"Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise" and Other Thought-Provoking Quotes

Artist  Maurizio Catelan, in article about the Guggenheim museum declining President Trump's request for a Van Gogh for the White House, but offering instead Catelan's solid gold toilet,

“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he has said.

From a paper called "The Economic Roots of the Rise of Trumpism" from the German Center for Economic Studies in Munich (CESifo) we see that many US children don't even get the $2 hotdogs:

 "Six million children are reported for maltreatment to U.S. agencies annually,33 and five children die daily due to abuse or neglect.34"

If you follow the links on the two footnotes, the six million figure is lower than the source, though it apparently covers a wide range of issues reported.  The figure from the second footnote is 1670 deaths per year, which divided by 365 days equals 4.57 which they rounded up to 5.  But it's still a shocking number.  If these numbers are accurate, then more kids in the US die from neglect or abuse by their parents than in school shootings.

This is a purely economic look that offers lots of interesting statistics that they use to explain Trump's election.  It doesn't seem to consider other contributing factors.


Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leader in UK (From BBC) on what would change if he becomes Prime Minister:

"A Labour government, he said, 'will take decisive action to make finance the servant of industry, not the masters of us all'". 

Rachel Crooks quoted in a Washington Post article about how the forced kiss she got (when she was a 22 year old office worker) from Trump affected her life:

“It was one of the first real failures or defeats of my life, where the world wasn’t what I hoped it was going to be, and I started to really doubt myself,” she said.

“Nobody would touch you, especially not Trump. You look like a boy. A gun to your head would be good for our nation.”  (Annonymous email to Crooks) 

This next quote from ImperfectCognitions seems a perfect response to all the Trump supporters who deny the truth of her story, including friends and relatives:

"You’re arguing with someone – about politics, or a policy at work, or about whose turn it is to do the dishes – and they keep finding all kinds of self-serving justifications for their view. When one of their arguments is defeated, rather than rethinking their position they just leap to another argument, then maybe another. They’re rationalizing –coming up with convenient defenses for what they want to believe, rather than responding even-handedly to the points you're making. You try to point it out, but they deny it, and dig in more."

The article is well worth reading.  It goes on to say that those who think they are more rational and wouldn't let their biases affect their judgment are possibly more susceptible because they think they aren't.