If it is true that Donald Trump’s net worth just increased by more than a billion dollars the public deserves to know why. This is likely the biggest financial windfall for a politician in world history, so it requires a detailed and transparent explanation.
From his campaign page:
Prior to his service in Congress, Senator Schatz was Hawai‘i’s Lieutenant Governor and served for eight years in the Hawai‘i State House of Representatives.
Senator Schatz grew up in Honolulu, and received his bachelor’s degree from Pomona College. He is married to Linda Schatz, an architect. They have a son and a daughter.
Senator Schatz has done exactly nothing in his life that was productive. Nothing. I guess his tweet isn’t surprising then. He went to an elite school where he majored in something, certainly not business. Then, career politician.
Should people like this be in any sort of power position at all?
Business is not hard to understand in a general sense. Company sells something to a customer and tries to make a profit. Man has been doing it for eons and eons ever since we realized there were gains from specializing.
The problem is people like Mr. Schatz. Our world is so developed now, a lot of people can earn a living by doing nothing. Is there a difference between Mr. Schatz and a welfare recipient? The only difference is that Mr. Schatz lives a lot more comfortably, gets to make decisions, and has a public pension that will be fatter than any welfare check.
Can we live without people like Mr. Schatz? Yes. It would make no difference in the fate of the world if he was occupied in his current occupation, or not. He makes no difference.
Mr. Schatz is ticked that Mr. Trump is making money today. You can see the envy in his tweet. The stock of $DJT is up over 40% today on the first day of trading. Maybe Mr. Schatz can short-sell it.
Mr. Schatz has not a clue about what it takes to build a business. He has no idea or concept of the risk. He has no feeling about how arduous it really is.
If it was easy to take an idea and build a big company out of it, everyone would do it. Instead, people like Mr. Schatz think that the capitalistic free market enterprise system is a terrible idea. Companies ought to hew the government line. Government enables them. “You didn’t build that” is more than a mantra, it is a whole belief system.
How is it that America won the Cold War and not the Soviet Union?
People like Mr. Schatz tear down success. They deliberately penalize it. We need less of Mr. Schatz, and more people like Mr. Trump. We need people that are dreamers who can come up with ideas and build companies that solve problems for people.
Marc Andreessen often says, “It’s time to build” and it is always time to build. There are always problems to solve. There are always ways to do it better. That is, if we let the free market capitalistic enterprise system operate. Creative destruction is one of its benefits. Companies failing are not a bug, they are a net positive.
In California, the apparatchiks are instituting a Chinese-style crony capitalist system statewide. It will have knock-on effects all over the US. Minimum wage is going to $20/hr, and fast food restaurants are preparing by laying off employees.
What’s so magic about $20? Why not $50? Why not $100? Today when you discount back government pensions into government employees’ salaries, they make more than many or most mid to low-level private employees.
The real minimum wage is $0.
At the very same time, dreamers are coming up with ideas to fill the void. They aren’t perfect yet. The touchscreens at fast food restaurants don’t work the way we want them to work. The dreamers are inventing robots to make our coffee, flip burgers, and make french fries.
It will be a rough transition but it’s going to happen.
Eventually, the commoditized tech being developed at fast food places will go upstream. Fast casual restaurants will adopt it. Restaurant operations managers will figure out how to satisfy customers with fewer human employees. The tech will get better. Someday, Michilen-starred restaurants will utilize the tech to make their operations more efficient.
The free market always wins. It finds a way. We are rapidly coming to a spot in human history where governments will not be able to stop it.
The real problem is that rent seeking has become the preferred behavior.
Schatz has a point, maybe. If the surge in price for Truth Social is real and due to purchases by entities and individuals who think the stock and the company have potential, no problem. But we should all apply the Hunter Biden standard and check under the hood to make sure there's not some distant cousin of the CCP driving the price or manipulating the stock. Just saying.
As to Schatz, he's worse than Jeffrey Carter described him. A brief review of Shatz's entry at the well known right-wing conspiracy site wikipedia shows Shatz entire non political career was spent in non-profits. So it's not just that he never built anything, he was never really responsible/accountable in a business sense. Do what the funders want, act right, show up at the ribbon cutting and party to follow and you'll likely get a raise. Not what we need in the senate, or house for that matter