, from the article I linked to above, makes me rethink my entire thinking process about Trump supporters. There is also new study that indicates that people with anxiety disorders have brains that are hard-wired in a certain way. Perhaps when the anxiety levels get too high something similar kicks in for the authoritarian personality type?

 

I have been gone but I will read it. Warning: I don't much trust social scientists.

 

But one of my fond family memories: I was expressing a favorable view of a certain five year old that many found unbearable. My youngest, about 12, said "You like ...???". The oldest, six years older, chimed in "You have to understand our father. He likes brats". And yes, indeed I do.

[Winstonm]

A study published last month in Current Biology found that people who suffer from anxiety struggle to differentiate between neutral (or "safe") stimulus and those associated with threats. Essentially, that means that anxious people experience a behavioral phenomenon known as emotional over-generalization, failing to effectively differentiate emotional situations.

 

"We show that in patients with anxiety, emotional experience induces plasticity in brain circuits that lasts after the experience is over," Dr. Rony Paz, a study author and researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, said in a press release. "Such plastic changes occur in primary circuits that later mediate the response to new stimuli, resulting in an inability to discriminate between the originally experienced stimulus and a new similar stimulus."

 

In other words, the brains of people with anxiety fail to adapt to changing situations as effectively as people with non-anxious brains. Once their brain determines a "route" of how to react to a stimulus, that is the route that it continues to take, regardless of changing conditions. Paz continued:

 

"Therefore, anxiety patients respond emotionally to such new stimuli as well, resulting in anxiety even in apparently irrelevant new situations. Importantly, they cannot control this, as it is a perceptual inability to discriminate."

 

I think when we take this finding and apply it to the authoritarian concept we might be getting closer to the answer of the Trump phenomenon. The authoritarian type person has been more deeply affected psychologically by terrorists' strikes and the anxious type has trouble distinguishing new possible threats from the old. Once the anxiety level is high, the authoritarian personality type looks to simple, strong messages from a seemingly strong-sounding leader willing to restore a sense of calm with his rhetoric.

 

Or so it seems.

[Elianna]

Nevermind, found one.

[kenberg]

I think when we take this finding and apply it to the authoritarian concept we might be getting closer to the answer of the Trump phenomenon. The authoritarian type person has been more deeply affected psychologically by terrorists' strikes and the anxious type has trouble distinguishing new possible threats from the old. Once the anxiety level is high, the authoritarian personality type looks to simple, strong messages from a seemingly strong-sounding leader willing to restore a sense of calm with his rhetoric.

 

Or so it seems.

 

 

You have written a lot about how to understand what is happening. Well, it is tough. But a few pages back I recommended an article for the Wash Post:

 

 

https://www.washingt...5f9a_story.html

 

 

 

I will quote parts.

 

 

Setser has kids and, for now, a job. Jennifer Bowers is his fiancee.

 

"What in the world is happening to this neighborhood?" Setser was saying now, waiting again for the school bus on his front porch. In the months since the announcement at UTEC, the steady march of anger and anxiety had been moving down his manufacturing line, part after part, shift after shift, and lately he had begun to notice things about Huntington that he had once overlooked. There were weeds creeping up around the neat craftsman homes, a stray needle in the alley and a fresh layer of graffiti on the nearby apartment building. "Can't anyone keep up a house anymore?" he said.

 

His children came home on the bus, and they sat down for family dinner and took turns talking about their days. Bowers had booked the wedding photographer. "Expensive but worth it," she said. The two boys had decided they wanted to go back to Florida, where they had vacationed, because they thought it might be nicer than Indiana. Krystal had met with an adviser at school and decided she wanted to become a dental hygienist, because the adviser thought there were lots of openings, and if so Krystal was happy to clean teeth

 

 

 

and

 

"We're getting to the point where there aren't really any good options left," he said. "The system is broken. Maybe its time to blow it up and start from scratch, like Trump's been saying."

 

Krystal rolled her eyes at him. "Come on. You're a Democrat."

 

"I was. But that was before we started turning into a weak country," he said. "Pretty soon there won't be anything left. We'll all be flipping burgers."

 

"Fine, but so what?" she said. "We just turn everything over to the guy who yells the loudest?"

 

Setser leaned into the table and banged it once for emphasis. "They're throwing our work back in our face," he said. "China is doing better. Even Mexico is doing better. Don't you want someone to go kick ass?"

 

"That doesn't really seem like you," she said, and for a few seconds she stared back at him, as if examining someone for the first time. The spices were alphabetized on the shelves. The family schedule was printed on the wall. Theirs was a happy home, a stable home.

 

 

 

These are not people such that I need a social scientist's help to understand them. They are the from my childhood, and it is here that the action will be in the upcoming election. I hope that the Dems can find a way to speak to them. It was once so.

[barmar]

This probably won't phase Ken, he's been through too many of these "wanna feel old" moments before.

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/feel_old.png

[kenberg]

This probably won't phase Ken, he's been through too many of these "wanna feel old" moments before.

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/feel_old.png

 

It's true about it not phasing me, I have made my peace with age. The one that snuck up on me for the sucker punch was not my thirtieth birthday, that one I was prepared for, but rather my daughter's thirtieth birthday. The oldest granddaughter is now 23 (0r is it 24), we will see how I do when she turns 30.

 

An 18 year old was 3 in 2001. Pearl Harbor was less than a month before I turned 3. I don't remember it (of course) but I do have memories, some pretty detailed, of the war years, although I was not directly affected in the way some were. I don't much go in for grouping people by generations, Boomers, X's, Mills, etc, but no doubt the age we grow up in influences our outlook. I regard the post-war movie The Best Years of Our Lives as a fine depiction of at least how we liked to think of ourselves at that time. Reality may have been a bit different.

I guess I have no idea of what would be an accurate portrayal of our outlook today.