He didn’t “get” rich. He was born rich. He would have much more money today if he had passively invested it. The man is a managerial train wreck that’s been consistently burning untold wealth for 30+ years.

Much of what he has left was gotten by repeatedly breaking the law, and somehow only ending up with civil liability instead of criminal convictions.

Now he is actively wrecking the US economy and has somehow bullied the GOP into going along with it.

> He didn’t “get” rich. He was born rich.

"If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline." -- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Branson

If you start with a lot you can deplete much of it before you have only a little.

"Somehow bullied" = the GOP is terrified of going against him, because his rabid base will drum anyone out of office who can be shown to be anti-Trump. After all, politicians' jobs are dependent on them getting elected.

I agree with you that passive investment would have got the same gains, but it's much easier to see in hindsight, it was not that easy to see beforehand.

He made money by burning other people and companies, but he came out quite well from it.

Not being able to actively beat the market has been known since about 1973:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street

Bogle started Vanguard in 1975:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanguard_Group

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_fund#Origins

"Known", yes, though probably not widely so. As I understand it, passive investing was generally considered a bad or at least risky idea at the time Vanguard was created.

He started 500 businesses, 6 went bankrupt.

It takes $100 and thirty minutes to start a business so that metric is useless. If anything, that many shell corps is suspect for money laundering, not business prowess.

Money laundering? Creating a corporation or LLC for each property is standard practice in the real estate business.

> ... usually, every investment property should be owned by a separate limited liability company that owns only one property and that is not engaged in any other business activity. The reason is simple: to maximize asset protection.

https://www.keytlaw.com/azllclaw/asset-protection/how-many-l...

And you really shouldn't go throwing around spurious accusations like that without any evidence.

>Creating a corporation or LLC for each property is standard practice in the real estate business.

So which is it? He started 500 businesses, or he has a few businesses that are made up of multiple properties.

I have friends with a few dozen rental properties, all in separate LLCs. I wouldn't say they "started 50 businesses".

You can't have it both ways; those 6 bankruptcies are just properties too.

So with your wording you should say Trump owned 500 properties and 6 of them lost money. And like any real estate investor, when the properties lost money, Trump gave those 6 properties to the creditors.

But I think my wording is more accurate. Your friend's rental properties may not be individual businesses, but Trump Tower or the Taj Mahal are.

Trump Tower and Taj Mahal are real businesses. But most of trumps "businesses" aren't. They are just shell companies to hold assets.

The vast majority of his businesses have no customers, and no regular income. They aren't intended to make a profit--they're intended to protect an asset from the bankruptcy of his real businesses. There was never any chance that they would need to go bankrupt, so he gets no credit for them not going bankrupt.

> The vast majority of his businesses have no customers, and no regular income.

Where do you get this? Is this just more BS with no evidence, like the money laundering accusation?

I haven't seen a complete list, but even Wikipedia has a list with a lot of businesses:

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

> they're intended to protect an asset from the bankruptcy of his real businesses

Even if you were right about Trump's businesses, corporations don't work like that. The stock can be taken in bankruptcy so they don't protect assets inside the corp from bankruptcy of the holder. They only protect assets outside the corp from bankruptcy of the corp.