What can you tell us about “The Storm” 
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Right. This seems like a terrible system of constant forced displacement. Anyone who struggles with the tax burden and tries to keep their assessed value at a sane level is at risk of being forced out by people wealthier than them.
We already see this in Portland, where home prices exploded as people relocated from more expensive urban areas. This would just mean the newcomers could take your house rather than just bid up what is on the market.
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I suspect they’re referring to self-employment taxes, which Trump probably does pay instead of social security and Medicare since he seems to organize things as LLCs where his is the sole owner.
To answer the original commenter, that becomes part of your overall tax liability, which he’s apparently used deductions and/or losses to eliminate.
My girlfriend, who lives in the modest house her parents built in what is now one of the tonier parts of Dallas, fights this battle every year with the appraisal district: they contend that the property is worth upwards of $500,000, while the structure is worth $14,000.
They will never, never negotiate the land value, only the “improvements”.
ETA: Hers is one of only four original houses left on her block; the rest have been replaced by hideous 5,000+ s.f., zero-lot-line McMansions.
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Nice write up at Huff.
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We call that an “aristocracy”.
I think some Americans mistakenly pride themselves on not having one.
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I tell people this all the time. You’ll never convince the average Republican based on claims of how little tax the wealthy pay, or claims of cheating on taxes, or by talking about what those taxes could pay for.
The GOP has convinced their base that government is bad and wasteful, and virtually all taxes (except for the military) are essentially theft.
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That is of course why his ‘friends’ advised him against running for President. Joe Schmoe-Richguy can argue with the IRS and really no one cares. They apparently told him that running for President would mean far more scrutiny which they thought he couldnt afford.
I guess we’ll find out whether they were right or not.
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James Madison had thoughts:
So is there a worse business person? Is there anyone else on the planet who has lost $1.2 billion between 1984 and 1995 and at $0.4ish billion in this century?
(and this isn’t counting the debt that he’s put the US into, which would make the answer obvious)
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not many, that’s for sure.
let’s just pretend he’s second to madoff, so we can talk about trump and madoff in the same sentence:
Prosecutors estimated the size of the fraud to be $64.8 billion
[eta]:
The scandal so affected Palm Beach that, according to The Globe and Mail , residents “stopped talking about the local destruction the Madoff storm caused only when Hurricane Trump came along” in 2016
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Most of the favourable references to Aristocracies assume that it is as it says-- rule of the best-- to be contrasted with plutocracies (rule of the rich), oligarchies (rule of the few), and kakistocracy (rule of the worst). Unless you’re one of those eugenicists, it’s difficult to argue that aristocracies are maintained with hereditary rule. Montesquieu implies that aristocrats are elected, while democrats obtain power through a lottery.
The modern sense of these words will always find themselves duelling with what those words meant in 1787.
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" . . . the aristocrats!"
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What those favourable references studiously ignore is that, sooner or later, an aristocracy is going to cough up a Charles II of Spain who gives you all of the above, plus an idiocracy.
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There are then three sorts of aristocracy—natural, elective and hereditary. The first is only for simple peoples; the third is the worst of all governments; the second is the best, and is aristocracy properly so called.
Besides the advantage that lies in the distinction between the two powers, it presents that of its members being chosen; for, in popular government, all the citizens are born magistrates; but here magistracy is confined to a few, who become such only by election. 2 By this means uprightness, understanding, experience and all other claims to pre-eminence and public esteem become so many further guarantees of wise government.
Moreover, assemblies are more easily held, affairs better discussed and carried out with more order and diligence, and the credit of the State is better sustained abroad by venerable senators than by a multitude that is unknown or despised.
In a word, it is the best and most natural arrangement that the wisest should govern the many, when it is assured that they will govern for its profit, and not for their own. There is no need to multiply instruments, or get twenty thousand men to do what a hundred picked men can do even better. But it must not be forgotten that corporate interest here begins to direct the public power less under the regulation of the general will, and that a further inevitable propensity takes away from the laws part of the executive power.
Charles Hapsburg defies two criteria laid down by the ancients. First, he was an autocrat, and not a oligarch, as power was theoretically invested in him, and not in a elite social class to which he belonged. Second, he was not elected-- the hereditary nature of the monarchy precluded notions of crowning a literate, smarter alternative.
Now it may well be the case that aristocracy (in its original theoretical sense) inevitably collapses into a kind of hereditary nobility, rather than being an useful alternative to sortition. But eighteenth century philosophers maintained it was so.
The softbank guy?
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It’s entirely possible that Son has lost that much money, but it also doesn’t seem nearly as a bad, considering all of his gains and relative wealth, so I don’t know that I would argue he is a worse business man.
Can one of the people here that know more about this than I do tell me what the difference between avoidance and just plain claiming deductables like the rest of us do?
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“Tax avoidance” encompasses sneaky legal (and illegal) maneuvers that most regular people couldn’t employ even if we wanted to, like creating distinct legal entities or offshore companies overseas to decrease tax liability.
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