Many of us have to work for decades to gather this amount of money, if even possible. Not even taking in account that we need to spend most of it to go through this amount of time.
[edit] Now, I think I should focus on other things. Average politicians can earn (/s) 50x more money in 5 years than what average programer earns in 190+ years.
Some also clean up by taking huge speaking fees for giving speeches, but only those at the top with heavy celebrity power. Can you usually pull this one off.
What makes you think that?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/13/us/politics/c...
The 10th best position was 63% better than the s&p. That’s just a touch better than keeping your money in qqq.
There might be evidence of congressional insider trading but the bare numbers aren’t it. In a population of 540 people you’d probably find similar outliers to what that article outlines.
The key thing is that of 100 trading members of Congress -of which not one (I believe) is a professional, full-time stock trader — 33% beat the SPY, and that this has been consistently true… the average professional, full-time trader can’t consistently do that.
You might not see evidence of fire, but I definitely see evidence of smoke.
But more importantly your understanding of how trading is judged is flawed. It is trivial to find a population of traders that includes 33% of them that beat the market last year. In fact you can do so going back every year through time.
What is hard (but not impossible) is to find a single trader who has done that consistently for many years. That’s because beating the market isn’t interesting, it’s beating it on a risk adjusted basis which is.
In fact your linked article hints at this. The most active traders in Congress _under_ performed the markets.
There simply isn’t evidence in aggregate that Congress people get market advantage through information only they have.
Yes, you can cherry-pick a population that doesn’t have insider information where 33% beat the market in any given year, but you wouldn’t expect that same population to consistently beat the market, year over year. In fact the whole argument for index funds is that, in aggregate, no one, including professional traders or anyone else without unfair market advantage, consistently and reliably beats the market itself over the long run. But it seems here’s a population that both inarguably has insider information and where 33% does consistently beat the market over and over, year after year.
Lack of evidence also simply isn’t particularly relevant, as the point isn’t to convict the legislator — who has the power to ensure such evidence isn’t available, and even if it were that it wouldn’t represent a crime, and even if it did that they wouldn’t be punished, etc — but instead to convince the voter to consider whether or not their vote should go to someone who disagrees with the notion that Caesar must be beyond reproach.
Every other congress person would have been better off in an index fund as expected. Its easy to write dramatic headlines about Congress people trading, and there are very good reasons that they shouldn't (it influencing their votes is top of that) but there is very little evidence of any significant information advantage in the trading positions or returns of congress people.
they get rich the old way, literal bags of money. you cannot win a big construction job without bags of money that go from the engineer to the govt inspector, then the inspector to the mayor, then to the governor. if you did up anything paid by tax, you will find that foundations are always missing several meters of concrete that are in the plan and paid for.
If celebrity speakers aren't worth anywhere near that, what are banks and multinationals and industry events bribing ex-sports coaches and actors for?
And of course even the politicians get paid by a lot of entities that aren't obvious beneficiaries. Boris Johnson might be as sleazy as former PMs get, but I'm really struggling to understand any quid pro quo with the Indian newspaper or Portuguese TV channel that both paid him north of $250k for a single keynote, and I don't think he ever had much influence on insurance brokers in Colorado either
Sheesh. Not even worth debating.
Sheesh.... almost like you don't have any arguments for what Colorado brokers have to thank a former British PM for, never mind what favours Goldman Sachs got from David Beckham or LL Cool J other than a clearly very expensive speech
You're not thinking like a hacker at all if you can't concoct theoretical ways that rich and powerful people might find themselves unexpectedly interconnected, and able to non-obviously do each other favors - perhaps even in round-robin fashion at times.
Regardless, on those examples you gave, I don't think it was a Portuguese TV channel, I think it was a global CNN summit which happened in Lisbon (but please correct me if I'm wrong).
Also, The Hindustan Times (which is the Indian newspaper I think you're referring to) is also not exactly a small media outlet with a circulation more than double that of the Times of London (based on the most recent numbers for The Times in 2020).
Additionally, a significant number of British citizens have family ties with India, and are likely to continue to follow English language news in India, so it's not simply 'some foreign newspaper'.
Some random backbencher isn't getting Johnson or Clinton sized speaking fees.
Johnson himself started his career as a journalist.
I'm well aware of Boris' journalistic career; I've even read some of his waffle. You share his flair for insinuation and missing the point so I wish you good luck with your own campaign to be PM ;-)
I really doubt there is a quid pro quo here — “I’ll help you out now in exchange for paying me off after I’m done with the presidency”
The value is like the value of any high-end brand — it makes one look powerful.
Why does some generic reality TV celebrity or "influencer" make money from showing up at a party or turning on some Xmas lights? Surely no one really cares, there are 1000s of reality TV stars. But, it turns out some people do care, so cookie-cutter reality TV celebrity gets paid to turn up.
In "high net worth" (for want of a better term) social circles ex-Presidents are the reality TV celebrities, and the people who want them to turn up are rich, so they get paid a lot for the equivalent of turning on the Xmas lights.
I suspect its not really about the speech, it's about having them in the same room and giving your guests the chance at a face-to-face meeting.
Of course Obama may be more discerning with which events he attends, but the demand for people like him to turn up is certainly real.
> How can't you see for what it truly is??
Essentially implies it isn't.
Look, there's some amount of money that's you're willing to spend on hearing someone you want to listen to speak/perform. Assuming you've ever gone to a concert or a show, that's true, so the rest is down to details. Would you pay $1 to watch former President Obama speak? $2? What's the cost of a dollar to you? If you're willing to spend $2 to see former President Obama speak, why wouldn't your rich friend spend $2, or their friend $4? If someone's got enough money that they're willing to pay a million dollars to hear someone speak, it's more a reflection on how much money they have and how little it means to them than anything else.
If I had a million dollars I'd spend it on other things but if I had a hundred million dollars, I'd totally spend a million to hear a former president speak, or have Taylor Swift play my birthday party.
Rich people spend their money differently than poor people, or are you too poor to see that?
Let's say a pillow cost $2, a contractor will charge $600. 10 politicians will get $550 dollars and the contractor will keep $50.
Of course, this is an unpopular idea.
You’re welcome, I’m not saying you don’t need money to participate in the experience of being a human. But there is more power in our belief in their unit (as this particular experience exposes about one store of value…. It certainly says about another.
The joker is real. ;)
Although in all seriousness, what is going on in your life?