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Notes -
Trump created some of the most valuable property in the world, and the construction of Trump Tower inspired a renaissance in New York City architecture at a time when the city was considered to be dying and gone. Were these broader trends that would have happened without Trump? Maybe, but he's a huge part of it. Judging the success of NY real estate independent of Trump is like saying Coke should have closed up shop and just bought Pepsi.
Trump is one of the richest men in the world. There are only something like 3,000 billionaires. If what he did wasn't all that impressive, there should be a lot more out there, an order of magnitude more. Why doesn't every guy with a reasonable fortune invest it all in the S&P 500, they're all underperforming the market.
This is silly. You can't just liquidate tens of millions of dollars and sit on your ass for forty years. You have to live on something, you have to do something, you don't just throw money at the market. It's a full time job, managing money, and then you end up doing deals and making investments anyways. "Instead of spending years lifting weights, you would have performed better if you'd spent that time working out instead." Now imagine saying that to Arnold.
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