2020 US Election (Part One)
- Thread starter Lexicus
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The retention of Legal Services is an indication that there is some inherent value in the legal services. In the United States, after years of working with the legal system in Canada, my impression is that legal services are viewed as an incredible loss through opportunity cost.
It's only worth it if one of the aggrieved parties is rich.
No, the libertarian in me thinks that access to Justice would improve things as more and more people were able to access Justice in a country that followed a good rule of law.
When I ran the numbers, probably a decade ago, a significant deflation in lawyer salary and investigation time would be incredibly valuable to the community overall. To me, this just screams as an opportunity for AI and automation
It's only worth it if one of the aggrieved parties is rich.
No, the libertarian in me thinks that access to Justice would improve things as more and more people were able to access Justice in a country that followed a good rule of law.
When I ran the numbers, probably a decade ago, a significant deflation in lawyer salary and investigation time would be incredibly valuable to the community overall. To me, this just screams as an opportunity for AI and automation
There are also a lot of business lawyers in those numbers. You can see that for example in that high ranking of Luxumbourg. Lichtenstein not on the list of you much higher than Luxumbourg, close to the US.
The US, with ofc the highest salary/income per lawyer, has also the highest litigation cost and highest liability cost as % of GDP (the latter roughly 1.5%). Not to mention the invisble cost for companies spending a lot of their higher management on liability issues.
It seems a battle culture indeed.
I'm reminded of a scene in American Gangster. Narco Russell Crowe is in Court for a custody battle with the ex, and his lawyer starts on this tirade about how it would be unfair to punish a man who society calls upon to risk his life to protect us all by deeming him unfit to protect his own son, by virtue of the very danger he undergoes to protect society... or something along those lines... Crowe interrupts her, turns to his ex and says that she is right about him, then apologizes to the Court for wasting everyone's time, declares himself an unfit parent and walks out. Just prior to that, his ex had called him out for engaging in grand displays of his "honesty" (he had previously turned in a huge bag of drug money instead of keeping it as any "normal" cop would have done) as simply being a smokescreen/penance for the fact that he is a deadbeat dad who cheats, womanizes and barely spends time with his son.
Again... Curtis Mayfield...
Reminds me of another movie Black Earth Rising, about hunting down war criminals of the Rwandan genocide, and bringing them to justice. There is a scene where they visit a local lawyer, to find out why these warlord's crimes aren't prosecuted locally, and he explains to them, essentially, that he cant even afford paperclips, let alone support staff. "Justice" is just too expensive.
Not for nothing, but Trump announced his withdrawal from the international criminal court in his last speech to the UN
Another big deal that went right under the radar because of the endless whirlwind of bullcrap...
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
How long until he withdraws from the UN and declares it a Terrorist Organization?
I find the ICC somewhat useless and toothless, and I think that Trump's criticism of the UN Human Rights Council had some valid points. Seriously valid. But when it comes to the idea of human rights, eventually you need some type of courts mechanism. They need funding, and they need a series of treaties under which the enforcement can happen.
The US complains the UN is toothless, but it is one of the major factors in why the UN is toothless. Congressmen **** their pants when they and their constituents think the sovereignty of the US is in any danger. Without the US coming to support the UN or play by its rules, there is no real hard power behind the UN. There have certainly been times when the US and UN have fallen in bed with each other, mostly when it served US interests (Korea, Suez, the like), but after the Cold War the whole reaction to any percieved infringement soared through the roof. It's akin to the League of Nations situation in a way.
The US is the one of the primary backers of the UN, but that means when the US has a falling out with the UN, the UN floats off. No other power has come close to replicating the US's central role in the UN - yet. A multipolar world of different superpowers will change that, but that's down the line.
metalhead
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Every word of those sentences . . . is wrong.
As you can see, or at least as you would see if you weren't a blind partisan hack, he didn't make the money. He obtained it through inheritance and fraud. I was right.
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Either he never had money or he acquired money, even if it was less than honorably. Which is it? Don't give me by inheritance. There wasn't much more than seed money and it didn't last.
J
metalhead
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Either he never had money or he acquired money, even if it was less than honorably. Which is it? Don't give me by inheritance. There wasn't much more than seed money and it didn't last.
J
Not "less than honorably." Illegally. What happened to your intense concern for the rule of law? Oh right, that was complete rubbish.
"But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.
Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings."
At least $413 million, obtained almost entirely tax-free thanks to extensive tax fraud. Seed money? Oh brother. Well, grifters like Trump need gullible marks like you, so well done I guess.
He got all of his money from his dad. Competent people invested it for him to make him more money, and that is the story of Trump. He's nothing more than an idiot trust fund kid pretending to be a business man. Every time he has actually tried to run a business, he has failed.
And yet... here we are... he is the president of our country... its pretty embarrassing TBH.
It is true that the inheritance was merely seed money, and that it didn't last.
I don't think people acknowledge what a miracle the United States is. It's the country of dreams. Like, if you can illegally inherit hundreds of millions of dollars, and lose most of it, you can still end up a billionaire.
As I said, both teams have a contempt for the rule of law. People on the right don't mind tax theft. Unless, of course, it's someone working under the table.
I don't think people acknowledge what a miracle the United States is. It's the country of dreams. Like, if you can illegally inherit hundreds of millions of dollars, and lose most of it, you can still end up a billionaire.
As I said, both teams have a contempt for the rule of law. People on the right don't mind tax theft. Unless, of course, it's someone working under the table.
Lexicus
Deity
The liberal "Trump is a failed businessman" meme was charmingly naive at first, but why are they still trotting it out after it's been explained over and over that he exploited bankruptcy laws to enrich himself in a way that was highly unethical but not dumb (or reflective of "failure") at all?
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Just to be clear, you are contradicting your many times stated position that he did not have much money and that only by inheritance.
You can get used to it because he's doing a good job.
There is an interesting article on the Democratic field of candidates. The candidate's prospects are treated as stocks, with a buy/sell/hold rating.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...the_2020_democratic_primary_field_139997.html
J
metalhead
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Infraction for flaming
It's pretty telling that you're actually trying to call me out for updating a prior belief based on new information. I guess in partisan hack world, this is considered bad form. You are such a pathetic little weasel.
Moderator Action: Calling someone a pathetic little weasel is flaming. I've already warned you guys in other threads about flaming each other. Stop it or get a thread ban. --LM
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Yeah, maybe he is actually a billionaire because he had $400 million given to him. Lord knows he didn't make it on his own. Either way he is clearly not adept at doing anything other than defrauding people.
Because he didn't exploit squat, he had lawyers and accountants do all that. Do you think there is any chance at all that Donald Trump understood bankruptcy law well enough on his own to exploit it? Of course not.
By all accounts he actually tried running the businesses. The only thing he was any good at was stiffing contractors and employees. At actual business, he was an enormous failure. Chances are excellent that his pop and some of his and his pop's crooked pals set these schemes up for him.
It was all just another way for his handlers to give him more money. None of it was actually him. The people that set up the tax fraud for him are probably the same ones who arranged the bankruptcies for him.
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Lexicus
Deity
"flip flop"
All of it? I highly doubt that he played no role in the process.
"On his own", no, but that he understands it enough to at least direct his lawyers and accountants somewhat? Of course.
I mean, given that business activity, particularly in real estate, increasingly seems to consist explicitly of trading in claims on income derived from other people's work, I'm skeptical of the premise that there is some fundamental difference between "actual business" and "stiffing contractors and employees."
metalhead
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My point is that it takes zero knowledge or skill or intelligence of any kind to buy and then mismanage a failing business, and then go to your crooked lawyers and tell them to rob it blind on your behalf. Assuming they didn't just do it of their own accord so they could collect millions in fees for their services.
His main business is branding, not real estate. To the extent he has speculated in real estate, he has been a massive failure. He stiffed contractors at his casinos and still ran them into the ground, which says just about all you need to know about his business acumen.
He also has done some other ventures - steaks, water, an airline, vodka. All have also been complete and total failures, and the airline in particular actually cost him much of what his dad had given him up until then.
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