Amusingly, $35k was the cost of the "Gold Elite" version of the Trump University scam.
Because my sources of information are now somewhat random, I just learned that Perry isn't still governor of Texas.
This reminds me of derauqsd's discovery he had enough equity in his house to have bought the political crook of the week.
In all seriousness, the Republican Party is hardly even the party of business anymore so much as it is the party of con artist scumbags.
I think one of the things we've been learning is that this is largely a false distinction. The temptation is to say, 'twas ever thus, but I don't actually think that's true; US Steel actually made all that metal, they didn't fake it and sell nonexistent steel to investors who were left holding the bag*. I have a few competing/complementary theories:
A. Without manufacturing, there's less $$ to be made in less-scammable material goods, so more of the economy has moved to inherently scammable things.
B. Investors demand returns that are generally unachievable without scamming. I mean, that was the fundamental story behind the 2007 crash: demand for high return yet safe investments outstripped supply, so CDOs were conjured up. But it applies to every business: nobody wants to own a share of a nice, stable business that grows as fast as the economy and returns a modest dividend every year. So if that describes your business, there's every incentive to scamify, whether by cooking the books or cheating your workers or destroying going term value by cutting quality or skimping on R&D.
C. Reaganite CEO worship has created a cult of unaccountability that essentially invites this behavior.
D. The Republican Party has largely been taken over by grifters--the direct mail people, the gold people, etc--and this has spread throughout the system. The Democratic Party has enabled some of B and C above, in part thanks to Wall Street money, but it's not literally a grift; a look at the respective presidential fields this year is decisive on that front.
E. The rewards of being in the 1% are so vast that the incentive to scam are greater than ever before. Induced scammery, as it were.
*to be super-clear, I think the temptation has always been there, and also that there have been other eras where grifting and chicanery were common as well; I just don't think that the all scams, all the time status quo is eternal
You'd need both the equity and the ability to carry the payments if you borrowed the equity.
Without manufacturing, there's less $$ to be made in less-scammable material goods, so more of the economy has moved to inherently scammable things.
Material goods aren't just less scammable. Manufacturing is more receptive (vulnerable?) to labor organization because of the fixed capital. I've personally swiped jobs from guys in India, but I can't surround a plant and attempt to beat them for working for less than I want to work for.
4 is accurate, I think, as is 6. Wotcha gonna do 'bout it?
Possibly because I'm very efficient and that enabled him to underbid.
I'd like to push back on some of 4. There is no reason why you can't have massive scams in manufacturing. Look at, for example, China. Yes, they actually were making all that milk powder: they were just loading it with melamine. There have been some infamous scams around Chinese mining and forestry companies that just weren't producing all the timber or ore that they said they were.
Look at the housing sector. That was about physical products! All those houses did actually exist - it's just they weren't worth nearly as much as everyone thought. The railway bubble of the 1840s was infamous for scams, to the point where it was a running joke. There's a great story by Aytoun called "How We Got Up The Glenmutchkin Railway (and how we got out of it)" about a pair of con artists inventing an entirely fictitious railway and making vast amounts off the IPO.
I think the main problems are:
Cult of financial innovation: there is an entire industry of intelligent people trying to invent dodgy-sounding but technically legal ways of making money. Scams are the obvious failure mode here.
Short planning horizons in investment management: as long as you can keep your returns high for the next two years, then who cares, because you'll have moved on or up by then and it's not your problem.
Your points about CEO accountability and the Party of Scam are good, I think.
I do sort of love the idea of the liberal-center-left UMC groups in America just sort of shrugging, giving up on donating to campaigns in red states and just pooling money to buy the Republican candidate after he wins the election. It is starting to sound like it would be a lot cheaper and, hey, there's the added bonus of being able to destroy them politically later on if it turns out there's a genuinely winnable election coming up. (I don't know that "was bought off by special interest groups" is enough to turn off the Republican base, but "bought off by explicitly liberal special interest group" probably would.)
Yes, they actually were making all that milk powder: they were just loading it with melamine.
The Chinese character for "melamine" is similar to the one for "Vitamin D".
They're were always scams, but at the end of the day, you got a car, now get people whose job it is to stop you from getting health care.
I want to write an essay about Gilded Age/Trumpite/con-artist buffoonery being the next logical stage after neoliberal reforms. For example, at-will employment almost explicitly invites CEOs to become loyalty-obsessed egomaniacal tyrants.
14: I would read that essay.
I'm starting to think that the best outcome of this election would be widespread recognition of what we're talking about here. MSM will want to limit the story to Trump as Scammer In Chief, but there's an opportunity for a broader narrative.
I don't know if Abbott is actively worse than Rick Perry, but he seems to be constantly making triumphant Limbaugh-style public statements about how he's on a crusade to destroy the lives of the people who didn't vote for him. Rick Perry either was more statesmanlike or was motivated simply by wanting to win instead of also having a burning hatred and contempt for his opponents.
Maybe Abbott will run for president now that David French has said he won't run.