7 ms·

Isn't Pelosi worth like 100 million or something? How much money is enough for these people? :( How quickly are these trades made public? Maybe we should just

by akudha 6y ago

Isn't Pelosi worth like 100 million or something? How much money is enough for these people? :( How quickly are these trades made public? Maybe we should just copy the congress people's trades and make some profit ourselves :P

kennywinker 6y ago
Well, according to the US supreme court, money is speech - so more money more voice. As a concrete example, trump backed his own campaign to the tune of ~$66mil. Without it, I'm not sure he would have gotten as far as he did. (I'm not endorsing this, I'm just saying these are the rules of the game that's been set up) And to answer your second question - not quick enough for the public to act on it.
frockington1 6y ago
Clearance time varies but can take months. They've already collected profits by the time they are disclosed
eloff 6y ago
> How much money is enough for these people? :( What kind of attitude is that? If you have savings, one seeks a return on said savings by investing them. That's perfectly normal and rational behavior at all wealth levels.
- gowld 6y ago
  "normal and rational" is different from "ethical or moral". "All wealth levels" are not the same.
  - tastyfreeze 6y ago
    It is not immoral or unethical for somebody to have or earn more money than another. All people try to increase their wealth however they can. At lower income levels that is very difficult but the behavior is the same.
  - eloff 6y ago
    Let me strengthen my position by adding that it is also moral and ethical to seek a return by investing, providing you make reasonably ethical investments. Maybe not in the coal industry or whale meat industry - but any number of things can be perfectly ethical and even beneficial to society at large.
    - akudha 6y ago
      Does reasonably ethical investments include using insider knowledge? Which is what these politicians seem to be doing. Sure it is not illegal, but is it ethical?
      - eloff 6y ago
        I'm not advocating for insider investing - which may well be going on here. That's obviously not ethical. I made a much more general statement in my comment, which you seemingly objected to.
      - pc86 6y ago
        This took a left turn when someone started just complaining that people have a lot of money.
  - dysrend 6y ago
    It fails to comply in either case.
- blunte 6y ago
  Let me phrase the question differently: How much money is enough if you already have $100M and to gain more, you have to manipulate and cheat? But even without changing the question, $100M invested in a very low risk manner will generate considerable cash flow (if you regularly take some profits). So without even spending your "savings", you can live very comfortably. However, a special thing happens when you are high net worth. You suddenly have a lot of lenders begging to loan you money at very low interest rates. They need a place to put money, and they know you have assets to cover any loan they might give you. So you, the wealthy individual with $100M in assets, CAN still go buy nice stuff even if your cash flow from your investments isn't huge. Honestly, unless you just need to show people how much money you can drop because you're so rich you don't care, you don't actually have to spend any of your money to live bigly.
  - eloff 6y ago
    > How much money is enough if you already have $100M and to gain more, you have to manipulate and cheat? Yeah, that's not a good at any wealth level. > But even without changing the question, $100M invested in a very low risk manner will generate considerable cash flow (if you regularly take some profits) Sure. But individual risk appetites vary and at that wealth level you can afford to diversify like crazy - and should in my opinion. I'm not sure what that had to do with anything.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Manipulation and cheating is wrong regardless of the amount of money. Tossing the monetary value just aims to inflame passions and try to make an emotional appeal.
- burkaman 6y ago
  It is not rational once you have enough money for you and those you care about to be infinitely comfortable for the rest of your lives. Say you have $100,000 in the bank, and you want to spend $10,000. What's the best use of that money? For a normal self-interested person, a rational use would be to invest in whatever will give the largest return, in order to have enough money for living expenses, retirement, children, whatever. Now, say you have $100 million, and you want to spend $10 million. What's the best use of that money? Seeking a purely financial return is completely pointless. It will have absolutely no impact on your life or future, or those of the people you care about. So as a person with a normal amount of self-interest who also cares about other things in the world, the most rational behavior would be to donate it to a cause you care about, or start some purposeful organization, or anything that will have a positive impact on something or someone you value. At this level of wealth, just making more money has no positive impact on anybody, even yourself. I guess it's possible that Pelosi is saving up in order to start a SpaceX competitor or buy an NBA team or something once she leaves Congress, but she's 81 so that seems unlikely.
  - philsnow 6y ago
    > At this level of wealth, just making more money has no positive impact on anybody, even yourself. except that having capital makes it easier to gain more capital, so you could very well end up with more impact by aggressively investing for a few years before donating.
    - burkaman 6y ago
      Ok, say you invest that $10 million and a year later it's grown to $12 million. That's a decent return, but what was the opportunity cost of investing in Microsoft instead of, I don't know, funding 100 people on GoFundMe who are going to die if they can't afford surgery? The US government uses ~$10 million as the value of a human life when they analyze the cost/benefit of various policies. And it's a compounding investment - a dead person contributes nothing to society, but a living one might contribute quite a bit. That's just one example though, you could make an argument for any number of worthwhile uses for that money. Even something like venture capital or political organizing, which aren't exactly selfless philanthropic endeavors. And again, I'm talking about 10% of what's in the bank. You could donate $10 million, invest $60 million, and still have an absurd amount left to buy a few houses or whatever you want for yourself. All while risking nothing, if you hold onto $10 million or so to secure your future. My argument is that there's some threshold after which you have enough money to support yourself, and to invest to maintain your way of life, and to do something purposeful with the rest. And I think that threshold is below $100 million. I agree that it takes money to make money, but as you say, after "a few years" of investing, you do something with it. When does that happen? Do you need to hit a billion first?
BurningFrog 6y ago
Any sum is fine as long as you got it honestly. The problem with Pelosi and others is that the money comes from abusing their power, and is in effect taken from other investors.
- Yoofie 6y ago
  The most amazing thing is that these people keep getting re-elected. The voters are the ones allowing this to happen.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I don't agree, I think that tax load after 100 million (or some similar ridiculous figure) should be ludicrously high. Taxes never stopped rich people from wanting to become richer, lets just make it a bit harder and put that money back into circulation.
busymom0 6y ago
Last I checked couple years ago, she was worth $140 million. She's worth even more now. I am not against non politician people having tons of money. I am against politicians getting rich using insider trading. And the same politicians also accusing their political opponents of doing the very thing they are doing themselves - even more. Hypocrisy and double standards is what makes me disgusted. There's not a single profession I can think of where someone would gladly be working when they are 80 years old. House and Senate needs term limits. 8 years max. No one should be allowed to become a life long politician and get rich off of it. But unfortunately, what we want is different from what we get. There's no way these politicians will pass bills to limit their own terms. These people convince the ordinary people that they are all moral and care about them. But meanwhile they are getting rich off of public's trust in them.

by akudha 6y ago

kennywinker 6y ago

Well, according to the US supreme court, money is speech - so more money more voice. As a concrete example, trump backed his own campaign to the tune of ~$66mil. Without it, I'm not sure he would have gotten as far as he did. (I'm not endorsing this, I'm just saying these are the rules of the game that's been set up) And to answer your second question - not quick enough for the public to act on it.

frockington1 6y ago

Clearance time varies but can take months. They've already collected profits by the time they are disclosed

eloff 6y ago

> How much money is enough for these people? :( What kind of attitude is that? If you have savings, one seeks a return on said savings by investing them. That's perfectly normal and rational behavior at all wealth levels.

gowld 6y ago
"normal and rational" is different from "ethical or moral". "All wealth levels" are not the same.
- tastyfreeze 6y ago
  It is not immoral or unethical for somebody to have or earn more money than another. All people try to increase their wealth however they can. At lower income levels that is very difficult but the behavior is the same.
- eloff 6y ago
  Let me strengthen my position by adding that it is also moral and ethical to seek a return by investing, providing you make reasonably ethical investments. Maybe not in the coal industry or whale meat industry - but any number of things can be perfectly ethical and even beneficial to society at large.
  - akudha 6y ago
    Does reasonably ethical investments include using insider knowledge? Which is what these politicians seem to be doing. Sure it is not illegal, but is it ethical?
    - eloff 6y ago
      I'm not advocating for insider investing - which may well be going on here. That's obviously not ethical. I made a much more general statement in my comment, which you seemingly objected to.
    - pc86 6y ago
      This took a left turn when someone started just complaining that people have a lot of money.
- dysrend 6y ago
  It fails to comply in either case.
blunte 6y ago
Let me phrase the question differently: How much money is enough if you already have $100M and to gain more, you have to manipulate and cheat? But even without changing the question, $100M invested in a very low risk manner will generate considerable cash flow (if you regularly take some profits). So without even spending your "savings", you can live very comfortably. However, a special thing happens when you are high net worth. You suddenly have a lot of lenders begging to loan you money at very low interest rates. They need a place to put money, and they know you have assets to cover any loan they might give you. So you, the wealthy individual with $100M in assets, CAN still go buy nice stuff even if your cash flow from your investments isn't huge. Honestly, unless you just need to show people how much money you can drop because you're so rich you don't care, you don't actually have to spend any of your money to live bigly.
- eloff 6y ago
  > How much money is enough if you already have $100M and to gain more, you have to manipulate and cheat? Yeah, that's not a good at any wealth level. > But even without changing the question, $100M invested in a very low risk manner will generate considerable cash flow (if you regularly take some profits) Sure. But individual risk appetites vary and at that wealth level you can afford to diversify like crazy - and should in my opinion. I'm not sure what that had to do with anything.
- pc86 6y ago
  Manipulation and cheating is wrong regardless of the amount of money. Tossing the monetary value just aims to inflame passions and try to make an emotional appeal.
burkaman 6y ago
It is not rational once you have enough money for you and those you care about to be infinitely comfortable for the rest of your lives. Say you have $100,000 in the bank, and you want to spend $10,000. What's the best use of that money? For a normal self-interested person, a rational use would be to invest in whatever will give the largest return, in order to have enough money for living expenses, retirement, children, whatever. Now, say you have $100 million, and you want to spend $10 million. What's the best use of that money? Seeking a purely financial return is completely pointless. It will have absolutely no impact on your life or future, or those of the people you care about. So as a person with a normal amount of self-interest who also cares about other things in the world, the most rational behavior would be to donate it to a cause you care about, or start some purposeful organization, or anything that will have a positive impact on something or someone you value. At this level of wealth, just making more money has no positive impact on anybody, even yourself. I guess it's possible that Pelosi is saving up in order to start a SpaceX competitor or buy an NBA team or something once she leaves Congress, but she's 81 so that seems unlikely.
- philsnow 6y ago
  > At this level of wealth, just making more money has no positive impact on anybody, even yourself. except that having capital makes it easier to gain more capital, so you could very well end up with more impact by aggressively investing for a few years before donating.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    Ok, say you invest that $10 million and a year later it's grown to $12 million. That's a decent return, but what was the opportunity cost of investing in Microsoft instead of, I don't know, funding 100 people on GoFundMe who are going to die if they can't afford surgery? The US government uses ~$10 million as the value of a human life when they analyze the cost/benefit of various policies. And it's a compounding investment - a dead person contributes nothing to society, but a living one might contribute quite a bit. That's just one example though, you could make an argument for any number of worthwhile uses for that money. Even something like venture capital or political organizing, which aren't exactly selfless philanthropic endeavors. And again, I'm talking about 10% of what's in the bank. You could donate $10 million, invest $60 million, and still have an absurd amount left to buy a few houses or whatever you want for yourself. All while risking nothing, if you hold onto $10 million or so to secure your future. My argument is that there's some threshold after which you have enough money to support yourself, and to invest to maintain your way of life, and to do something purposeful with the rest. And I think that threshold is below $100 million. I agree that it takes money to make money, but as you say, after "a few years" of investing, you do something with it. When does that happen? Do you need to hit a billion first?

BurningFrog 6y ago

Any sum is fine as long as you got it honestly. The problem with Pelosi and others is that the money comes from abusing their power, and is in effect taken from other investors.

Yoofie 6y ago
The most amazing thing is that these people keep getting re-elected. The voters are the ones allowing this to happen.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I don't agree, I think that tax load after 100 million (or some similar ridiculous figure) should be ludicrously high. Taxes never stopped rich people from wanting to become richer, lets just make it a bit harder and put that money back into circulation.

busymom0 6y ago

Last I checked couple years ago, she was worth $140 million. She's worth even more now. I am not against non politician people having tons of money. I am against politicians getting rich using insider trading. And the same politicians also accusing their political opponents of doing the very thing they are doing themselves - even more. Hypocrisy and double standards is what makes me disgusted. There's not a single profession I can think of where someone would gladly be working when they are 80 years old. House and Senate needs term limits. 8 years max. No one should be allowed to become a life long politician and get rich off of it. But unfortunately, what we want is different from what we get. There's no way these politicians will pass bills to limit their own terms. These people convince the ordinary people that they are all moral and care about them. But meanwhile they are getting rich off of public's trust in them.