What Kind of Genius Loses A Billion Dollars?

[brewer]

[Napoléon]

Has Hillary Clinton ever done a single thing to change said law either?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think the chief difference between Trump losing a billion and other mind-bogglingly wealthy people doing the same is that Trump is touting his business acumen as one of the reasons people should vote for him. By some accounts (pun intended) he lost this money not because people stopped buying his products (as with Apple) or because of a shift in economic realities (as with coal companies), but because he has a habit of being a self-aggrandizing bumhole who over-pays for things he wants to put his name on.

If anyone - literally ANYone - else appeared on the telly and said, 'Make me your leader because I'm a brilliant businessman who makes bad decisions, stiffs the people who work for me, has been to bankruptcy court four times, and managed to make a casino unprofitable,' voters would arm themselves with pitchforks and torches and march on the studio like the peasants on Frankenstein's castle.

Boru

[vorlon13]

Folks shilling for the current administration (or members thereof) can't really criticize Trump for losing only a billion while they are oblivious to their government loosing trillions.

[Minimalist]

The current administration is not running this time.

[Tiberius]

Someone on reddit explained the difference between Bill Gates losses and Donald Trump's quite well.

The losses that Gates had were based on "potential" net worth, not actualized worth. Most of Bill Gates' net worth comes from the stock market, and his "losses" were the result of stocks going down in value, but that doesn't mean he lost money; in fact the stocks were still worth more than when he bought them.

Say you buy a stock for $1, and its value goes up to $1,000. Your net worth has increased 99,900%, but you don't have to pay any taxes unless you sell the stock for money (which counts as capital gains). If the stock crashes to $250, your net worth has decreased by 75%, but you're still up 24,900% from what you originally paid.

As for Steve Jobs, he took back Apple in 1997 when it was already failing as a business. That loss would have likely occurred whether or not he was CEO. The year after the loss, Apple made a profit of several hundred million, and then of course turned Apple into the 9th richest company in the world.

[abaris]

To even compare Gates and Jobs to the likes of Trump ....

Gates admittedly born with a silve spoon already in his mouth. Same as Zuckerberg, but not the same as Jobs. But they all created something. Jobs managed, as Tiberius said, to turn around a nearly broke company into making massive amounts of money. Trump only managed to bankrupt everything he touched time and time again.

[vorlon13]

"or members thereof"

[Divinity]

Trump touts his business acumen, and he has so many fucking failed businesses that it's not even funny. And he stays on top because he's a fucking weasel.

Also the government "losing" trillions (Losing, meaning they don't know how it was spent. Rather than that they made bad investments or choices--we don't even fucking know what their choices are) is due to bad accounting by the pentagon that's been going on well before this past administration took over. And of course Donald fucking Drumpf wants to give more money to the Department of Defense, because he likes shiny toys that go 'boom'.

[abaris]

Trump touts his business acumen, and he has so many fucking failed businesses that it's not even funny.  And he stays on top because he's a fucking weasel.  

He's a pretty successful con man. In that sense he's a weasel.

As much as I dislike certain aspects of Gates, Jobs or the companies they created, they are real success stories.