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from the fortunes-declining-like-many-other-americans dept.
AlterNet reports
Donald Trump has dropped 92 places in the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans, with the magazine putting his wealth at $3.1bn, down from $3.7bn last year.
[...] Forbes ranked the first billionaire president as the 248th wealthiest person in America. The year before, he was ranked 156th.
As a candidate, Trump said his net worth was more than $10bn, but Forbes pegged that figure at $4.5bn in September 2015. By Forbes' estimates, Trump's wealth has fallen 31% in two years.
According to Forbes' story:
It was another record year for the wealthiest people in America, as the price of admission to the country's most exclusive club jumped nearly 18% to $2 billion. Even at these new heights, entrepreneurs are breaking into the ranks for the first time as they mint fortunes in everything from telecom to booze to fishing. There were 22 newcomers, 14 of whom are self-made entrepreneurs. Among the most notable: Arizona iced tea cofounder Don Vultaggio; Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings; Tito Beveridge, the creator of Tito's Handmade Vodka; Chuck Bundrant, whose Trident Seafoods sells his fish to places like McDonald's and Burger King; and Rocco Commisso, founder of cable TV and broadband firm Mediacom and owner of the New York Cosmos, a soccer club based in Brooklyn.
The most notable loser was President Donald Trump, whose fortune fell $600 million to $3.1 billion. A tough New York real estate market, particularly for retail locations; a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign all contributed to the declining fortune of the 45th president.
If you prefer, you can just go straight to the list [Edit - that requires JS from www.forbes.com and i.forbesimg.com, JS-phobes can get just the raw numbers here -- FP].
In November, some thought that having a successful businessman at the helm would cure USA's ills. I wonder if this will increase the incidence of buyer's remorse among voters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:56PM (9 children)
Hmm yeah maybe a former naval nuclear submarine engineering officer. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
(for the sarcasm impaired, I've forgotten more history than most people know, so no karma whoring "well acktually you clearly don't know about former president Mr ...")
I think what went wrong with that former prez at a high level, was he was a superior human being. I am too, I know the experience. My first mgmt job about a quarter century ago I had trouble adjusting to the idea that I got the job because I was very good at my job because of who and what I was, so naturally I'd magically increase team production once I have a team to manage via osmosis or some damn thing, but the people I was in charge of were slackers I couldn't relate to very well, or to be honest, couldn't relate to them at all. Luckily I figured out "how to manage inferiors" in my 20s but the former president seems not to have figured that out, possibly, at all, ever, in his entire lifetime, much to the detriment of his performance. All the former prez failings seem to follow from that fundamental inability of his. Given a bunch of highly motivated hyper intelligent nuclear navy personnel he did pretty well... given a country of shitty 70s boomer hippies high on weed he was kinda lost; typical career academy officer, not worth much when LARPing as a drill sgt.
Something similar would happen with a typical engineer. The social dynamics of the university EE lab are not applicable to the real world. This is how we'd do it at MIT, works in a monoculture of 140+ IQ people, but not with multicultural 80 to 100 IQ people.
If you'd like an alternative viewpoint, a drill instructor as god emperor would be interesting to see. Absolute power corrupts humans absolutely, but drill sgts seem inhuman so they avoid that peculiar constraint of humans. Once in awhile you get one who has sex with the female trainees, or kills someone, but its remarkably rare compared to the NCO corps or especially compared to the general public.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:50PM (4 children)
Jimmy Carter's failing was not that he was not smart enough, but that he expected the rest of DC to follow his example of intelligent, moral collaboration. Of course that failed because DC is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
An engineer who understood that and had the will to cleanse that place with fire would tower above any other American in history. They'd pile up granite higher than Mt. McKinley to carve a giant statue of him.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @04:48PM (1 child)
But to accomplish that such a president would have to vastly abuse their power and would likely destroy everything. How do you go from dictator / coup back to democracy?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:57PM
Not necessarily. Under the system we have we'd need such a person taking office with a posse in Congress with sufficient discipline and skill to drive a decisive agenda. If that agenda aimed squarely at really taking down the status quo, it would be enormously popular and successful with the American people. Congress has a single-digit approval rating, so they're hanging by a thread as it is.
The model I have in mind is a technocrat like Bloomberg. I had bones to pick with the guy, but he was one of the more effective leaders I've seen in America in my lifetime. He managed to move the needle in a very entrenched, corrupt political culture in the country's largest city, and he did it with a relative lack of controversy (compare, for example, with Rudy Giuliani's time as mayor).
Short of a revolution, something like that is required to keep America from coming apart at the seams and breathe new life into this democracy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
I don't think we're disagreeing very much.
Can't help but notice the cultural concept of the nerd was invented and pushed hard in the 70s possibly precisely to prevent someone capable of fixing things from rising to power and "draining the swamp", which might be seen as an endorsement of the theory, by the system.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:58PM
Well TPTB can't allow governance according to the data when the data is so damning, right? Because that's exactly the kind of governance a nerd/engineer/technocrat is wont to do.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:08PM (2 children)
I guess you are not superior when it comes to modesty. Somebody is channeling their inner Trump.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:26PM (1 child)
I was pretty young in the Carter years, but what little I remember, and discussions after his term about him, imply he wasn't very modest about not being a crook, but I don't think that was his problem in being effective. Merely being himself with a little more modesty wouldn't have helped him.
In my case before I was in mgmt I was pretty successful and professional (at least at work) so I had roughly zilch experience with counseling / disciplining / fixing interpersonal problems at work. Who would act that stupid at work, I'd never do something that stupid as they can see, and shrug shoulders didn't work so well in low level mgmt. Rather than more humility about my better judgment, what worked more or less is some folks just need to be told how it is, a little stronger hand.
Now modesty was really a Clinton problem. I'm just a good ole boy to have a beer with, while everyone knows he's a bribe taking rapist. A little humility about being a dirtbag would have helped. Ms Clinton had a similar issue WRT I am a woman and its my time much like everyone gets out of the way of a 9-month pregnant woman because "its time" she thought the whole would would worship her presidential run merely because of her genitals, which ironically are not that rare or unusual being present in about half the population. Like trying to sell a pet rock to a skeptical population. Didn't work out so well, LOL, but a little humility might have helped her percentages a bit.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:03PM
"a little humility might have helped her percentages a bit."
I disagree. A soul and total personality transplant could not have fixed that trainwreck of a candidate. You'd have to send somebody back in a time machine and undertake some serious temporal engineering to try and encourage a more positive development of Hillary Clinton. But, honestly, probably not even then.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pdfernhout on Friday October 20 2017, @01:56PM
You may find some of the books here on management of interest, especially Michael Lopp's "Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager" which goes into detail on why the transition from engineer to manager can be so rough:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations-Reading-List [github.com]
At least in technical firms (others may differ) it's not quite so much about becoming a drill sergeant as becoming a social connector and social problem solver -- which requires different skills and domain knowledge than solving engineering problems (even if there is some overlap about finding solutions to complex problems). You wouldn't expect an electrical engineer to immediately start solving complex problems in genetics, so why think an electrical engineer can suddenly solve complex problems in social relationships? Or why think most competent and happy EEs would ever be happier suddenly shifted to working on genetics in the way we often just expect engineers would see management as a step up?
That said, China has been mostly run by engineers recently:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2518910/it-management/five-reasons-why-china-will-rule-tech.html [computerworld.com]
"In China, eight of the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, including the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, have engineering degrees; one has a degree in geology. Of the 15 U.S. cabinet members, six have law degrees. Only one cabinet member has a hard-science degree -- Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, has a doctorate in physics. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have law degrees."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.