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> Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions". Please explain for me how that is so,

> Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions". Please explain for me how that is so, without diverting into claiming that they're being handed tens of millions of dollars secretly under the table. I'm familiar with how campaign contributions work and the legal regulations involved, including what they're allowed to do - and not do - with the money. How do campaign contributions from military industrial complex firms translate into Congressional members getting obscenely rich? Every single Congressional member would have been better off buying any number of dozens of various traditional tech stocks than any of the military industrial stocks (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, etc.). Amazon/Netflix/Apple/Microsoft/Google/Facebook/Tesla/etc. > Northrop Cloudflare is up more since its IPO than Boeing is over ~15 years. Watch out for those CDN campaign contributions?

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> Please explain for me how that is so, without diverting into claiming that they're being handed tens of millions of dollars secretly under the table. There are two aspects to this. The first is campaign contributions. Recent US Presidential election campaigns have exceeded a billion dollars. House and Senate races have been millions to hundreds of millions, per election. The people "giving" this money are not doing so out of altruism. It's not secret money under the table, it's all open and disclosed, but nobody thinks it has no effect on behavior. At best the representatives are entirely scrupulous and never allow the money to affect their positions, but then the candidates with pro-corporate positions find it easier to raise money, the money allows them to buy more advertising, and the candidates who want to shovel tax dollars into corporate coffers win more elections. The second is the revolving door. You go serve some time in Congress, do what the corporations want, and when you retire or fail to win re-election because your constituents got fed up with what you were doing, you have a cushy job paying six, seven, eight figures a year waiting for you after. Or that job goes to a member of your family while you're still in office.
sdenton4 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  That's definitely a problem, although the examples in the US are things like the SEC and the FCC, i.e. unelected officials.
Godel_unicode 5y ago
People have made much about how the Pelosi fortune has grown in the last 20 years, but they seem to have overlooked the fact that they would actually have done better to just invest in the S&P500.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> Please explain for me how that is so, without diverting into claiming that they're being handed tens of millions of dollars secretly under the table. There are two aspects to this. The first is campaign contributions. Recent US Presidential election campaigns have exceeded a billion dollars. House and Senate races have been millions to hundreds of millions, per election. The people "giving" this money are not doing so out of altruism. It's not secret money under the table, it's all open and disclosed, but nobody thinks it has no effect on behavior. At best the representatives are entirely scrupulous and never allow the money to affect their positions, but then the candidates with pro-corporate positions find it easier to raise money, the money allows them to buy more advertising, and the candidates who want to shovel tax dollars into corporate coffers win more elections. The second is the revolving door. You go serve some time in Congress, do what the corporations want, and when you retire or fail to win re-election because your constituents got fed up with what you were doing, you have a cushy job paying six, seven, eight figures a year waiting for you after. Or that job goes to a member of your family while you're still in office.

sdenton4 5y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

Godel_unicode 5y ago
That's definitely a problem, although the examples in the US are things like the SEC and the FCC, i.e. unelected officials.

Godel_unicode 5y ago

People have made much about how the Pelosi fortune has grown in the last 20 years, but they seem to have overlooked the fact that they would actually have done better to just invest in the S&P500.