Also, the hotels, I forgot to mention in this post. Trump hotels has an amazing reputation as a luxury hotel. That would probably suffer without his brand. Majorly

Probably depends on the building. I have no idea tbh. I know he built most of the trump towers, and he probably doesn't technically own them, but his coporation(s) probably do. 

I'm curious how much of a positive/negative effect Trump's campaign and presidency had on his business. I figure it has to be positive after the election.

Definitely will help in America with Republicans but not Democrats/liberals. In foreign countries, Trump reputation has been damaged.

There is a legal difference between him owning it outright and his corporations owning it though. I don't know the details, but there are tax and liability differences.

I really don't know why people think Trump is a blue collar guy lol. How can the average American even connect with him with the property and companies under his name? People were saying they couldn't connect with Hillary for being out of touch with the average citizen, which was true, but how is Trump any different?

I started thinking and realized this guy is more out of touch with average American than Hillary even. Truly insane what has happened to politics in America.

..... 10% raise to the military for whatever paranoid reason and even 7% raise to Homeland security.. Everything else notable getting cuts, some massive cuts. I hope Congress doesn't pass this and makes alterations. Why does the military need 10% raise? Jeez..

There is also like 2 billion funding in there for the wall for this year.. Next year will also be $2 billion more. We are definitely paying for the wall directly through tax money. Fuck you, Trump.

Yeah, the US is basically at a new post WW2 low for military spending as a % of GDP every year. It was like 15% in the 50s (which was ludicrous) and it's only like 3-4% now, which tbh is pretty damn small when you consider most of it is going to pensions, salaries, etc. Idk if an increase is in order, but 4-5% wouldn't be a big deal at all.
Also he should cut entitlements, not stuff that is an investment like he's doing. Dumb bitch. I'm pretty sure he's just taking this hard line as a negotiating position though. It'll be somewhere in between this and something else.

I don't want to see a 10% increase in military though per year. We would be going up from around $600 billion to 660 billion.. Unnecessary to do if you are cutting other things. Either leave the military spending where it is or cut a bit (I prefer a small cut).

I am not willing to look at military spending as a % of GDP juxtaposed to that of the 60s because the overall budget/GDP is much larger than in the 50s/60s. Plus, the way wars are fought has changed significantly..

We are heading more towards cyberwarfare, which doesn't require the same sorts of resources as ICBMs or massive ship numbers. Anyways, a single carrier group (with nuclear powered aircraft carrier + subs) is also more powerful than anything we had in the 50s. We also have drones and high-tech satellites. The latest F35s are coming into play soon as well and we still have the stealth bombers. There was none of that back in the day. Only thing I would consider is upgrading the missile defense system (PATRIOT system is outdated).

I haven't seen any good ideas of how to deal with medicare/medicaid/social security tbh.. Very costly programs but so many people rely on them for insurance and supplementary income, especially older people and disabled.

I don't mind increasing medicare age to 67 considering people live much longer than when Medicare was first implemented. That would help. What else can you do? Without outright canceling it altogether.

Edit: the more I think about it, the more I continue returning to the issue of insurance/healthcare sector. I think that is the biggest issue we face in all this, including a HUGE chunk of entitlements. Premiums keep rising, medicare/medicaid keeps costing more, meds continue to get more expensive, treatments are very very inconsistent in cost from hospital to hospital, etc. I think that needs to be focused on rather than focusing on the entitlements because if you could solve healthcare issue then entitlements will be solved as well (excluding social security).

1) The US military power relative to other nations is miniscule?I beg to differ. Lets break it down between air force, navy and army.

Lets start with the gem of the US military. Air Force. No country on Earth comes close when we break it down. We have the greatest stealth bombers the world has ever seen. Countries are still just catching up with the F22 Raptors and we have the F35s coming into play very soon. We have B2 stealth bombers, which no other country's stealth bomber comes close. We used to have the F117 in the arsenal but the F22 can do the same things even better so F117 was retired recently. F16 has been passed by other countries -- latest MIGs are on par with the F22 afaik. No MIG currently on active list or coming active soon can touch the F35. USA has complete and utter domination of the air force. Minuscule? Hah!

Lets look at the navy next. USA has 20 nuclear subs and aircraft carriers. Planet Earth, excluding USA, owns 22 aircraft carriers. United States owns 19 carriers and we are not even including the 3 new carriers coming into the fleet as soon as construction finishes. USA has plans for building even more aircraft carriers. Keep in mind only 1 of the aircraft carriers not owned by America is nuclear powered. Every other nuclear aircraft carrier is in US hands. We have the fastest, quietest and deepest diving nuclear subs (how fast or much it can dive is classified). America is the only country with all subs being nuclear - ALL! Navy is not even close to rest of the world. 30yrs ago, USSR was close but since early 90s, it is a blowout! Minuscule? Hah!

Army starts to get close. Chinese Army would be somewhat close due to the sheer numbers. This one I guess numbers do matter. We do have the best tanks in the world. Throw M1A1 Abrams in almost any battlefield, and it will take on any tank out there with both mobility and straight up strike. Marines, special forces, best in the world. If we look at the army foot soldiers though then we can argue there between numbers (Chinese) and quality of training (USA). Numbers may eventually overpower quality. Not much we can do here.

Intelligence agencies? Best in the world. Nukes? Needs some upgrading but compared to rest of the world, still best of the best.

As far as the PATRIOT system goes, it may the most battle tested but it has some limitations. Check out the new system Russia is going to be deploying soon. , it is not battle tested, but it has some huge advantages over the PATRIOT system, such as the number of ground to air missiles you can put in a single battery + much quicker reload time. We need to upgrade our PATRIOT system to match what the Russians are putting out.

No. Relative to what it was in the past (in comparison to other nations)
In the 60s it was designed to be dominant enough to win a war against both the Soviet Union (A true superpower) and China (Which, while economically weak still boasted a powerful military compared to American allies)

Forbes just released their list of net-worth of billionaires and dropped Trump quite a bit to $3.5 billion.


www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/03/20/trump-drops-220-spots-on-forbes-list-of-billionaires/?utm_term=.b68b810c1414

But you are still right. In the end, you are worth what you can sell yourself for.. Just look at the Clippers. Almost nobody thought they would sell for more than $1 billion, but they did. That alone raised the value of basketball teams pretty much across the board overnight. Nobody knows how much Trump can get for his assets without putting them on the open market..