Scotland can do without Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a coupon clipper of some stature. He likes to surround himself with trophy women and has an interesting hair cut. He says that his father was a “worker” and that he loved to work.  It depends on one’s definition of work I suppose but Trump's father certainly wasn’t a worker.  He dealt in real estate.  This is not productive Labor.

Trump is worth about $3 billion so by the standards of those who govern society he is a “successful” man, like Warren Buffett and other coupon clippers.  All it takes is hard work, right. Success in capitalist society is how much wealth you can accumulate and you certainly can’t accumulate such wealth working. Success in capitalism is not working. Trump's father left him $35 million, sure he's worked hard alright.

Trump is a crude and arrogant bourgeois.  He is in the news across the pond in Scotland because one of his planned investments over there, a $750 million golf resort is being threatened because people will be able to see wind turbines at a nearby wind farm that is planned about a mile away. "I will start work on the hotel immediately if I hear that the horrendous wind farm will not go ahead." He told a Scottish parliamentary committee.

Trump added that, “If you want to scatter your landscape with these horrible, horrible Structures, you will do tremendous damage.” What an indictment of human society that cretins like this have the  influence they do; the Brits have them too of course, just look at Prince Charles.  "Your pristine  countryside and coastlines will forever be destroyed and Scotland will go broke.", Trump warned the  people of Scotland. He accused SNP Scottish Nationalist Party leader, Alex Salmond of being  “hell bent on destroying Scotland’s coastline”

Like all coupon clippers, Trump points to the job creation that would result due to his investment; this is what all big capitalists say to justify their role in society, they create jobs. Carnegie said it, Jay Gould believed it, as does Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. But there are two issues here.  Firstly, the capital that forms his investment, in other words, the reserve fund in society created by past Labor power and how it is allocated is not his decision to make.  The money is not his and society is not his alone.

Trump bought this for $41 Mil, sold it for $95. Hard work?

Secondly, owners of capital don’t buy labor power don’t hire workers to create something useful. If their activity results in something socially useful this is incidental to their primary goal which is to exit a process with more money than they went in to it with. It is not an accident of society that capital gains is taxed at a lower rate. Workers’ primary source of subsistence is wage income, the price of their Labor power in use. So Trump isn’t concerned with jobs as a means of making life and society better in general he wants to “make capital work” as they say.  If forests, lakes, rivers, homes, get in the way of this then they are bad for the economy.  If nations that are forced by their populations to curb this rapacious and destructive activity of the coupon clippers then the missiles and bunker busting bombs will find their target.

So in Trump's world, there is nothing unusual about his fear of a wind farm or his absurd claims that they will destroy an entire nation.  So far, air is quite abundant, including the hotter kind that comes out of Trump’s mouth. Trump has even backed an anti-windfarm group although according to Newsnet Scotland, a study found that “72% of Scots backed windfarms and only 7% were 'strongly against'”.

According to research commissioned by VisitScotland, reported in Newsnet, Scotland’s tourism industry is doing quite well and a recent survey shows tourism in Scotland increased 9 per cent between 2010 and 2011, and money spent by visitors jumped by 14 per cent during what was a record breaking year for renewables.

The research, commissioned by VisitScotland, shows:

83 per cent of respondents in Scotland and 80 per cent of UK respondents stated their decision to holiday in the UK would not be affected by the presence of a wind farm

80 per cent of respondents in Scotland and 81 per cent of UK respondents either disagreed with or neither agreed nor disagreed that wind farms spoil the look of the Scottish countryside

46% of respondents said that they would be interested in visiting a visitor centre at a wind farm.

The best thing that can happen to Scotland is if Trump got on a plane and left.