U.S. Congress Live Net Worth Tracker | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Congress Live Net Worth Tracker

quiverquant.com

46 pointsgmays33 comments

How can any of these people have a net worth less than $50k? Surely they have a car or house. Two cars and they are already close to $50K. Any house in California will be a minimum of half a million and that's a burned down garage without plumbing.

EDIT: Looking through the data it includes physical assets such as personal residential property, automobiles, and airplanes.

I believe it's just stock portfolios as net worth, but I could be wrong

No, as it also lists bank accounts and 401k: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Alexa...

I reckon this is only measuring the size of their stock portfolio.

From the bottom of the page:

>This estimate does not include the value of the individual's primary residence, or any outstanding liabilities.

Shouldn't it just be called a Portfolio Tracker then?

If they wanted to include the primary residence, they could. The data is out there. Zillow lists historical sale prices for any house.

number one got rich by [1] fleecing (fraud) the federal gvt - through his hospitals. no prison, just fine - and he's now in the senate.

[1]: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article...

I'm really only interested in their net worth change after taking office.

that would be an interesting visual

The richest congress members got there through insider trading, like Nancy Pelosi's purchase of NVDA calls right before the American Semiconductor funding was announced.

Congress should be paid well - probably more than $174k per year if we want the best and the brightest. Congress should also be completely banned from any sort of individual stock trading, and closely monitored for passing insider info.

They simply have access to too much information. Everything they and their spouse or partner own should be in a blind trust from the time they win a primary election until they've been out of office for some set period of time, say 10 years, since the information they get especially on committees related to the treasury, commerce, and national intelligence, has impacts lasting years.

It should be impossible to go from a nobody to achieving generational wealth in a decade due to legally protected insider trading. Trading is zero sum - someone sold those NVDA calls to Pelosi and lost millions. Information asymmetry just makes this legally protected theft with extra steps.

Agreed on most points, but do know that options market makers would be hedged on that position so likely didn't lose anything significant. However, by frontrunning the market Pelosi created worse conditions for other investors.

Let them trade whatever they want — but publish their trades and delay execution for 48 hours.

Yeah, 24-48 hours advance notice would be a better option IMO, then anyone could follow along.

Hell, you could have funds based on congressional trades.

I think a company came out with ETFs for this already. Nancy Pelosi and the democrats have one called NANC and Ted Cruz and the republicans have KRUZ.

They don't have to report until months after the trade in practice (nothing happens when they do it late) and something like a month after in law.

There already are multiple ETFs and other trackers that follow Congressional trades.

If you use Autopilot (no affiliation) it will even update your holdings every time the targeted people change their investments.

But that is still a month and a half delay, depending on how well reporting is. Likely well after what ever money making event occurs.

I know that congress is required to disclose trades, but what is the required timeline on that? Like is it days, hours, or months later?

They are required to disclose trades within 45 days of the trade.

And often don't meet those timelines.

It would be fun to have a law that said once your family's net worth rose above some factor of the poverty line you'd be ineligible for higher office.

Yes, I recognize the multitude of problems this presents, but it's fun to consider the implications.

I wish they'd go a step farther and require members of Congress, staff and immediate family disclose any stock trades at least 24 hours ahead of the exchange.

The fact that existing exclosure timelines and reporting are bad enough.

Maybe Rep Massey could make ESP32 badges for the other members with this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37840547

What is the point of a live net worth tracker if it is just an estimate. This could be table in a wikipedia page based on the margin of error and amount of guesswork invovled

> What is the point of a live net worth tracker if it is just an estimate?

Sensationalist propaganda.

Far more interested in a list of the names and assets of the people who lobby them.

Members of Congress shouldn't be allowed to accumulate this kind of obscene wealth - full stop. The only details up for debate is where we draw the line & how to aggressively enforce it.

They aren't "accumulating" it, they just have it. The top four, for sure, are wealthy from activities and careers prior to entering congress, often by a spouse or family.

Your rule would basically amount to "no rich people allowed to serve in government", which seems arguably even worse.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that would be worse?

I don’t personally think it’s a helpful restriction but I’m curious what problems you believe it would cause.

For starters, you’re prepackaging the overthrow committee.

Can you elaborate a little bit? I'm unclear on your meeting.

It explicitly isolates people with tremendous power from the levers of official power. That pretty much guarantees you'll have a shadow government. (A competing power centre. Less Q Anon and more gangs in South America.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com