No?

I mean, there are countries where the President personally controls the Treasury, and you can usually spot them by the enourmous statutes and portraits of the Leader.

> does Trump own the American Treasury

No, Congress controls that, and they're elected by the American people, who ultimately own it.

Here's a more interesting example: https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/resources/faqs/

> The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it belong to the monarch.

> No, Congress controls that, and they're elected by the American people, who ultimately own it.

Trump is also elected by the American people, though, right?

So is the winner of American Idol, that doesn't mean he/she own the treasure either.

Trick question: he's elected by the Electoral College. Which is why he's president despite recieving fewer votes than the other candidate, because it's not a direct election but a delegate system.

For those haven't heard, there are plans underway to change that, too. Check out the National Popular Vote movement:

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

They're more than halfway there. I'm all in favor of the movement, and am holding out hope we'll see it click into place in the next decade or so.

FWIW, I am happily planning to expend my 3500 magic internet points promoting unions, worker's rights, and democracy in the strongly antidemocratic USA. In fact, I am looking forward to it.

You can't use HN primarily for political and ideological battle. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The reason is that it destroys intellectual curiosity, which is what this site exists for.

We've warned you about this numerous times already. I don't want to ban you, but if you keep doing this we're going to have to.

I sincerely wish the site admins were as fastidious at minimizing ideology when it's pro-capitalist, but I also understand that this site functions largely as a promotional vehicle for a venture capital fund; it's never wise to bite the hand that feeds one.

Those are cheap and easy shots to take, with no burden of proof. But you actually don't know how hard we work for those things not to be true. Nor does it change the rules or the request that you abide by them.

States elect the president. The people vote on the electors who represent their state in the electoral college.

> does Trump own the American Treasury?

Depends on what you mean by "own". I would use "able to decide how it is used". So I would say that Mark Zuckerberg "owns" Facebook because he has a controlling interest (although he does not own 100% of the stock). I would say that Donald Trump does not "own" the US Treasury because our form of government contains checks and balances.

Still not applicable to Trump because the U.S. Congress has power of the purse, not the President.

Not true, the president can declare an 'emergency' and circumvent Congress.

Referring to no specific case in particular: that is not a circumvention but an application of the authority that Congress delegated to the President in the National Emergencies Act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act