How Much Does a Politician Cost? | Hacker News Reader

How Much Does a Politician Cost?

theintercept.com

23 pointsbainsfather14 comments

> While Volcker had used high interest rates to engineer a crushing recession at the start of Reagan’s first term, he then allowed the economy to expand rapidly just in time to carry Reagan to a landslide reelection in 1984.

Is it really true that one person controls the whole economy?

And if so, why does Glass-Steagall matter one way or the other?

How could Volcker on the one hand crash the economy himself, and then immediately un-crash it, while on the other hand being the guardian of Glass-Steagall, supposedly the only defense against... crashing the economy?

This story seems to be more mythmaking than science.

Either this author does not understand basic economics or they are intentionally misrepresenting what Volcker did.

Volcker raised interest rates because of 1) high inflation, 2) tight access to capital, and 3) weak US dollar. By any measurement, the US was already in a recession before he even came to office.

What this author implies is exactly the opposite of what happened -- that rather than responding to a recession, he created one. And although high interest rates definitely had negative consequences, continuing with the previous mometary policies would have been worse.

> representatives who voted in favor of finance often received $200,000-$300,000 from that sector, which raised the odds of switching by 25-40 percent.

Quite cheap, given the magnitude of the results.

Lobbying has one of the highest ROIs of any activities a company can do. I have seen statistics where they showed an average ROI of 100x and more.

So what's preventing market saturation from everyone lobbying until the ROI drops to something sane?

I was wondering about that too. I think lobbying is only one side of it but there is also the threat of attacks ads from super PACs. They often don't even have to spend the money because the threat alone is enough. And that is much more money.

Market theory doesn't apply. The group against which lobbying efforts are directed is often the American people - and they are not organized enough to 'enter the market's.

On issues where there are > 1 powerful organized constituencies in the lobbying market, this is exactly what happens.

However, many issues have just a single "market participant" which is organized enough to participate, and then the ROI is really high.

Unfortunately, not as much as one would hope. Apparently $1000 is enough to move the needle for a member of the House.

Baking an apple pie when selling your house makes people pay tens of thousands of dollars more for it, on average.

Or those Hare Krishnas that give out worthless flowers as a "gift" to get you to donate.

It might not be greed, though whatever it is is hardly desirable.

Baking an apple pie is a ridiculous conceit.

Just use cookie fragrance spray:

https://demeterfragrance.com/chocolate-chip-cookie.html

That smells like over-fitting:

>For every $1,000 a representative received from corporations supporting net neutrality, like Google or Netflix, they were 24 percent more likely to vote for it. For every $1,000 from companies opposing it, they were 2.6 percent more likely to vote against.

A 10x differece in magnitude, by directionality?

We also have no notion of correlation/causation here. If a rep has shown herself previously to support my interests, by speeches, ideas, or whatever, I'm more likely to donate to her next campaign. The question is: are there lawmakers who voted one way (or "neutrally"), then changed after the cash came in?

It's not like you need to buy everyone in the majority party. Just a few influential members and the rest will follow

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