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How would you deal with illiquid assets? I can't imagine a republican taking the business they spent their whole life building and putting it into a trust mana

• pjc50 6y ago
  If they don't want to do that, they could always not become a politician? Maybe leave some space for people who aren't business owners, who are spectacularly over-represented?
  • wpietri 6y ago
    Exactly. With 325 million people, we shouldn't have a problem finding 542 elected officials who are willing to put their full-time focus on the job.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• TuringNYC 6y ago
  On the contrary! In some cases, individuals strive for elected/appointed office because there are clauses which allow for penalty-free exits from locked-up equity. I realize this doesnt help for illiquid assets, but it does help for assets where you are locked into vesting schedules.
• wpietri 6y ago
  I'm not seeing the bad part here. Every day there are people who sell off their business and go do something else. If an owner isn't ready for that, well, they can keep running the business. I also think it's fine if the trust doesn't really manage the business, but instead just sells it off and puts the money in stock and bond index funds. And I think it's not just Republicans who would have to do some hard thinking here. Bloomberg is a Democrat, for example. Does he want to be president, or does he want to run Bloomberg? Both of those seem like plenty for one person to do. I think it's reasonable to say that if he wants to be our leading public servant for a number of years, he should sell off his business to people who have time to focus on it.