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> "It's pretty clear he was never a good businessman."

Don't you find it silly to call a person with a net worth of $4 billion "not a good businessman" keeping in mind that he made this money doing business



Had he taken the money he was lent or given at the start of his business career, and invested it into an index fund instead of doing his attempts at business, he would now have a net worth of $12 billion instead of $4 billion.

He did far, far worse as a businessman than he would have had he done nothing.

Based on that alone, I can call him not a good businessman.


> Had he taken the money he was lent or given at the start of his business career, and invested it into an index fund instead of doing his attempts at business, he would now have a net worth of $12 billion instead of $4 billion.

Matt Levine wrote a great article on this idea: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-09-03/should-do...

Maybe the best line: "For one thing, if he put all his money in index funds and reinvested all the dividends for 41 years, he'd be dead, because you can't buy food with reinvested dividends."


Crazy that I'm not dead yet. Somehow the rest of us manage to eat without spending dividends earned from money given to us by our parents.


Interesting... Hadn't heard that before, source?


The article I linked in a sibling to your comment sources several versions of this calculation in the footnotes, though I'm sure there are others as well: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-09-03/should-do...


I don't find it silly for several reasons:

- My definition of "good businessman" is more than just maximizing one person's profits over all other considerations.

- It's clear that Trump has achieved a significant portion of his gains through legal threats. He has underpaid contractors, and his main response has been "Sue me if you want the rest of your money. But it will cost you more than it's worth to sue me." This is not my idea of a "good businessman".

- I don't have any faith in his stated net worth. I wonder what his actual worth is, if you could get an accurate assessment of his assets. I also have no idea how his election affects his actual net worth.




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