Jeff gets elected to public office

Jeff owns a business which was previously losing 100 billion dollars a year and gives himself contracts and benefits. His business now only loses 50 billion dollars a year?

Did Jeff make a profit from his government position?


Yes. He made 50 billion dollars a year profit from the contracts he awarded to his government position.

Proof:

Profit = Change in Money = Final Money - Initial Money = (-50 bn/year) - (-100 bn/year) = 50 bn/year

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Nov 2 2019 03:44pm

Nobody here is speculating about him abusing contracts. We're giving you scenarios that everybody would consider unethical but using your own line of reasoning would not be unethical in the slightest.

*guy steals $100 from an old lady, then loses $150 at the poker table

police: 'freeze, scumbag! you're being arrested for theft!'
guy: 'what are you talking about? i'm $5,000 poorer than i was a day ago!'

trump supporter: 'yeah right! how can that guy be a thief when he's $2,000 poorer than yesterday? checkmate! get an economics degree, you idiot!'

my god you're stupid

i would have thought that by this point you'd at least google the equation for profit

Revenue-costs= profit (the most simplified version of this equation)

only an idiot would say that after losing money two years in a row that somehow results in a positive

The question is not how much he has lost overall since he entered politics, the question is how much he has lost because of his involvement in politics. As the article described, some resorts of his which lie in deep blue territory have seen business flatline since he started his campaign; the business of lending the "Trump" name for branding has cratered, and so on.

It is possible for these politics-related losses to be higher or lower than the profits he made (Trump hotel in Washington D.C. etc.) - and afaik, no one has provided numbers to prove a case in either direction. As it stands, we dont know, although it seems quite plausible to me that the negatives of being involved in politics outweigh the profits he made because of it.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 2 2019 03:47pm

If you lost LESS than what you otherwise would have then you made a profit over what you would have.

Losing less is the same as gaining, in that both result in your net worth being higher than it otherwise would have.

This was literally a problem on a test in my macroeconomics class, and it was given specifically to illustrate that you can gain money in one place but lose overall.

you are the stupid one for not realising you're attacking a straw man.

no one is arguing he increased his net worth.

we're arguing that he abused the office to generate money for his private business.

those are entirely different arguments, and you're being a hack for outright ignoring the latter.

Honestly it shouldn't even be brought up. He should have used a blind trust like literally every other president has and we wouldn't be having this issue.

He can't address the argument or he would have to acknowledge that Trump has done something wrong.

Full defense mode.

Very true, although I would assume that the "Trump" brand would still have taken a huge hit, as would his golf resorts and such.

Well, he's an old, stubborn patriach of a business empire - is anyone surprised that he didnt want to give up control?