[HN Gopher] "Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill
___________________________________________________________________
"Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill
Author : mhb
Score : 764 points
Date : 2025-12-03 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nber.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nber.org)
| mahatofu wrote:
| How does one find out what stocks each Rep owns?
| burkaman wrote:
| https://unusualwhales.com/portfolios/pro-congress-etf
| stego-tech wrote:
| Unusual Whales keeps track of Congressional disclosures and
| even built ETFs around each party's picks:
| https://unusualwhales.com/politics
|
| It's absolutely disgusting that this sort of Insider Trading
| has been allowed to continue unchecked, and a significant
| contributor to the normalization of American corruption and its
| associated regulatory capture.
| andsoitis wrote:
| See https://www.investopedia.com/how-to-find-lawmaker-
| investment... for the official disclosure portals, as well as
| some unofficial trackers.
| showerst wrote:
| They have to fill out a disclosure form, but it's on a 30 day
| delay, often more because they file late.
|
| Be wary of all the third party congressional stock trackers for
| this reason.
| threatofrain wrote:
| By the time you factor in the information you're too late.
| derrida wrote:
| Ask one of them to lunch, slip them an envelope.
| burkaman wrote:
| Incorrect title, the finding is "lawmakers who later ascend to
| leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers
| beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually
| after ascension." This is saying that people in congressional
| leadership positions do 47% better than other members of
| Congress.
| exasperaited wrote:
| The more committees you are on, the more opportunities you have
| for informed medium term trading that escapes insider-dealing
| scrutiny. It's a fundamental problem with government and it is
| why politicians should be required to put their stocks in a
| blind trust. But it still doesn't solve the problem of blind
| trusts not being truly blind when you know what went into them.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > it is why politicians should be required to put their
| stocks in a blind trust
|
| Don't these people get a salary already? If "serving the
| people" isn't enough as an incentive, maybe they shouldn't be
| in a position for serving the people?
|
| Outlaw politicians owning stocks at all, it makes no sense
| they ever could in the first place, when the incentives are
| so obviously misaligned. It simply lives too much room for
| misbehaving actors, no matter how much bandage you put on
| top.
| _heimdall wrote:
| It makes more sense when the government isn't as powerful
| as it is today. If we didn't ask or expect our governments
| to do so much the politicians would have much less
| advantage over the average person.
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't want people in congress as a career. Do it for at
| most 2 terms and get back to the real world. When that is
| the reality it means we cannot take away their ability to
| have stocks because when they return "to the real world"
| they will need that savings. Though while in office they
| should be limited to buying and selling from blind trusts
| and such things where they cannot know what happens except
| the economy in general. However if they own stock before it
| isn't fair to make them sell it: this is a really hard
| problem and there probably isn't an answer I will be happy
| with.
| mothballed wrote:
| I would use straight up sortition rather than voting for
| congress. Propel people into the job from obscurity, by
| the time they've learned how to game the system it is
| time to leave.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Don't we get the same problem? You win the lottery, now
| you're a senator, and by the way, I have nice brown bag
| for you.
| mothballed wrote:
| Only if you theorize that power corruption is a step
| function, and that there isn't survivor bias and
| influence during the process of getting to the point
| where you can even win an election.
|
| Running an election campaign as anyone but a filthy rich
| person means you have to accept a brown bag at the
| beginning with a lot of implied conditions. Sortition
| means it's at least possible you get someone who isn't
| looking for the brown bag.
| lordnacho wrote:
| That's a good point actually.
| greedo wrote:
| Lord Acton has a few words about power etc. I don't think
| most people selected ala Cincinnatus for greatness have
| the ability to demure when venturing into government at
| high levels. Quid Pro Quo...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Sortition means it's at least possible you get someone
| who isn't looking for the brown bag.
|
| I mean sure, but sortition has tons of it's own problems,
| and it's actually pretty easy to reduce the requirement
| to take a bag before you can run a campaign, because this
| is something every other democratic country manages.
|
| The US is the only country that allows you to run
| campaign adverts _years_ ahead of time. That 's
| expensive. The US has no limits to campaign contributions
| in the first place, and no ceiling on campaign spending.
| The US has loudly declared that it is right and just that
| the mega rich oil Baron can pay for literally every
| single campaign if they want, and unilaterally control
| who has access to his funds for getting elected. The US
| Supreme court has declared that it is a good thing that
| the oil baron can always outspend average people to get
| their needs heard.
|
| Maybe fix the part of our country where we allowed the
| supreme court to insist that more money should give you
| more access and control over government. Maybe fix the
| part where half the country insists that we should elect
| "Businessmen" who will run a country like a "Business"
| because that's somehow a good thing, and that having
| someone who has direct business interests that are
| contrary to the interest of the general public run said
| government is a good way to do things.
|
| It's like thinking that Pharma adverts are bad and so we
| should destroy the pharma industry. Like, no, chill, just
| ban pharma adverts like the rest of the world.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The thing is that bribery is technically illegal. Of
| course it's completely ubiquitous, but it's _generally_
| (FFS Menendez) done in a nuanced and practiced way.
| Newcomers are not always going to be willing to accept
| bribes, and actually trying to offer them one would
| require much more overtness, which enters rapidly into
| the domain of clear criminality, to say nothing of when
| your bribe attempt is rejected. And these are the issues
| with just one guy - with hundreds of politicians
| regularly cycling in and out, this scale of bribery is
| just not realistic.
|
| The bigger risk with sortition is that power isn't
| granted through a title, but through people agreeing to
| respect that title. If the authority of that title ends
| up being undermined, then it's entirely possible for
| power to shift from our representatives to other,
| probably more entrenched, groups. One could argue that on
| many issues this is already the case. For instance
| Congress ostensibly has oversight over the intelligence
| agencies but the power relationship there is completely
| reversed. For those that don't know, Congressmen don't
| have classified access by default. Millions of people in
| the US have classified clearance, but the people
| representing the country at the highest level - nah, why
| would they need such a thing?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yeah this is exactly it, there's no good way to prevent
| congress from sharing inside information to enrich people
| around them in the wake of personal bans... we just need
| term limits to reduce the surface area
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| For reps, I'm okay with four terms for a total of eight
| years.
|
| Less sure on senators.
|
| But on the whole I agree with term limits for Congress.
|
| The problem is getting the house full of lifers to agree
| to the real swamp of government (it's Congress).
| alistairSH wrote:
| Good news, the average career in the House is already 8
| years, so no new law needed! The Senate average is 11
| years, so it's already less than 2 terms, no change
| needed there either!
|
| I'm only half kidding - yes, there are outliers, many of
| whom probably should have retired years ago (but not
| because they've been around too long, but because they're
| simply too old to do the job - Pelosi and McConnell come
| to mind). But, the range of term limits that are usually
| discussed are already within the existing range, so it
| doesn't change all that much.
| mothballed wrote:
| Those with longer tenure though tend to end up in the
| powerful senate positions like becoming a
| majority/minority leader. Thus you end up with absolute
| fossils like Pelosi or McConnell who most recently
| basically snuck in banning hemp into the budget bill,
| which was something absolutely almost no one in the USA
| was calling for and incredibly unpopular.
|
| I doubt a minority/majority leader with only 2 terms
| would be as good at snaking in this kind of stuff in, or
| snaking their way through the politics of various
| committees to kill off proposed legislation before it's
| voted upon, that takes practice to really get good at all
| the underhanded techniques.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > they're simply too old to do the job
|
| I'd absolutely support a maximum age limit, maybe e.g. if
| you will reach 70 years of age in your term of office you
| cannot run. So a senator could be elected up to age 64. A
| Representative up to age 68. And I'd apply that to all
| elected offices. My biggest criticism of Biden vs. Trump
| was that they were both too old.
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| No, no. We want the wisdom of the older generations.
|
| We want the stability of someone who has seen life's ups
| and downs and understands there is more to life than the
| petty day to days of a presidency. There is a legacy
| beyond them and they imbue that in their policy.
|
| Age can be a symptom of your inability to do this, but it
| is not the problem.
|
| The problem is with specific mental ailments and behavior
| coming into the presidency. We should scrutinize those
| ailments heavily, and build a culture around stepping
| down when life inevitably gets to you too -- and having
| it taken from you if you do not take the opportunity for
| mutual dignity.
|
| The problems that afflicted Biden could happen to anyone
| at any age. It is a problem if any candidate experiences
| it.
|
| And I do not really think age has effectively changed
| Trump's view of the world.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a minimum age already on all those offices for
| exactly those reasons.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| It's not the overall average that matter here. What is
| average for those in leadership positions?
| komali2 wrote:
| > 't want people in congress as a career. Do it for at
| most 2 terms and get back to the real world.
|
| How realistic is this though? Getting elected to Congress
| usually means having some other prior government
| experience, or your opponents attack you with "why would
| you give this person responsibility at a congressional
| level if they've never even worked in local politics?"
| Not to mention you need name recognition, a history in
| government that people can use to understand your values
| as acted, relationships in government to accomplish
| anything.
|
| As I get older it seems that liberal democracy basically
| requires career bureaucrats to function. I'm very open to
| discussing other ways of organizing society, but if we're
| gonna do liberal democracy, seems this is the way.
| bluGill wrote:
| > How realistic is this though? Getting elected to
| Congress usually means having some other prior government
| experience, or your opponents attack you with "why would
| you give this person responsibility at a congressional
| level if they've never even worked in local politics?"
| Not to mention you need name recognition, a history in
| government that people can use to understand your values
| as acted, relationships in government to accomplish
| anything.
|
| I would contend there are plenty of people in lower
| levels who can move up or not. Was the mayor of the next
| town over any good and thus I want to send them onto
| state congress? Was a library board member two towns over
| good and I want them in the US house? For that matter, do
| they run a good honest business (there are lots of
| businesses) that I can check out locally and thus I want
| to risk them.
|
| The real key is that term limits need to apply to
| everyone and so nobody will bother asking about
| experience as there isn't anything more on their side to
| fall back on.
|
| Though in the end you are probably right - doesn't mean I
| like it.
|
| > As I get older it seems that liberal democracy
| basically requires career bureaucrats to function.
|
| I agree, but the people in congress should not be the
| career bureaucrats.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| > For that matter, do they run a good honest business
| (there are lots of businesses) that I can check out
| locally and thus I want to risk them.
|
| It's always funny to me how much people hand wring over
| politicians and then they somehow believe that putting
| someone who currently and actively has large personal
| interests and incentives to make government worse for
| people for their own gain is somehow a _good_ thing
|
| If you think politicians doing things to affect their
| bottom line through stocks is bad, surely you recognize
| how crystal clear and more direct the incentive is to do
| that kind of thing when your "asset" is your own business
| that can't be easily pivoted and depends on labor being
| cheap and desperate?
|
| Nevermind that those kind of people just usually have
| radically different worldviews about what a government
| SHOULD do, and that worldview almost never allows for
| government preventing them from harming people for profit
| QuizzicalCarbon wrote:
| It's called "term limits" and it's a good thing.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| There's bad and good to term limits. It incentivizes
| short term thinking and goals. Supreme Court judges for
| example are deliberately given lifetime seats to get rid
| of short term incentives.
| kakacik wrote:
| Go back to local politics? Why the only direction should
| be always up? At the end, who cares?
|
| Career politicians with most power who reach the top will
| always be good primarily at one thing - bullshitting
| their way to the top in various sociopathic manners that
| no power structure anywhere is immune to. Those who are
| inside the circus for 30+ years? Expect them to be rotten
| to the core while wearing very polished masks, seeing and
| dealing with the worst and staying on top. Not a place
| for a nice good hearted well intending folks.
|
| Don't expect some common good to come out of them just
| because it would be nice or proper thing to do, either
| its by mistake as a byproduct of some other effort or
| some pre-election campaign.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Think through the downstream impact of term limits...
| where does the power accumulated by long-term congressmen
| go? My guess... it flows to either/all of career
| bureaucrats, lobbyists, or career congressional aides. Do
| we really want to cede more power to groups that are not
| elected (bureaucrats, lobbyists) or elected-by-proxy
| (aides)?
| bluGill wrote:
| Depends on what power we cede. We should give them clear
| rules so they can make decisions based on their
| expertise. They should not be making the rules though
| (except as suggestions to congress - as experts this is
| an important part of their job)
| wavemode wrote:
| I take the exact opposite view. A revolving door of
| congresspeople would decrease the influence of lobbying
| (and, for that matter, the influence of political parties
| in general), because once a member of congress reaches
| their term limit they would no longer be influenced by
| campaign donations.
|
| Also, let's take a step back:
|
| > where does the power accumulated by long-term
| congressmen go
|
| We need to take a very hard look at any supposedly
| democratic system in which power is "accumulated" by
| individuals. Deeply entrenched politicians who never face
| term limits nor reelection resistance have no reason
| whatsoever to care about the will of the people.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _nor reelection resistance_
|
| Ding ding! I think that's the real problem. If I were
| king for a day, I'd end gerrymandering and replace it
| with non-partisan (probably algorithmic) districting. And
| I'd shit-can partisan primaries and introduce approval
| voting or instant-runoff (or something similar).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| > A revolving door of congresspeople would decrease the
| influence of lobbying
|
| Make an argument that actually supports this rather than
| asserting it.
|
| Most people who study this kind of thing outright
| disagree.
|
| Lobbying in the US doesn't happen because we let people
| work in government for a long time, plenty of other
| countries do that, it happens because we are one of the
| only places that _legally empower rich people to pay for
| the campaigns of elected officials and have one of the
| most expensive political campaigning systems in the
| world_ and we openly claim lobbying to be a _right_ of
| rich people.
|
| Political parties in the US yet again come back to just
| how absurdly expensive running a campaign is in the US,
| largely because we refuse to regulate it. Other countries
| don't allow candidates to run advertisements a full year
| in advance because that's wasteful and stupid. Candidates
| are beholden to the political parties for campaign
| funding. Even Bernie suckles the political party teat to
| maintain his seat.
|
| If you don't fix that but you limit the ability of a
| politician to gain mindshare simply by doing a good job
| in congress (because you only give them two terms) all
| you have done is make it _easier_ for rich people to
| control who can get elected.
|
| Indeed, even the US system used to be better! The Civil
| Rights Act was bipartisan, with meaningful republican
| support, because there used to be socially progressive
| republicans! There used to be racist asshole democrats!
| When the Clinton government was cutting programs,
| prominent republican representatives from Texas were
| actively working with prominent Democrat representatives
| to maintain funding to the particle collider project
| there. But as America continued to enshrine the right of
| the rich to fund politicians, and continued to let
| campaign costs balloon to the point that _only_ a rich
| person 's super PAC or the literal party establishments
| could afford to run one, what did you expect to happen?
|
| Trumps power over the republican party is fascinating
| because it largely isn't money based. He's just so
| populist among republican voters that he can unilaterally
| control who gets elected regardless of funding. This is
| generally a fucking bad thing, because trump sucks, but
| it's just a more direct version of what the Democrat and
| Republican parties have done for a few decades now.
|
| Are you aware that both democrat and republican lawmakers
| spend most of their time on the phone calling and begging
| rich people to fund their _next_ election campaign, even
| right after an election?
|
| None of this goes away with term limits. All you are
| doing is giving the people who hold the purse _more_
| power over elections.
|
| How good would you be at your job if you had to spend a
| few million dollars every four years to keep it? How good
| would you be if your company's competitors were loudly
| offering to pay that burden?
| titzer wrote:
| > Do it for at most 2 terms and get back to the real
| world.
|
| Guaranteeing they never get good at their job, and
| institutional knowledge keeps decaying.
|
| We need to stop pretending that Congress or any of these
| elected positions don't require skills. I think to be a
| Congressperson you have to go to specific trade school--
| let's call it Congress U--graduate with high honors,
| serve in some _other_ government capacity, and your
| grades are public record. Only then are you qualified to
| even run for election.
|
| Democracy isn't about letting any random firebrand run
| things. Heck, we don't even let random firebrands install
| electricity.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Disagree. The main motivation for serving in Congress
| should be just that - service to the country. Not
| personal power building, not a career. The actual
| process, writing bills, parliamentary procedure, is all
| managed by staff anyway. The representative or senator is
| mainly the face of the office and should be mostly
| talking with constituents and not buried in policy.
|
| If there's one qualification test I would possibly
| support it would to pass a high school AP US History
| exam.
| wyre wrote:
| That's the main motivation to serving in the army, but
| that still requires training and exams.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Guaranteeing [that congressional lawmakers] never get
| good at their job
|
| I don't know if you've been paying much attention to US
| politics since the year 2000 but the vast majority of
| them are no good at their job regardless of how long
| they've been there.
|
| > We need to stop pretending that Congress or any of
| these elected positions don't require skills.
|
| I don't think anyone does? But currently the only real
| skills you need for attaining high US office are 1) be
| rich and/or have enough rich people in your phone book or
| 2) the ability to make Donald Trump feel like a special
| boy.
|
| > Democracy isn't about letting any random firebrand run
| things.
|
| _waves in US /UK/Argentina/Brazilian politics over the
| last decade_
| robot-wrangler wrote:
| As a thought experiment, imagine a world where borders
| exist as they are but the whole political process inside
| them everywhere is to 1) choose a zone randomly 2) choose
| a citizen randomly 3) receive policy proposal from them
| 4) vote yes/no on policy using random dice 5) for
| resolving ambiguity on any and all policy details such as
| "how much" or "for how long", return to step 1.
|
| It's uh, king for a day, with checks and balances on
| human cruelty via chaotic caprice. How likely is that
| world to be worse than ours? If so, how much worse? If
| not here and now, then which counterfactual geography or
| year would you have to transported to so that this
| randomized process is _definitely_ preferable?
| bluGill wrote:
| Here is the problem: what if it is worse in ways that
| none of us can think of today? How do we get out of this
| system if it turns out bad.
|
| History has shown everything we have tried ends up worse
| than what we have, but that doesn't mean there are not
| things that could be better. Only that we need to be
| really careful not to make things worse in a way we can't
| get out of in our attempt.
| somenameforme wrote:
| In general when one looks at the longest serving
| politicians, it seems to reek much more of extremes of
| corruption than skill. The insider trading this article
| references being but one aspect of that. It also
| correlates with people turning into warmongers, but
| that's probably just another angle to corruption since
| there's a rich and ridiculously unaccountable flow of
| money in military related stuff.
|
| For another datum consider presidents' second term. This
| is often where they are supposed to be able to really act
| out their vision for the future since they're ostensibly
| out of politics after this and have at least 4 years of
| experience at the highest level, yet they almost
| invariably tend to be _extremely_ underwhelming.
|
| I'm not arguing there is no skill, but I am arguing that
| just spending a lot of time in office doesn't seem to
| correlate much with achieving that skill.
| xp84 wrote:
| I am completely sympathetic to your motivations here.
| However, it seems like if you take that approach, where
| many qualifications are required before you are
| "eligible" to hold elected office, it's much closer to an
| aristocracy than a republic or a democracy. Unelected
| elites who control the special university and those who
| set the eligibility rules in general hold and safeguard
| the real power, allowing trusted insiders to ascend to
| power and burying those with unorthodox ideas or worrying
| populist notions. It's an anti-democratic idea.
|
| It probably, on net, increases the power of elites and
| decreases the power of ordinary people, which increases
| the already extreme tilt in that direction. Like with a
| lot of things, it depends on the virtue of the elites in
| question whether this is a great idea or a catastrophic
| and oppressive one. As we can see, our current elites are
| so shameless they blatantly trade on privileged knowledge
| and can't even manage to pass a budget for the country.
| titzer wrote:
| I worry about this too. That is why transparency in all
| aspects of the qualification process is key. I think said
| trade school should be free, and even subsidized. We
| should have a pretty large pool of qualified candidates
| so that qualifications aren't the major bottleneck.
|
| This can work. We do accept accreditation for lots of
| aspects of the economy, and though none of them is a
| perfect system, does for the most part keep quacks out of
| certain trades.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > I don't want people in congress as a career. Do it for
| at most 2 terms and get back to the real world.
|
| This means you want them to do a job for four years when
| it takes them two or three to learn how to do it.
| xp84 wrote:
| Since they are supposed to be serving their country and
| not seeking personal gain, _their interests should be
| aligned with those of the whole country._ As a condition
| of taking office, they should surrender their entire
| stock portfolio to a government custodian in exchange for
| a federally-held broad market index fund. While in
| office, they are free to sell from that fund if they need
| the money and free to buy more of that, but no other
| securities. When they leave office, they are owed the
| present value of their index fund, and can repurchase
| whatever they want to. All of these could be made non-
| taxable events, so that if someone wants to just go back
| into the same positions they had, there isn't any
| complication.
|
| To me, the above seems slightly complex, but well worth
| undertaking in order to stop this blatant and shameless
| corruption.
|
| As we've seen with the current president, though, it's
| much more difficult when they own and control whole
| businesses instead of just fungible securities. To be
| fair to the president, there isn't really any reasonable
| way to get rid of his massive conflicts of interest
| besides having a pre-inauguration IPO for all his
| companies and retaining 0 shares - and his family
| retaining nothing too. But that's a bigger problem that
| probably cant be solved.
|
| Stocks though, it would be easy, they just don't want to
| solve it.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Doesn't that imply that everyone in Congress will be
| amateur at best at being congressman?
| wavemode wrote:
| Being a congressperson isn't something you're supposed to
| have to get good at. You're supposed to just be a
| representative of the people. The "experts" in government
| are the nonelected officials, advisors and agencies.
|
| For similar reasons, all presidents are newbies. The
| benefits of having one with lots of experience would be
| vastly outweighed by the downsides...
| LunaSea wrote:
| Like most founding fathers were at the time?
| bjourne wrote:
| Yeah, but that makes them susceptible to lobby groups.
| They offer the politicians cushy jobs after their
| political career in exchange for political services.
| Politician probably has to be a sustainable and well-paid
| career somehow.
| bumby wrote:
| I'm only playing devils advocate here but the counter
| argument is society is very complex and it takes time to
| understand it to a sufficient degree. Short term limits
| would mean a Congress making impactful decisions without
| fully understanding the ramifications, or they just rely
| on unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists to tell them what
| to do.
|
| The counter counter argument is that you could be a
| career politician working your way up: two terms at city
| council, two as mayor, two as governor etc...and by the
| time someone is voted into the national stage they
| presumably have decades of experience.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > 2 terms and get back to the real world
|
| We are not the first people to come up with this idea.
|
| I think it is generally believed that the less time
| legislators serve the more power accrues to the
| bureaucracy and other non-elected positions.
|
| This is also an undesirable situation. Possibly worse
| than the disease, so to speak.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it's not really possible considering that most retirement
| accounts are stock portfolios -- it also doesn't matter too
| much on an individual level because an individual ban just
| gets pushed to sharing stock tips with extended family
| (already happens), family bans get pushed to friends,
| etc...
|
| I really think the best and maybe only way to avoid this
| wealth building nonsense are much harsher term limits --
| public service should be severely limited to prevent people
| from being in decades long positions to abuse it. Term
| limits also prevent the incessant campaign fundraising to
| some extent, because say you're limited to 2 terms...
| there's not much point in personal fundraising on your last
| one
| zucked wrote:
| Agree -- strict term limits would be a gamechanger in a
| lot of ways.
| zucked wrote:
| I have a hot take on this that I think could actually make
| some headway: - We _raise_ the congressional salary. Say,
| maybe double them across the board.
|
| BUT in exchange, you, your immediate family, and any
| business, LLC, or other similar vehicle you are a named
| party to as a consultant, beneficiary, owner, or investor
| must divest of _specific_ investments and can only hold the
| equivalent value of an index fund that tracks the general
| market. Or, you can remove yourself from the investment
| /ownership vehicle during the term you serve as a
| congressperson.
|
| Problem solved? Probably not, but it's an interesting
| thought experiment. I'm sure there are a bunch of loopholes
| I haven't fully through through, too.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| > Or, you can remove yourself from the
| investment/ownership vehicle during the term you serve as
| a congressperson.
|
| The problem with "blind trusts" is that even blind men
| wink and nudge. It's quite hard to police a veritable
| horde of Congressmen who pinky-swear to never pass
| information along to friends, relatives and various other
| associates, employed by them or otherwise.
| matwood wrote:
| Which can be solved with insider trading enforcement of
| political figures and their associates. This SEC already
| does this to 'normal' people.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| It can be. But it's quite hard. And frequently
| unsuccessful. The concept of "insider trading" sounds
| great and unambiguous until some examination, but becomes
| quite ripe for loophole-finding exercises afterwards.
| zucked wrote:
| I honestly don't know how you put a cone of silence
| around congresspeople such that insider trading anywhere
| in their sphere of influence is impossible. My intent
| would be to make it difficult for the congressperson to
| directly benefit from passing along insider info and
| compensate them enough such that it isn't a practical
| path. Sure, they could still tell friends to buy/sell,
| but if the friend *does* act on that, it's sure going to
| raise eyebrows when they try to wire $1M worth of
| proceeds to the congressperson for "movie & pizza night".
|
| And I know that the next stone to be cast is "yeah, but
| if they help friends/business associates beat the market,
| congresspeople can still benefit with board seats and
| jobs when they're done with congressional terms". That's
| totally valid, and I have no idea how to combat that.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Forget pizza night IOUs. Lots of very smart people have
| come up with lots of clever ways to pay someone for a
| service, ways that don't even register when it comes to
| public awareness. I could have bought this house from you
| for 1.5 million, but I'm going to buy it for 2.5 million
| because I simply must have it. Man, what a sucker, eh?
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > The problem with "blind trusts" is that even blind men
| wink and nudge.
|
| They should only be allowed to invest in a fund that is
| open to public participation. This should also be public
| information. You should be able to pick a congresperson
| and invest in the exact same funds that they do.
| alistairSH wrote:
| If we don't pay them well (and we arguably already fail to
| do that[1]), then it becomes really hard for anybody but
| the independently wealthy to be in Congress.
|
| 1 - $174,000 is the current salary. With that, they have to
| maintain two households (one in DC, one in home
| district/state). That salary is far from unusual for white
| collar workers in major metro areas.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yes, like every other profession in the US seemingly,
| Congress is also underpaid. But letting them individually
| fight for getting as money as they possible can before
| they retire via means the typical person doesn't have
| access to, isn't right either. I agree they should be
| paid appropriately, so they also can survive on their
| salary, but still think they shouldn't be able to do
| certain things others can, because of their position.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Agreed. I'd prefer they were required to use a blind
| trust. Or, possibly immediate reporting on trades.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Give them spending rights. You need a second home in DC?
| Ok, if you pass a means test we reimburse your rent and
| travel costs. There's no sense in giving them additional
| excuses for not doing their job. 174k is plenty of money
| to live off.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I would bump it to $10M/year. In terms of importance,
| this is still vastly underpaying these jobs.
|
| That should take the edge off any money seeking schemes.
| It's hard to bribe the wealthy!
|
| For 435 congress people and 100 senators, that adds up to
| $5.35B, which is about 6 hours of federal spending.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| You'd have a massive influx of incompetent grifters who
| only get themselves elected for the salary. At the end of
| the day public service still has to a "sacrifice"
| (doesn't mean that it shouldn't be compensated at e.g.
| top 5 percentile income).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The Singapore experience is very different.
|
| They probably do more than just pay a lot though.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > If we don't pay them well (and we arguably already fail
| to do that[1]), then it becomes really hard for anybody
| but the independently wealthy to be in Congress
|
| Congress should be paid minimum wage. They are the ones
| who determined that this is enough to live on so
| everything above that is wasteful spending of public
| funds. If they don't think it's enough, they can change
| the minimum wage to a liveable amount.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| That's the best way of ensuring that bribes (legal or
| not) become the primary source of income for every
| representative who is not independently wealthy.
| toephu2 wrote:
| Yup, Singapore follows this model.
|
| Singapore pays its public officials high salaries
| primarily to ensure the integrity and quality of its
| government. The official justification centers on
| attracting top talent who could otherwise command high
| incomes in the private sector, thereby establishing a
| "clean wage" that reduces the financial incentive for
| corruption. Salaries are explicitly benchmarked to the
| median income of the nation's highest earners.
|
| e.g.,
|
| Singapore PM annual salary: ~$1.63 million USD
|
| Singapore President salary: ~$1.14 million USD
|
| (These are the highest public salaries in the world for
| politicians)
| ralferoo wrote:
| Your argument seems to be that those in public service
| should only survive on their salaries, because "doing it
| for the people" is enough of a reward that they don't need
| to worry about such trivialities as money.
|
| There's no good reason to stop anyone from owning stocks.
| It's part of any sensible person's retirement strategy. The
| issue is whether there's a conflict of interest there, and
| blind trusts or broad market ETFs are two good ways of
| addressing that issue.
|
| Other alternatives include announcing their intention to
| trade in specific stocks several months in advance of doing
| so, so that even if they know about specific long-term
| future advantages a company might have, it's public
| knowledge and others can also trade in a similar way. But
| the easiest solutions by far are blind trusts and broad
| market ETFs.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> There 's no good reason to stop anyone from owning
| stocks. It's part of any sensible person's retirement
| strategy._
|
| Congrescritters already have a retirement strategy
| provided to them for free courtesy of the American
| people: a pension.
|
| On top of that, many of them never retire, they just hold
| power and keep collecting paychecks until the day they
| die.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Their salary is not nearly enough. FAANG SWEs make several
| times more money for something that's quite a bit less
| important. Their pay is pretty good, but they also have a
| job which requires them to stay away from home (for most of
| them) for long periods of time. The pay is not really
| enough to maintain a household _and_ a second living space
| comfortably.
|
| I get the sentiment that they shouldn't be in it for the
| money. But money is important even for idealists. Let's say
| someone wants to serve the people, but not enough to take a
| $174,000/year salary with a lot of travel and needing to
| pay for lodging in a remote city, when they could be making
| $500,000/year at Facebook instead. Would you say that this
| person doesn't want to serve the people enough, and
| shouldn't run?
|
| Maybe you would, but the problem is that you mostly won't
| get people who want to serve even more. By paying a
| relatively low salary, you'll end up getting:
|
| 1. Idealists with poor prospects in the job market.
|
| 2. Extreme idealists with good job prospects.
|
| 3. People who think they can leverage the position to make
| enough money to offset the difference in pay.
|
| 4. People rich enough not to care about piddling W-2
| income.
|
| In practice, categories 3 and 4 will win. According to
| https://www.quiverquant.com/congress-live-net-worth/, 107
| members, or 20%, of Congress has a net worth of over $10
| million. That net worth is in the top 2% of their age
| group. 16 members, or 3%, have a net worth of over $100
| million.
|
| And of course people don't tend to attain substantial net
| worth without having an eye for ways to make money, so it's
| very likely that those people will abuse their position to
| make money as long as they think they can get away with it.
|
| I'd rather see a substantially increased salary, something
| like $1 million/year, so that ordinary people with decent
| skills can see serving in Congress as something they don't
| have to sacrifice for, financially. That would create a lot
| more competition for those positions and push out some of
| the extremely wealthy ones.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > The pay is not really enough to maintain a household
| and a second living space comfortably.
|
| Who's talking about a second living space? They can move
| like most Americans do for work when the commute is too
| much.
|
| > Let's say someone wants to serve the people, but not
| enough to take a $174,000/year salary with a lot of
| travel and needing to pay for lodging in a remote city,
| when they could be making $500,000/year at Facebook
| instead.
|
| Then they can go work for Facebook. Who cares what they
| would like to have.
|
| > Would you say that this person doesn't want to serve
| the people enough, and shouldn't run?
|
| Yes.
|
| > Maybe you would, but the problem is that you mostly
| won't get people who want to serve even more.
|
| Source?
|
| > In practice, categories 3 and 4 will win. According to
| https://www.quiverquant.com/congress-live-net-worth/, 107
| members, or 20%, of Congress has a net worth of over $10
| million. That net worth is in the top 2% of their age
| group. 16 members, or 3%, have a net worth of over $100
| million.
|
| Before or after they started their career?
|
| > I'd rather see a substantially increased salary,
| something like $1 million/year, so that ordinary people
| with decent skills can see serving in Congress as
| something they don't have to sacrifice for, financially.
|
| Ordinary people don't have the expectation of needing to
| be payed $1M to serve their country.
|
| > That would create a lot more competition for those
| positions and push out some of the extremely wealthy
| ones.
|
| The wealthy ones just use their wealth to get ahead.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Could you maybe read the whole message before quote-
| replying? It's kind of annoying to get "Source?" followed
| by a quote of the data it's based on.
|
| > Before or after they started their career?
|
| Does it matter? You don't get that kind of wealth from
| $174,000/year. Either you came into the job with it and
| thus are in category 4, or you didn't and you managed to
| build that wealth despite not having a salary that would
| produce it, meaning you're in category 3.
|
| I don't understand how you envision moving for the job
| would work. You think a member of Congress from, say,
| Oregon should live full-time in DC? That certainly
| doesn't sound like a "serve the people" situation, that
| sounds like a "completely insulated from your
| constituents and always surrounded by insiders"
| situation. In practice, representatives are only in DC
| about half the year, and the part where they're not in DC
| is an essential part of the job.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > It's kind of annoying to get "Source?" followed by a
| quote of the data it's based on.
|
| But your link doesn't answer your statement which was
| that you wouldn't find people more willing to serve if
| you were to lower the salary.
|
| Your link lists congressional representatives net worths
| which is a biased dataset which only looks at the type of
| people that currently run for Congress but also the money
| they managed to accumulate in sometimes illegal ways
| during their tenure (in Congress or other political
| appointments).
|
| > Does it matter? You don't get that kind of wealth from
| $174,000/year. Either you came into the job with it and
| thus are in category 4, or you didn't and you managed to
| build that wealth despite not having a salary that would
| produce it, meaning you're in category 3.
|
| Or you made that money through insider trading which is
| the topic at hand.
|
| > I don't understand how you envision moving for the job
| would work.
|
| You sell your house or rent it out and then you buy a
| train / plane ticket.
|
| > You think a member of Congress from, say, Oregon should
| live full-time in DC?
|
| Sure, that's where the votes take place.
|
| Congress representatives have reimbursements of up to
| $367 per day which is enough for them to pay for travel,
| lodging and food costs while back in their state.
|
| > That certainly doesn't sound like a "serve the people"
| situation
|
| This is already the case right now:
| https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2020/05/house-
| candid...
|
| > that sounds like a "completely insulated from your
| constituents and always surrounded by insiders" situation
|
| Well you do have to be elected first so that means you
| still need to be known and liked in that district.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Could we just not prohibit lawmakers from investing in
| particular stocks, but rather to only invest in the market as
| a whole (e.g. via ETFs) and/or in government bonds?
| miohtama wrote:
| Yes but politicians would need to agree. Why would they?
| Jensson wrote:
| In a decent democracy you could vote those out, sadly USA
| ain't that.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| That's why populist movements raise its head from time to
| time. It's the human's self-cleansing mechanism -- very
| damaging, and usually burn much more than necessary, but
| whatever.
| Aurornis wrote:
| More importantly, why would you want to restrict public
| servants only to low interest rate government bonds? That
| would select out most people with decent financial sense
| from taking the job.
|
| The point is to level the playing field, not to become so
| restrictive and punishing that the job only appeals to
| politicians who are so self-sacrificing that they don't
| exist as much as people want. Stocks also aren't the only
| place where politicians could leverage their positions
| for personal financial gain.
| program_whiz wrote:
| Unintended side benefit -- those with power are
| incentivized to raise bond interest, creating a safe
| investment for others to use.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Because this topic makes people mad and makes politicians
| who oppose it look bad, which hurts electability. Not to
| mention it seems like non-elite politicians wouldn't be
| affected, so for them this is an easy publicity boost.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Restricting public servants to only government bond
| investments would be a great way to discourage anyone with
| financial sense from running for congress.
|
| I think the simplest way forward would be to require
| immediate, not delayed, disclosure of trades. If they're
| doing something, let everyone see it immediately and it
| specific detail.
|
| We could also implement some planned trading requirements
| for large purchases of individual stocks: If someone wants
| to trade more than $100K of something, make them announce
| it 7 or even 1 day in advance. They still get to buy it,
| but the market can front-run the investment if they believe
| there's inside info at play.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Restricting them to invest in equities via index
| funds/ETFs, on the other hand, is not nearly as
| problematic.
| Aurornis wrote:
| To what end? Most congressional actions that could
| conceivably lead to insider trading benefit aren't
| directed at single companies anyway. They're directed at
| sectors or policies which impact many companies, which is
| easily captured by ETFs.
|
| If Congress is acting on singular companies, the congress
| people are usually smart enough to avoid obviously
| trading that singular stock.
| 5upplied_demand wrote:
| > They're directed at sectors or policies which impact
| many companies, which is easily captured by ETFs.
|
| The abstract doesn't seem to agree. The use of "firms"
| and "corporate" implies individual companies.
|
| "purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government
| contracts and favorable party support on bills. The
| corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades
| that predict subsequent corporate news and greater
| returns on donor-owned or home-state firms."
| NickC25 wrote:
| This is what needs to happen.
|
| Banning trading outright is impossible and won't happen.
|
| Congressional staff and congresspeople (and their
| families + extended families) should be forced to trade
| via an exchange that publicly discloses _immediately_ ,
| and any person on public dime needs to disclose
| specifically WHY they made the trade or, there needs to
| be some sort of mechanism that forces said congressfolk
| to disclose their trades 48 hours prior to execution, and
| held for at least X amount of time. Any selling of
| security needs to be announced well ahead of time.
| cestith wrote:
| They should also, like judges, be recusing themselves
| from decisions and deliberations known to directly favor
| or hinder those personal holdings.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Ha! The supreme court (what a joke) has said that it's
| cool to give "gratuities" after the fact to judges or
| lawmakers who do what you want. It's not a bribe, it's
| just a gift or a tip!
| cestith wrote:
| Yes, well, it's obvious the current Supreme Court is
| ethically and politically compromised.
| Uehreka wrote:
| > Restricting public servants to only government bond
| investments would be a great way to discourage anyone
| with financial sense from running for congress.
|
| Running for congress is already kind of a financially
| silly thing to do, that ship has sailed. Let's pull the
| trigger on this and just see what happens.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >Running for congress is already kind of a financially
| silly thing to do
|
| Evidently it's not. There's another problem that it seems
| to me that it's mainly wealthy elite who get in. How many
| working class people are there in major leadership
| positions?
| Uehreka wrote:
| > Evidently it's not.
|
| Cards on the table: I just don't think people operate
| with single incentives like that, and even if they did,
| it's a cost I'd pay easily.
| polski-g wrote:
| We've been doing it. There has been a severe degradation
| in quality.
|
| Congressmen's salaries need to increase by 10x.
| komali2 wrote:
| > discourage anyone with financial sense from running for
| congress.
|
| What's wrong with that? "If you choose a life in
| government, you'll never be rich, but you may be
| powerful" seems like a perfectly acceptable situation.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| It may be acceptable for them, but I'd prefer people who
| have financial sense in charge of the budget and people
| who are so power hungry as to forgo money kept as far
| from governance as possible
| greedo wrote:
| So you're saying we currently have a Congress with
| financial sense?
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Only moreso than the counterfactual. The status quo only
| rewards those with financial sense who are willing to be
| a little corrupt, which undermines the effect. Really, we
| should just pay them 7 figures
| LtWorf wrote:
| People who want to enrich themselves rarely care about
| others. It's the opposite of people you want running a
| government.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You shouldn't be punished for being financially
| intelligent. You are conflating corruption with financial
| competence.
|
| We don't stop athletes who use the gym regularly from
| competing because all the guys using steroids also went
| to the gym a lot.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > You shouldn't be punished for being financially
| intelligent. You are conflating corruption with financial
| competence.
|
| And you're conflating "being financially intelligent"
| with "being primarily motivated by profit and personal
| gain".
|
| A conman is often "financially intelligent", too, but
| what they're inclined to _do_ with that intelligence
| matters.
| catigula wrote:
| You aren't being punished, nobody is forcing you to run
| for Congress.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And if you consider "I'm not as rich as I am _physically
| capable_ of being " to be "punishment", you have absurd
| priorities and should not be in congress.
|
| There's so much more to life and the world than the
| number on your portfolio for christs sake.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| People have this mindset like they are the buddha or
| something, and then you show them a trick to save 25% on
| every amazon order, and they are all over like addict
| shown a pill stash. So dumb
| jkubicek wrote:
| Even the most disruptive proposals in these comments
| aren't banning representatives from being rich, it's just
| banning them from adding extreme amounts of additional
| wealth _while in office_.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| ETFs and mutual funds wouldn't suffer from this?
| nmstoker wrote:
| It's not so challenging and it happens widely in
| industry: people are often heavily restricted in the
| range of trading they may conduct in cases where their
| business would give them insider knowledge, such as in
| certain parts of banks, accounting firms, credit rating
| agencies etc
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It's not so challenging and it happens widely in
| industry:
|
| Restricting people only to government bond investments
| (the first line of my post, the point I was responding
| to) does not happen widely in industry.
|
| Restricting people's trades of a few stocks where they
| have insider knowledge does happen. I would be in favor
| of laws against congressional insider trading, too, but
| not laws forbidding _all_ stock ownership or restricting
| them to government bonds as was proposed above. That's
| just short sighted.
| swores wrote:
| You're creating a straw man (perhaps accidentally) which
| makes your argument seem such stronger than it is against
| the actual proposals.
|
| Neither the comment you replied to, nor the proposed law,
| suggest the limit should be solely government bonds,
| which is what you're arguing against in your comment,
| they both say government bonds OR publicly traded diverse
| stock funds, for example ETFs.
|
| Maybe you still believe that's restrictive enough to be a
| problem, but considering many people, even the likes of
| Warren Buffet, consider the best investment advice to be
| either "just invest in ETF/funds that track the whole
| market" or "just invest in a mix of ETFs/funds and also
| some bonds", while nobody considers "just invest in
| government bonds" to be good advice, your argument would
| be a hell if a lot weaker if actually applied to what IS
| being proposed rather than pretending that the proposal
| only allows investing in government bonds.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Restricting public servants to only government bond
| investments would be a great way to discourage anyone
| with financial sense from running for congress.
|
| The flip side is it also discourages anyone primarily
| looking to profit off it, rather than being interested in
| actual governance.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| People think that quality governance is all about the
| intelligence to know the best rules to decide for the
| greater benefit of society. Politicians behave badly
| because of incentive. Good rules would require correct
| incentive, not merely higher quality individuals.
| Intelligence doesn't dissuade corruption of power, if
| anything it accelerates it.
| program_whiz wrote:
| Unintended side effect might be that congress would use
| their power to make bonds a more profitable avenue of
| investment, creating a very reliable, high-interest
| retirement vehicle for average people (rather than
| getting into the roulette wheel of the stock market).
| Imagine if USG-backed 15% treasuries were a thing?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Where do you think the money for those 15% interest
| payments would come from?
|
| There are historical examples of what happens when
| lawmakers mandate high amounts of money creation. It
| doesn't end with the people being better off. It usually
| destroys the economy.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Right now congresspeople are only paid about $200k.
| People who want that position are likely to be people who
| plan to profit off of it in other ways, at the expense of
| the nation. We should pay congresspeople more, as well as
| increasing trading and lobbying restrictions, to help
| attract honest, capable candidates.
| nwellinghoff wrote:
| Agreed. The whole idea that they are in it for the
| "service" is a really naive idea. If we want honest
| hardworking and qualified people to do the job the
| salaries should be in the 500k to 1.5m (senate) range.
| Then knock out the corruption.
| thmsths wrote:
| According to this link [1] 200k would put someone above
| the 80th percentile and not far below the 95th percentile
| in terms of household income for the DC metro area, so I
| don't see how that could be considered "underpaid",
| especially when you consider the benefits.
|
| [1] https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/District-of-
| Columbia...
| rendang wrote:
| The type of person who gets elected to Congress is likely
| to be far above average in charisma/intelligence/skill,
| and hence underpaid relative to what they could attain in
| the private sector
| skrblr wrote:
| If someone is paid 500k-1.5M, do they suddenly lose
| interest in further enriching themselves? I don't
| understand this argument.
| tekne wrote:
| I mean, it sounds dumb, but returns from further wealth
| are logarithmic; after a certain point, the only thing
| you can buy more of is power. And you've already got
| that, in this case!
|
| If you're in a situation where getting more wealth could
| endanger your power, it makes sense not to wealth-max
| since, again, what else could you buy with it? But you
| need to get into the "what else could you buy with it"
| regime for this reasoning to make sense.
|
| Someone who only has basic needs gets there pretty early.
| But even the relatively unenlightened don't need the
| second jet except, yannow, for power.
| gcr wrote:
| i'd support that if and only if it required
| congresspeople to divest from individual stocks. with
| perhaps some compromise like...maybe they could hold
| "total market" index funds, or are only able to trade
| once a year, or etc
| k8si wrote:
| Well, currently we have a ton of Congresspeople who are
| _primarily_ motivated by their "good financial sense"
| (for obvious reasons e.g. this study). So, I think we
| could do with a few more Congresspeople with less
| financial sense and more genuine motivation to improve
| the lives of their constituents.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > would be a great way to discourage anyone with
| financial sense from running for congress.
|
| So it's better to encourage people without any morals?
|
| I think we need politicians who have the financial sense
| to see that the government is built to serve people
| whether or not they're invested in the market. As it is
| now now we've completely failed the American people.
| tomrod wrote:
| Not just individual disclosure, as families and friends
| share information. It's a sticky web.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Could we just not prohibit lawmakers from investing in
| particular stocks_
|
| You're talking about HR 5106 [0] (aka the "Restore Trust in
| Congress Act"), currently being blocked by Republican House
| leadership, and actively facing a discharge position by the
| House rank and file (Republican included) to force a vote
| [1].
|
| [0] https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr5106/BILLS-119hr51
| 06ih....
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-stock-trading-
| ban-disc...
| stickfigure wrote:
| The de-facto leader of the Republican party is running
| blatant _crypto scams_ from the White House and his
| supporters cheer him on.
|
| I don't know where the Overton Window is today, but it's
| a long way from Jimmy Carter's peanut farm.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It's a big cult, and you ain't in it.
| iyn wrote:
| Imagine reading that pre 2008 (creation of bitcoin) --
| what kind of _crypto scam_ could president run?!
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Jimmy Carter 's peanut farm_
|
| Ironically, somewhere I was walking around on Sunday.
| Pretty place.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| It's authored by a Republican congressman, and is a
| bipartisan flop, with only 100 total reps sponsoring.
| It's true that of those few who are sponsoring there are
| more Democrats, but overall most Democrats oppose which
| is also enough to block the bill, same as Republicans.
|
| Source: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr5106
|
| It also blocks stock trading entirely for congressmen,
| which is dramatically different from what gp was
| suggesting.
| dangus wrote:
| 80 Democratic cosponsors out of 213 Democratic
| representatives.
|
| The bill is sponsored by 37% of Democrats
|
| 22 Republican cosponsors out of 219 Republican
| representativs.
|
| The bill is sponsored by 10% of Republicans.
|
| I think you might be jumping to conclusions by calling it
| a bipartisan flop. Co-sponsorship is not the same as a
| vote, there may be people not on the sponsorship list who
| would vote for the bill.
|
| The bill was introduced 3 months ago (43 days these last
| three months was a government shutdown) and not enough
| time has passed to determine whether the bill will be a
| "flop" or not.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Blocking it outright is probably more than what I want. I
| think if they can only invest in things like S&P500 funds
| that would suffice for me. Force them to invest more
| broadly in a way that it cannot interfere with the
| market.
| burkaman wrote:
| 102 cosponsors is a lot, most bills have far fewer than
| that. Look through recent bills that have passed the
| House, you won't find any with that many cosponsors. This
| is true of both bipartisan unanimous bills
| (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr4423,
| https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr5348) and
| partisan controversial ones
| (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr5107,
| https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr1949).
| jerf wrote:
| Alternatively, instead of disclosing on a huge delay, have
| them disclose instantly. We have the mechanisms to do this
| nowadays.
|
| Even "ETFs" are a big enough hole to drive a truck through
| in terms of performance, e.g., it's not hard to guess how
| an oil ETF will perform in response to certain geopolitical
| events.
|
| We could also apply Presidential rules to all of them. The
| President has to essentially forgo all ability to manage
| his or her wealth during the time they are in office. Such
| shenanigans as they play must either be to benefit someone
| else, or a very long term play for when they are out of
| office. This is still what you might call "suboptimal" but
| it's an improvement, even just the "longterm" part. (We
| should be so lucky as for our politicians to be thinking
| about how to goose the _longterm_ performance of our
| economy rather than how to make a couple million next week
| no matter what it does to everyone else.)
| jonhohle wrote:
| Instant disclosure would allow ETFs, which is probably
| the best option.
|
| I think having a congressional required fund that the
| public could also invest in makes sense as well.
|
| I've been thinking about an act to intentionally enrich
| members of Congress for reducing the deficit (e.g. a
| fraction of percent of savings certified by GAO goes to
| district and to member's fund with a multi year cool off
| period, saving based on ratcheted down watermark).
|
| The first allows constituents to reap the benefits of
| their member's power, the second incentivizes members to
| be as financially motivated to not spend money as they
| are to spend money.
| raddan wrote:
| > I've been thinking about an act to intentionally enrich
| members of Congress for reducing the deficit (e.g. a
| fraction of percent of savings certified by GAO goes to
| district and to member's fund with a multi year cool off
| period, saving based on ratcheted down watermark).
|
| There needs to be more incentive to be wise with that
| money though. If a representative decides to "fall on
| their sword" and cut spending on local infrastructure
| projects, they enrich themselves while impoverishing
| their constituents. Other reps probably won't jump in to
| save a district they don't represent. I would worry that
| this would make politicians fleecing their neighbors even
| worse.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Or have them disclose before they buy?
| dmoy wrote:
| I would say instead of just blanket "ETF":
|
| 1. Only things that approximately match the contents of
| TSP funds or broader
|
| 2. Have to write down a 10b5-1 for the entire duration of
| your election plus one year, with a double cooloff period
| (6mo vs 3mo), and have to extend it within 3mo of each
| successful election.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I'd rather force them to completely divest and give them a
| decent pension (which I believe we already do).
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I agree that blind trusts don't fix everything, but it is a
| start.
|
| The situation right now isn't just corrupting, congress-
| critters are labeled as idiots by their own if they don't
| actively take advantage of "perks" like free stock tips that
| would be illegal in any other context.
|
| The "everyone does it" excuse is what keeps this house of
| cards up. And it is not partisan, both D's and R's inevitably
| become rich if they stay in the house for more than a couple
| of terms.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Wouldn't they just trade through their relatives? Or does the
| insider trading immunity not stretch that far?
| ekianjo wrote:
| That's also insider trading.
| drob518 wrote:
| Force them to buy nothing but SPY. If you're in Congress,
| you're allowed to get the market return. Or a government bond
| fund, or cash. That's it.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| Ideally we should remove the incentive all together. Limit it
| so Politicians can only buy index funds that don't target any
| specific industry.
|
| Fundamentally you can classify modern society into two
| groups: government and commercial citizenry.
|
| The incentives of these two groups are misaligned and that is
| essentially the origin of all corruption.
|
| The commercial citizen, his goal is to make money, compete
| and to do so by bending the rules and using any means
| possible.
|
| The government, his goal is to be fair, to enforce and follow
| the rules, and to guard citizens.
|
| When you combine these two groups the incentives collide. You
| get government officials who are supposed to be fair but
| instead they are incentivized by commercial interests so they
| make biased laws, take bribes and do all that shit.
|
| To reduce corruption you really need to create societies made
| up of two different groups with two different sets of
| incentives.
|
| Dictators are more immune to this effect because all of their
| commercial incentives are pretty much completely fulfilled as
| they own the whole country.
|
| In a democracy the closest sort of thing I've seen to this is
| priesthood. Buddhism or becoming a monk is similar but these
| are not elevated leadership positions like priests.
|
| Basically when you become a government official it should be
| like becoming a priest. You are removing yourself from
| commercial society. It changes everything. Your incentives
| are different and it even filters out all the bad actors.
|
| Such a society can realistically exist. I think the
| unrealistic part is converting our current society into
| something like this.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| The primary challenge I see is that at least in the US,
| government positions are often elected and termed, meaning
| there is no guarantee your cash flow from your government
| job will continue long-term. This is why you must continue
| to operate as a private citizen, with a government job.
|
| The second potential issue is one of pay - the best of
| society can make far more in a commercial setting than in a
| government setting - barring corruption, of course.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| For your second potential issue, I'm saying that's the
| point. Nobody becomes a priest for money.
|
| These people who become priests do so for other reasons
| and they largely want to exit the commercial economy.
| That's the type of people government should be made of.
| Under this system pretty much 100 percent of politicians
| wouldn't have even become a politician.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Since we are talking about political leadership at the
| highest levels (not pastoral local municipalities), a
| good comparison with priesthood would be the Vatican.
| Even in priesthood, when there is concentrated power over
| vulnerable populations, we can find: wealth hoarding,
| money laundering, collaboration with organized crime, and
| protection of rampant sexual abuse. For hundreds of
| years. This suggests to me that the issue is hierarchy
| more than it is quality of those who reign over us.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| I wouldn't say "nobody becomes a priest for money" ...
|
| https://www.allpastors.com/top-20-richest-pastors-in-
| america...
|
| Yes, priesthood is perhaps not a traditional path toward
| achieving $100M+ net worth. Yet people have gotten there
| that way...
| MikeNotThePope wrote:
| Here's my hot take: politicians should be paid a lot of
| money, and in return they should be subject to limits on
| how they can invest, if they can invest at all. Remove
| the incentives that cause corruption and attract talent.
| I think it's a bit naive to say that public servants need
| to be earning a meager salary. Underpaid people don't
| stay in their roles very long.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| This is a fair and rational take, but I think it's hard
| to drum up political appetite for increasing your own
| pay.
| bosie wrote:
| > Remove the incentives that cause corruption and attract
| talent.
|
| has it been shown that a salary would actually remove the
| incentives for corruption? maybe for some but greed is a
| strong incentive.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Unfortunately it's like trying to pin down a greased
| pig...
|
| Sure, forbid them from making investments. What about
| "consulting" work? What about private company ownership?
|
| What about their spouse? Are they also forbidden from all
| activities? Family members? In-laws?
|
| I feel like there are too many ways of self-dealing that
| would be hard to prevent.
|
| It should be a social stimga that voters care deeply
| about. But voters would have to first care to vote...
| ahoy wrote:
| The first point is true of most employment, unless you're
| one of the ~10% of US employees with a union contract.
| Your paycheck is always subject to the whims of your
| employer.
|
| I don't have a great solution for the 2nd issue you pose
| though. Raising the pay of elected officials is often
| politically unpopular, but you're certainly right that
| one makes more in the private sector than as a junior
| congressperson.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Yes and no - if you lose your job at Apple, you can go
| down the street to Microsoft. If you lose your elected
| government job, you can't run again for years. Meaning,
| you have to switch from being a government employee back
| to being a commercial employee.
| fn-mote wrote:
| If you lose you elected government job and you still need
| to work, you become a lobbyist.
| fellowmartian wrote:
| The goal should be to not produce homo economicus in the
| first place, not to figure out how to build a society out
| of them in the same way you build a trustless smart
| contract.
| wavemode wrote:
| You can still play the market with index funds. For example
| if someone knew that Trump was about to announce new
| tariffs they would sell to dodge the brief market panic.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Index funds are also heavily exposed to tech these days:
| https://www.slickcharts.com/sp500
|
| So they aren't really immune to sector changes (like a
| bill banning AI would crash it very heavily).
| j45 wrote:
| Except, AI won't be banned. Maybe access to AI becomes a
| moat of sorts.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > Ideally we should remove the incentive all together.
| Limit it so Politicians can only buy index funds that don't
| target any specific industry.
|
| I'd go one step further: upon election you have to convert
| all equity assets to US bonds.
| sollewitt wrote:
| > The commercial citizen, his goal is to make money,
| compete and to do so by bending the rules and using any
| means possible.
|
| This conception of "citizen" is even more depressing to me
| than Homo Economicus. There are values aside from wealth,
| and not everyone is a money grubbing sociopath.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Problem: politicians have families. Unless becoming a
| "government citizen" propagates recursively to cover one's
| extended family, and perhaps their extended families as
| well, i.e. potentially hundreds of people in total, there's
| no way to isolate the new member of government from having
| incentive to help their loved ones, who are still
| "commercial citizens".
|
| Conversely, if you somehow solve that, it brings forth a
| new problem: the "govenrment citizens" are now an alien
| society, with little understanding of lives of people they
| serve. To borrow your priest analogy, it's like Catholic
| priests giving marital advice to couples - it tends to be
| wildly off mark, as celibacy gives the priest neither
| experience nor stake in happy marriages.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I'm not particularly concerned about unfair gains made
| possible by insider knowledge. The economy is large enough,
| and the set of lawmakers (not to mention leadership-level
| lawmakers!) small enough, that that the overall effect on
| anything is going to be negligible.
|
| My concern would be that the "skill" we're seeing isn't with
| using insider information, but with using their power to
| _alter outcomes_ to make whatever investments they 'd
| previously chosen become profitable post hoc. If they're
| causing our regulatory landscape to be change to pad their
| wallets, that's going to have a much greater effect on our
| overall system than just being able to make a trade a day
| earlier than the rest of us.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > I'm not particularly concerned about unfair gains made
| possible by insider knowledge.
|
| I am. I work at a company that trades publicly. My wife
| works at a firm. I can't do anything with my stocks outside
| of three weeks a quarter. I can never buy options. My wife
| has to clear her positions with whatever department. If I
| have these obstacles, congress should absolutely have them
| -- maybe more. Ideally they can trade index funds and
| that's about it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If I have these obstacles, congress should absolutely
| have them
|
| This jealousy is a minor issue, though. There's no reason
| for you to believe Congresspeople should have exactly the
| same limitations and opportunities that you have. This is
| in fact a discussion that involves limiting them from
| doing things that you would retain the right to do.
|
| The problem is how they govern.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| It's not jealousy, it's equality. If insider trading is
| illegal, then it should be illegal for everyone and
| Congress should be no exception. They have even more
| opportunities and insider knowledge, about many more
| companies than I do. It absolutely affects how they
| govern, they tend to be more corrupt because they don't
| have to abide by the same regulations that a civilian
| does.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Yeah, your equality really is just jealousy. It's your
| feeling that the situation is unfair. But there's no
| principle of nature that says that things must be fair.
|
| For me, if I can improve the lot of everyone by at least
| X%, but doing so means that some few people will actually
| get a benefit of 2X%, that's a darn good deal.
| Withholding the potential X% from those poor people just
| because it's not fair seems rather cruel. We may have the
| luxury of wanting things to be fair, but there are some
| people for whom those X% will make all the difference.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| People WILL look at for their interests. We should ask for
| basic disclosure of what those are and vote for people who
| have our interests.
| HacklesRaised wrote:
| But we should be concerned shouldn't we? These people are
| exempt from laws, they and their presecessors made, for
| which they will happily condemn the common person and
| profit again when you pay for your crime.
|
| They should be more accountable, not less.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _These people are exempt from laws, they and their
| presecessors made_
|
| Well, that's the problem, right there. We shouldn't be
| thinking about making new laws that they also won't
| subject themselves to. We should be thinking about
| shoring up the rule of law, and ensuring that they are
| always held accountable.
|
| Unfortunately, today's partisan politics prevents that
| from happening. The partisans - on BOTH sides - behave as
| if it's more important that their own side appear
| faultless and all guilt falls on their opponent. So
| partisans ensure that those on their own side will get a
| free pass.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > that that the overall effect on anything is going to be
| negligible.
|
| It's not the effect on the market you should be worried
| about. It's the effect on democracy. If you have a culture
| of people comfortable with doing very well thank you off
| the back of the broad knowledge they have access to that is
| not-quite-non-public-but-buried-in-the-minutes, then you
| are tolerating the first tier of the rot.
|
| The second tier of the rot is insider trading.
|
| The third tier is the insider trading that is happening
| when nobody cares, like in the current regime.
|
| The third tier of the rot is the grift. You can see the
| grift happening now.
|
| You have to go broken-windows-policy on this or you have
| nothing.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| That's why I don't think they should be able to trade stocks
| at all. Why are they under less scrutiny than low rung
| engineering employees at one of the big 4?
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, that is one solution, but history has shown it is very
| hard to effectively police it, as there are a million ways to
| get around it.
|
| The SEC enforcement of Insider Trading laws is also
| simultaneously both ineffective and created high-profile
| wrong cases which get people with influence to further weaken
| it.
|
| Seems to me the best solution to all of the above is to
| simply require _ALL_ trades to be open and transparent with
| the ultimate beneficial owner and the trade available in
| real-time. Pharma scientists & execs start buying/selling
| their stock unusually? Easy to setup trackers so we know it
| in the same second and can also take advantage of their
| knowledge that their new drug trial succeeded/failed, and it
| will eliminate much of the insider-trading edge. A
| congressperson buys/sells a bundle of shares of a company in
| his state? Again, we see they're likely getting/losing
| contracts soon, and again, much of the margin disappears.
|
| Traders would rapidly setup hedge funds and ETFs to ensure
| this happens in milliseconds, and much of the advantage and
| problems of insider trading being unfair disappear, along
| with a lot of enforcement cost.
|
| Obviously just a concept, what are the holes?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Personally, I think there's a fundamental flaw in insider
| training law in the same category as the fundamental flaw in
| copyright and patents.
|
| You are trying to stop people from using knowledge for
| gain... In a system that is fundamentally designed to reward
| using knowledge for gain. Fully enforcing insider trading law
| requires slicing of categories and resolution of ambiguity
| that creates the same problems it does in the other knowledge
| market law: decisions that feel unfair even if the letter
| says they aren't, people getting away with things that feel
| wrong on a technicality, and the whole category Congress
| people fall into where it's impossible to do their job and
| not obtain enough market knowledge to be leverageable.
|
| I don't have enough historical knowledge to know if this was
| always a problem and we just weren't sensitive to it or if
| past generations were more modest or magnanimous and either
| didn't take advantage of what they knew or took advantage of
| it and spread the wealth around, but I think we might be
| trying to fundamentally solve the wrong problem.
|
| It is entirely possible that the problem is the asymmetry is
| the market creates themselves. There may simply be no better,
| more efficient solution than taxing the hell out of the rich,
| no matter how they got there.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >This is saying that people in congressional leadership
| positions do 47% better than other members of Congress.
|
| It's even more damning than that I think.
|
| >we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership
| positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but
| outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after
| ascension.
|
| The same person makes more after being put in a leadership
| position than before. That essentially removes any possibility
| of 'well maybe they're just more knowledgable and that's why
| they're in leadership.'
| roughly wrote:
| Here's the strongest steel man I can provide:
|
| A person typically picks stocks based on some view of the
| future: what's going to be valuable, how the world is going
| to change, etc. Presumably, a congressperson does the same
| when drafting legislation - try to move the world in the
| direction they think it should go. The underlying worldview
| and outlook is the shared variable, and congresspeople in
| leadership positions are more capable of moving the world the
| way they think it should go than anyone else. The increased
| stock performance is because someone in congressional
| leadership's predictions for the future are more self-
| fulfilling than most.
|
| (Again, that's the best steel man I can offer, and if you
| made it this far without laughing, I commend you)
| gblargg wrote:
| Just require their stock allocations to be made public and
| anyone can follow their example.
| diehunde wrote:
| Aren't they required to make their stock trades public?
| downrightmike wrote:
| Positive assortative matching aka rotten eggs stick
| together
| ivape wrote:
| This would be the largest insider trading scandal in that case.
| Sharing company information that is then traded on would fit
| this bill I think.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Absolutely. I like the diplomatic way the authors put this,
| whilst making it blatant what the implications are.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the largest insider trading scandal_
|
| Based on the dollar amounts, no. What makes it noteworthy is
| it's a massive corruption scandal.
| gcapu wrote:
| So, you want a title that is 5 lines long? It's a fair
| criticism, but maybe it's just too difficult to summarize in a
| title.
| burkaman wrote:
| Something like "Congressional leadership 47% better at
| picking stocks than rank-and-file"
| torginus wrote:
| What's the rule on titles now? I thought HN had a strict 'no
| editorializing headlines' policy, but I see the article has a
| different headline than what was posted here
| dpflan wrote:
| Essentially, what information are they privy to that public is
| not? What asymmetry exists (timing, un-public information)? Is
| there any way for the public to be nearly as informed? What are
| they trading on? Upcoming funding changes (more money here ->
| buy, less money there --> sell)? COVID impact stands out.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If you compared Pelosi to other investors in San Francisco,
| you wouldn't see much of a difference. Anyone who has gone
| heavy into tech in the last couple of decades has
| outperformed the market at considerable risk of going broke
| if there was a tech bust. Compare Facebook or Google to an
| index fund, especially before index funds decides to go heavy
| into FAANGs.
|
| People who make/have more money also have more appetite for
| risk and also in general make more returns. Even without
| insider trading, being able to take a lopsided position on
| tech with the expectation that if it loses you still have a
| comfortable life, that is how the rich become richer.
| phkahler wrote:
| That doesn't explain why persons in leadership positions
| outperform other members of congress. Presumably they all
| talk to each other and could share trading strategies.
| There's no reason not to unless your strategy involves
| inside information that might get you in trouble if spread
| around.
| bumby wrote:
| I'm not defending congressional trading, but there are
| potentially other confounding variables (emphasis on
| potential). Leaders may tend to be older, have more
| appetite for risk, or leadership may correlate with
| wealth/status because "the connected" can also raise more
| money etc etc. Unless those types of variables are
| controlled for, it should temper how strongly we draw
| conclusions.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It actually does, if you believe that the people in
| leadership positions have been earning money for longer
| and have more experience in investing. You could also
| easily argue that they are more successful in general
| than congress people of similar tenure who aren't in
| leadership positions.
|
| You are basically comparing the CEO to middle layer
| management, and then what do you expect? You need to do a
| more balanced comparison than that to show an actual
| discrepancy. Or maybe get congress to dole leadership
| positions out at random and then compare?
| thayne wrote:
| It isn't necessarily that they have information the public
| doesn't (although it could be that, they would know about
| policy changes before the general public does). It could also
| be that they use their leadership position to push forward
| policies that benefit stocks that they own.
| fwip wrote:
| This could even happen for non-selfish reasons. If you
| genuinely believe that, e.g, "The future of America is
| BigTech," you'll both favor tech stocks in your portfolio
| and be more sympathetic to their lobbyists and favored
| bills.
| adabyron wrote:
| There are 3 things always overlooked in this conversation.
|
| - It's not just representatives but their staff, family and
| friends. See the Covid scandals as an example.
|
| - Often the information they're privy to can come from their
| networks outside of government. The current transparency laws
| give us insights into their family members' investments which
| is incredibly beneficial public knowledge.
|
| - The current laws have no teeth and are not enforced well.
| Immediate disclosure should be required & automated for
| elected representatives, judges, family & staff within 24
| hours. Late reporting should be immediate sale and loss of
| any profits.
| dccoolgai wrote:
| Most "big" projects (huge chip foundries, etc.) require
| various forms of government approval (if not outright
| funding). They get asymmetry from knowing:
|
| 1. Sometimes that the project is happening before everyone
| else 2. If the project will or will not be approved or
| stopped e.g. in committee 3. Various other classified things
| like Dept of Defense briefings (if the Army says it needs XYZ
| component and plans to buy 10 billion worth of them, then buy
| the company that makes XYZ component).
| chis wrote:
| There are a lot of strong claims that the paper does not make.
| It never says that leaders outperform index funds. It just says
| very specifically that leaders outperform other members of
| congress. The paper also does not include any clear charts on
| the actual returns the congressional leaders were getting.
|
| Maybe I'm simply too dumb to interpret this paper, but overall
| I find it unconvincing of anything notable or scandalous.
| 0xWTF wrote:
| I mean, there's additional evidence
| https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/congress-
| trading-...
|
| At this point, there's a whole body of evidence
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10590.
| ..
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/cong...
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501822122
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472.
| ..
|
| https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Congre.
| ..
| chis wrote:
| I'm interested in the specific claim that Congresspeople
| are trading in ways that beats SPY, and I think it's just
| not true.
|
| The Unusual Whales piece says that in 2023, Democrats had
| 31% returns, Republicans 18%, and SPY was 25%. Doing a
| weighted calculation, I get (31 _212+18_ 222)/(212+222) =
| 25% exactly. So that piece provides some strong evidence
| that in that year, Congress did not outperform the market,
| despite attempting to imply the opposite.
|
| Your other links are just general speculation on the
| subject, and in fact link 4 even says "House and Senator
| stock returns are consistent with random stock picking."
|
| I do think Congress should probably be restricted from
| options and maybe short-term trading in general. But I get
| frustrated by all these doomers who think Congress is
| corrupt and doing insider trading all the time when there's
| just not any generalized evidence for it.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| Someone really needs to do a meta-analysis of these results
| because a paper from a few years ago showed that members of
| congress underperform at stock picking:
|
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26975/w269...
|
| Both papers could be true if congresspeople are worse than the
| public at picking stocks, but congressional leaders are just
| better than the average congressperson
| James_K wrote:
| If this were the case, they would be just as good before
| becoming leaders. Yet the 47% increase only happens when they
| gain a position of power.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Any chance they worked really hard for that promotion and
| it paid multiple dividends? Just kidding.
| bumby wrote:
| I didn't get a chance to read the entire NBER paper, but an
| important nuance is that it takes an industry-normalized
| perspective.
|
| It could be possible that someone in Congress has insider
| information about a specific industry that helps them, but
| not about a specific stock. For example, if I knew about
| specific legislation that would impact auto manufacturers I
| may have a better idea to get in or out of that sector
| without necessarily knowing if Ford will do better than GM.
|
| To your point about meta-analysis it would also be useful to
| know if members are worse than normies at picking industries
| as well.
| lazyeye wrote:
| It would also be interesting to compare overall stock-picking
| "ability" across party lines.
|
| Real-estate investing is another corruption vector. One way
| to bribe a politician is to sell them a house at a million
| dollar discount. The optics become that the politician is a
| "savvy real-estate investor".
| bilekas wrote:
| It must be just down to the fact that they're so intelligent and
| tuned into the world that they know where to invest. Nothing to
| see here folks, move along now.
|
| I would say jokes aside but the political system promotes this
| corruption.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Corruption and unfair election systems are one of the clearest
| bipartisan embarrassments. I can't understand why this gets
| overshadowed by wedges. Maybe the media benefits from it?
| daveguy wrote:
| The election systems are managed at the state level exactly
| as they should be. Corruption has a much lower chance when
| there are barriers.
|
| That said, there should be national minimum standards for the
| elections.
|
| Chain of custody is something all elections adhere to in the
| US, but if it's not a federal requirement, it should be.
|
| What's really needed are hand marked paper ballots,
| electronically counted using open, independently audited
| machines with no network connectivity (obviously). "Scantron"
| style machines That should be a minimum requirement.
|
| Nobody stole the election from the doddering old fool in
| 2020. Internet bullshit doesn't stand up in court where they
| do have evidence standards.
|
| Edit: Back on topic ... individual stock trading by
| representatives clearly should be illegal. And apparently we
| need more independent watchdogs with better protections
| against a puppet who mindlessly goes along with the last
| person to manipulate them.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| > _Maybe the media benefits from it?_
|
| Nah.
|
| We just love our dog whistles.
|
| Abortion!!
|
| Immigrants!!
|
| The billionaires are stealing from you!!
|
| Libtards!!
|
| Right wing shooters!!
|
| Oh yeah, almost forgot..
|
| Something, something blacks!!!
|
| That's how you win elections these days.
|
| You can try to win an election on something substantive, say,
| infrastructure repair and updates for instance. But the wedge
| issue fueled campaigns are gonna wipe the floor with you.
|
| We the people have voted on this over and over. The data is
| irrefutable. We love our wedge issues.
| luma wrote:
| Billionaires benefit from it, they are the ones buying off
| our government. All the other "wedge issues" are designed to
| deflect attention away from our oligarchs and both parties
| are on the take. Look at how the DNC reacted to Mamdani for a
| recent example.
|
| To be clear, because I know it will come up - not saying both
| parties are the same, but I am saying they are both doing the
| oligarch's bidding. The US government is now fully captured
| by billionaires and is currently being used for personal
| enrichment of those in power.
| rcv wrote:
| I know you're joking, but the most interesting finding here is
| that they got more financially intelligent and tuned in after
| ascending to higher positions within congress.
| sebtron wrote:
| Ah yes that must be perfectly legal and a sign of a healthy
| democracy.
| Simulacra wrote:
| My boss has invested in a fund that tracks Nancy Pelosi's stock
| trades for years, and he's made quite a profit. I wish I could do
| that.
| bell-cot wrote:
| What's the barrier? Is the fund closed to new investors, or
| does it require a very large initial investment and/or years of
| "exemplary donations" to the Democratic party?
| ta12653421 wrote:
| NANC
| tekla wrote:
| Nothing. Its performance is kinda meh.
| fblp wrote:
| yep also curious about this!
| ta12653421 wrote:
| NANC
| ta12653421 wrote:
| you can do that, if you are in the US?
|
| Ticker: NANC, its an ETF
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Nominal returns are only 11% more compared to a riskless VOO
| for the past 5 years. But NANC expense ratio is 0.74% per year
| while VOO is 0.03% per year. Every year, NANC would have to
| return an additional 0.7% just to break even with VOO, not
| accounting for the additional risk.
|
| So we're looking at 11% - 3.5% = 7.5% real return over 5 years,
| or roughly 1.5% per year. I'll easily recommend passing on this
| one.
|
| https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/NANC/VOO
| greyface- wrote:
| > compared to a riskless VOO
|
| Where do I get some of this "riskless" VOO? My broker only
| seems willing to sell me the regular, risky kind.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would bet Congress passing legislation to backstop VOO
| (like they have time and time again) is much likelier than
| legislation to backstop NANC.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The fact that Nancy Pelosi became the meme for congress members
| trading stocks is more political than anything. The actual top
| performing congressional portfolios never make as much news.
| Pelosi doesn't make as many trades as other members like
| Marjorie Taylor Green, who gets a free pass for some reason.
|
| And everyone ignores the fact that her husband is a
| professional in the finance and venture capital world.
| Investing is literally his job.
|
| Anyway, if you want to track her trades there are ETFs to do
| it. It's not an exclusive investment thing. If you're in the US
| you could buy them from your broker right now.
|
| There are also countless sites that will push the Nancy Pelosi
| portfolio to your inbox, but they're universally spammy and
| almost always pushing some other agenda too.
|
| As a rule: If they're focused specifically on Nancy Pelosi and
| not looking at top congressional trades as a whole, they're
| more interested in pushing a political content than financial
| content.
|
| Oh, and it's important to know that you can't actually track
| congressional portfolios in real time. The disclosures are
| delayed so you can only track them after the fact. If you
| believe they're front-running insider info then the changes may
| have happened before you could possibly get the signal to buy
| or sell.
| kortilla wrote:
| MTG gets a pass because she's relatively new and mostly
| irrelevant. She's also not on the side you expect to be
| better about avoiding shading money schemes given all of the
| public positioning.
|
| One smacks of hypocrisy while the other is a dirt bag
| behaving exactly as expected.
| zuminator wrote:
| Huh? Are you saying that Pelosi is a worse person because
| MTG is a worse person? I don't get the logic.
|
| Given the situation (that it's unfortunately legal for them
| to do this) I don't blame either one for taking money left
| on the table. Why forgo a financial windfall, who benefits
| by that? The voters should back candidates who will change
| the law, and then we can talk about criminality and not
| selective hypocrisy outrage.
| jimbohn wrote:
| MTG is part of the side that has won the social media
| influence game (via bots/russians/etc.), so of course, she
| doesn't get as targeted.
| HardCodedBias wrote:
| MTG does better than Nancy?
|
| https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Marjo.
| ..
|
| https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Nancy.
| ..
|
| Sure doesn't look like it.
|
| It looks like she buys and holds, unlikely nancy. And it
| looks like she bought some AMD which had great returns (oh
| how I wish I bought it) and held it.
|
| Looks like a false claim to me.
| boringg wrote:
| Its funny -- out of all the corruption you see from Washington
| this one seems the most benign. For whatever reason this one gets
| almost the most constant press. Maybe because its the easiest to
| fix but isn't.
| exasperaited wrote:
| This is so far from benign.
| kortilla wrote:
| Well it's pretty benign if they aren't making different
| decisions on laws based on existing holdings. That's _just_
| insider trading which is a tax on the shareholders.
|
| Bribery or anything else that affects their lawmaking
| decisions is significantly worse because the impact is so
| much larger.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If.
|
| But there is a third option: They are making decisions
| based on what will move _something_ the most - doesn 't
| matter what, and doesn't matter which way, and doesn't
| matter for how long. Then they invest in that thing a bit
| before the decision becomes public that moves that thing.
| clevergadget wrote:
| if they are actively avoiding making decisions based on how
| it would directly impact them? o,O
| myrmidon wrote:
| How can you be certain that policymakers won't make
| decisions that help their trading instead of their
| constituents? The incentive is already there, and the whole
| thing is legal, too.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think campaign donations or even more
| explicit bribes are a huge problem, too, but it is already
| insane to me that you would ban and prosecute "ordinary
| insider traders" and just let lawmakers do whatever. If
| presidents have to give up peanut farming, then asking for
| congressmembers to be utterly decoupled from stock trading
| decisions is only fair and sensible in my view.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Mind bending to be downvoted over this. Do people really
| think these people are better or smarter?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > out of all the corruption you see from Washington this one
| seems the most benign
|
| Lawmakers deciding what laws to argue against/for based on how
| much money it'll get them personally is a benign issue? It's a
| very hard problem to solve, when the people making the laws
| have to outlaw behavior that makes them rich, but it's a very
| worthwhile one if you manage to get it down, because then
| you'll again get politicians working for the people rather than
| against.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Trading on inside information has that causality going on the
| other direction. It's them picking what stocks to buy
| depending on what laws are being most argued for/against.
| Every stock looks the same from their POV, and there's no
| reliable mechanism for making them prefer one law over
| another.
|
| The GP is right. It's campaign contributions, career rolling
| doors, and direct payments that make them pick one law over
| another. Inside trading only let them directly steal money
| from the population with no strings attached.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Peoples understanding of what "corruption" is differs by a
| surprising amount.
|
| The boundaries between corruption, lobbyism, incompetence and
| nepotism can get very blurry (sometimes even actually
| representing your constituents interests can look this way!).
|
| But policy makers enriching themselves by insider trading are
| seen as corrupt by pretty much everyone.
|
| What is the less benign corruption seen in Washington that you
| feel is most pressing?
| mdavidn wrote:
| Insider trading is a form of theft. Every trade has a
| counterparty who missed out on those capital gains because they
| did not have their thumb on regulatory levers.
| slibhb wrote:
| Despite Congress' general dysfunction, this seems like a problem
| that could feasibly be solved. It would make most Congressmen of
| both parties look good to pass a bill that e.g. restricted
| sitting members to index funds/mutual funds/etc.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Even that is open to massive bias. Who would vote to curtail
| the 7 tech giants when their own portfolio is basically the
| SP500 those companies dominate?
| bradhilton wrote:
| The SP500 is probably the most popular investment in America,
| perhaps aside from housing. Wouldn't hurt to have lawmaker's
| fortunes broadly aligned versus narrowly aligned with
| specific corporations.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| That can go very poorly like in 1929, 1965, 2000, etc. and
| it is going to go poorly again and show everyone why it is
| a bad idea.
|
| https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-
| re...
| butlike wrote:
| A new "boutique" mutual/ETF would spin up overnight which
| included just the assets already being insider traded.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Great intention, but too simplistic. The lawmaker has a third
| party set up a trust for the benefit of his children and the
| trust owns a company in yet another jurisdiction that just
| happens to not only take a position in a certain stock, but
| probably provides "consulting services" for a healthy fee. And
| that is the simple version. By the time the lawmaker's interest
| is fully obfuscated, the legal structure is fully compliant
| with every letter of the law, just not the intention. Better to
| have fewer laws that are actually enforceable.
| slibhb wrote:
| That's like saying "why bother banning insider trading?
| People can just obfuscate their illegal trades".
|
| Yeah, sometimes people can break laws and not get caught. But
| that's no argument against laws. Some congressmen might be
| able to hide their investments, but sometimes they'd get
| caught and plenty of them would not take the risk.
| Romario77 wrote:
| There are already insider trading laws which almost everyone
| has to comply with, congress people being an exception. They
| specifically allow insider trading for themselves while
| prohibiting it for everyone else.
|
| If you work in a financial company which does trading often
| times you are very restricted in what you could do. You also
| have to report all of your accounts plus close relatives
| accounts.
|
| And if you have an insider info and give it to someone else,
| no matter how remote from you it's still against the law to
| trade based on that and it's not "fully compliant with every
| letter of the law"
| SeanDav wrote:
| Right, no insider trading going on here at all /s
| hypeatei wrote:
| I think the solution is to pay them more, create very strict laws
| around insider trading, and enforce those laws vigorously.
|
| I don't know if that's realistic or not as the electorate has
| already shown they don't care enough to vote their
| representatives out for doing it and it's unlikely that current
| members would restrict their earnings. I guess it's good that we
| know about it, at least.
| someguyiguess wrote:
| Somehow I don't think paying them more is going to be a very
| popular idea among the citizenry.
| tokai wrote:
| It also wouldn't help anything.
| esafak wrote:
| Not unless you combine it with outlawing trading for them.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Yes it would. It'd make Congress a viable career path for
| ambitious-but-not-yet-wealthy people. Currently, you have
| to already be rich to be able to make it work. Public
| service should be a viable path to wealth for ambitious,
| capable young people.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| They should benchmark to early USA and Singapore and
| corporations.
|
| George Washington was paid 4x Trump, I believe.
|
| In the context of corruption cleanup, I think people
| understand that paying people well avoids corruption. Mexican
| cops, that sort of thing.
|
| Yes, not popular, but important.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I agree, but the substance of the issue is that their pay has
| remained the same since 2009 at $174k/year (i.e. not kept up
| with inflation at all) so if we want to discourage corrupt
| behavior then giving them a proper salary is probably a good
| idea if we're going to restrict other methods of building
| wealth.
| salawat wrote:
| I beg your pardon, but if that applies to Congresspeople,
| what about the common laborer? All I'm seeing is more
| pandering to those in a position of power.
| hypeatei wrote:
| The common laborer doesn't control the thing that has a
| monopoly on violence (the government)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Less concentrated wealth means less discretionary funds
| for bribery. :)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| You still have to prove if raising wages will reduce
| corruption, and if so, prove that it is reasonably cost
| effective. Keep in mind, there are already independently
| wealthy people involved in government in the US, and they
| still engage in corruption: Trump & his family, Musk while
| at Doge, Chris Collins, etc.
|
| After all, how much do you have to pay _the world 's
| richest man_ to keep things above board, I wonder?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > as the electorate has already shown they don't care enough to
| vote their representatives out for doing it
|
| The problem arises from how we run elections. It's very hard to
| dislodge an incumbent when the small group of people voting in
| a primary are very biased, and then the people voting in the
| general election really don't want the candidate from the other
| party.
|
| I suggest reading "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case
| for Multiparty Democracy in America" by Lee Drutman.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Two-Party-Doom-Loop-Multipar...
| amavect wrote:
| Lee Drutman advocates for ranked choice voting, but
| implementations in the USA still degenerated to 2 parties.
| RCV still has a spoiler effect.
| https://realrcv.equal.vote/alaska22
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU
|
| Instead, we need approval voting, or even STAR voting.
| https://www.equal.vote/
|
| (Drutman appears to have somewhat changed his views on RCV,
| but I don't think his "fusion voting" idea will catch on
| until we have multiple parties in the first place.
| https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/blog/how-i-
| updat... )
| mola wrote:
| It's funny. In my failing democracy people are convinced the
| solution is a two party system like the US (we have a
| parliament with a large amount of parties)
|
| Somehow I have a feeling the problem is not the system, but
| the culture...
| amavect wrote:
| >In my failing democracy
|
| Which nation, may I ask?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Also you need a hundred million dollars to run a campaign at
| all.
|
| Bernie snuggles up to the democrat party because even being
| _extremely popular_ doesn 't ensure you will be re-elected if
| you don't run a campaign.
|
| The 2024 and 2020 elections cost $15 and $18 _billion_
| dollars. We literally spend more than it costs to build an
| aircraft carrier, for no reason. An entire industry exists to
| suck up that money every 2-4 years. All that money comes from
| rich "donors", who always want to ask how you feel about <X>
| before agreeing to give you that money instead of your
| competitor.
|
| Most countries have strict limits on how much you can spend
| on campaigns, and limit how early you can start campaigning.
| Only in the US do you have to endure presidential campaign
| adverts in off years.
|
| Only in the US have we decided it's wrong to prevent the rich
| from totally controlling our electoral process through their
| wealth and resources.
|
| This no limits system means our politicians aren't even up
| for _sale_ , they are up for _auction_. Can you outbid Dupont
| the next time regulation comes up for forever chemicals?
| andsoitis wrote:
| How much do they get paid currently?
|
| Many people agree with Bay Area's idea that people making less
| than $105k are poor -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46036803
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Not enough to attracted talented, sane people with strong
| ethical values
| hugeBirb wrote:
| Braindead to think salary is somehow attached to morality.
| I would say some of the most immoral people are people with
| a lot of money, and there are countless examples of that.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| My logic is that, if you are trying to evaluate whether
| you'd want to be a politician, consideration of
| cost/benefit is rational. If you aren't ethical, the
| benefit of being a politician is a lot higher (because
| you can get unethical sources of funds). If we want to
| attract more sane, talented, ethical people, we need to
| pay more -- and prevent blatant corruption like
| privledged trading.
| hugeBirb wrote:
| "trying to evaluate...". Normal people aren't trying to
| evaluate becoming a politician. It's a lifelong career
| for most people and you think the lunch lady or librarian
| who constantly gives back to their community was
| evaluating on "becoming" a politician? The financial
| incentives should be lowered. Pay them like you pay a
| school teacher and ban insider trading. Then you wouldn't
| have all these worthless nepo babies who just want a lax
| job and power over people in these positions.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| We want highly talented people to be in government --
| it's a lot better than the alternative. Why should we
| treat comp so differently than other fields?
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I think a better choice would be to simply remove the
| ability or to profit from the job. Perhaps politicians
| give up all their property and become wards of the state
| after serving their terms, or agree to aggressive post-
| service surveillance and corruption enforcement.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Good way to make sure that the most capable people
| absolutely never go into politics.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Do people really think that all of the most capable
| people are motivated by money? I've made several career
| moves in my life which have prioritized things other than
| my salary or financial security. I don't feel this is
| that rare.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Yes, of course they are. Not solely by money, but the
| most capable workers are not going to work for less than
| market rate because they don't have to. They can get
| meaning and power and everything else they want, and
| still make way more than Congressmen get.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| You don't need to be motivated by money to not want to
| take a major pay cut to do a horrible job.
| Brybry wrote:
| $174k to $223k + allowances up to $2 million
|
| https://www.congress.gov/crs-
| product/RL30064#:~:text=The%20c...
| hugeBirb wrote:
| Why would we pay them more? The people who are in Congress for
| the money are the exact type of people I don't want in
| Congress.
| IanCal wrote:
| I understand this, but at the same time the concept of this
| to me is absolutely wild.
|
| We see this in the UK, the exact same argument. Yet I was
| paid more to manage a small tech team than an MP for fewer
| hours. You actively disincentivise people like me from taking
| public positions. I'm doing tech contracting and earn more
| than Prime Minister.
|
| The UK gets about a trillion dollars a year in, and spends
| more. The US takes in something like _five trillion dollars_.
|
| An exceptionally small improvement in improving the economy
| pays for itself indefinitely because these countries are
| absolutely enormous. Our MPs are paid about 90k/year, if you
| could improve the tax take of the government by 0.1% by
| improving the economy in some way *once* you could pay them
| PS1M/year *tax free* and you could pay that *forever* even if
| future people aren't as good they're just not actively
| detrimental. This is also for paying people who aren't
| actually making big decisions, just the elected
| representatives.
|
| Money should _not be an issue_ , missing a good person
| because of the money is utter insanity given the payback.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Because the most capable among us are able to command high
| salaries regardless of whether they're 'in it for the money'.
| Congress needs to be competitive with industry for the best
| talent.
|
| Also, giving politicians legitimate income makes them less
| susceptible to bribery and other forms of unethical income.
| hugeBirb wrote:
| This is so naive. No amount of money could force me to work
| for a company I didn't agree with morally, if I am able to
| "command" a higher salary I can command it elsewhere. And
| less susceptible to bribery? I can guarantee you that
| someone bringing in ~ $200k a year doesn't need to be
| looking for other sources of income. What do they tell poor
| people? Stop buying starbucks? Pull yourself up by the
| bootstraps! Shame they'd have to live a less lavish
| lifestyle as a public servant :( So at this point we should
| have to beg people and incentivize them with astronomical
| salaries to not be a piece of shit? I think this is just
| the product of late stage capitalism. Nobody gives a fuck
| about anything besides money and how to get more of it.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Lmao. $200k a year doesn't even get you a nice 1 bedroom
| apartment in many of the cities these representatives
| represent. Let alone pay for the 2 separate residences
| that they effectively need to maintain.
|
| And you are arguing against strawmen. Please point to an
| example of two of current Congress reps telling poor
| people "Stop buying starbucks? Pull yourself up by the
| bootstraps!"
|
| > So at this point we should have to beg people and
| incentivize them with astronomical salaries to not be a
| piece of shit? I think this is just the product of late
| stage capitalism. Nobody gives a fuck about anything
| besides money and how to get more of it.
|
| _This_ is the deeply naive view. It is not begging to
| pay market rate for top talent. The most capable people
| who we should want to run our government are worth far,
| far more on the open market than the current salary
| levels we pay Congress. If we want those people to
| consider Congress a viable option, we need to pay them
| accordingly. See Singapore for a strong example of this.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I'm also in the camp of paying government officials more. In my
| town, the mayor and council make about $30k each while the
| median income in the city is well over $100k and houses cost
| over $1M. That self-selects out the majority of qualified
| candidates who must work for a living.
|
| We have several high tech companies as well as a pro sports
| team that perpetually influence politics to the city's
| detriment, and the stooges that get put on our ballot each
| election are simply under-equipped to combat them.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > In my town, the mayor and council make about $30k each
| while the median income in the city is well over $100k and
| houses cost over $1M.
|
| The chief of police summons a recently enrolled policeman in
| his office: "The accounting called, and apparently you never
| picked your pay cheques in the last 6 months? What's up with
| that?" -- "Wait, we get paid? I thought it was, you get the
| badge and then gun, and then you're on your own!"
|
| The things with jokes, however, is that they probably should
| not become reality.
| trollbridge wrote:
| "Mayor" where I live is effectively a volunteer position.
| Raising the salary would require the village fully fund the
| position for the extent of a mayoral term which is too
| expensive.
|
| So instead they hire a city manager who basically runs
| everything, at a much higher salary, which meets budget rules
| since they could in theory fire him if they run out of money.
| Hence the city manager is an unelected strong executive,
| which is not good for democracy.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Here in NJ, I live in a small town of around 7,000 or so. We
| have a Township Committee form of government, five committee
| people with one nominally as Mayor (but really the same as
| everyone else). They get a yearly stipend of around $5,000 a
| year or a little less.
|
| It sounds crazy but our whole muni budget is under $5
| million. We have almost no infrastructure other than roads
| (98% of housing is on well water and septic systems, there
| are no street lights or sewers or the like).
|
| A lot of _municipal_ government in the US is like this. Very
| small with near-volunteers running everything.
|
| You are right that this rules out a lot of people who can't
| afford to effectively volunteer for local government. I think
| mostly this is a good thing.
| 91bananas wrote:
| 125k people, $9,000 for the city council position in my area.
| hamdingers wrote:
| > That self-selects out the majority of qualified candidates
| who must work for a living.
|
| Occupations like "landlord" and "car dealership owner" are
| wildly overrepresented in local government because they have
| high incomes with virtually no time commitment.
|
| These people aren't necessarily unqualified, but their
| motivation for holding office isn't usually aligned with the
| needs of the average member of the public.
| craftkiller wrote:
| This article was about members of the US congress so their
| salaries are $174k for your run-of-the-mill congressperson
| and higher for leadership roles. $174k is a very comfortable
| salary.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| It's low for people who control trillions of dollars in
| yearly government spending, and who indirectly decide the
| fate of trillions more in private spending. $174k being
| "comfortable" is a misdirection: it should be, "what is the
| market rate to get someone who can reasonably handle
| trillions of dollars without corruption and for the benefit
| of their constituents?" And the answer is apparently higher
| than $174k per year, because many of these people go on to
| million dollar appointments in the private sector
| afterward.
|
| See also, for example, Singapore, known for fairly low
| corruption, who pays government heads over $1M per year.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't understand how paying them more will curtail this. This
| is a mixture of a crime of convenience and greed. It's not a
| Les Mis situation where they need these stock picks to survive
| (or even thrive). The current US Administration is full of rich
| people who are still not above corruption.
|
| Obama signed the STOCK act into law, but of course, who watches
| the watchmen? The Restore Trust In Congress Act is sitting
| there, waiting for Mike Johnson to bring it to a vote.
| stetrain wrote:
| The idea is that if their salary does not actually cover the
| expenses of living in and traveling to DC to do their job,
| you are limiting the pool of potential congressional
| representatives to those who are independently wealthy or who
| are finding other ways to make money via their position.
|
| Paying enough to cover the expenses of the job isn't a
| solution to all problems, just kind of a minimum bar if we
| want a normal person to be able do the job without relying on
| other income sources.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| At first I am sympathetic to this idea, but the act of
| running is so expensive and time consuming, it does not
| matter what the salary will be, the pool is already
| limited.
|
| You need to be well connected and/or wealthy before you
| even start.
| hypeatei wrote:
| That's true, and I think Bernie's idea of having publicly
| funded elections is great because of that issue.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Or don't have elections and pick legislators randomly
| like we pick juries.
| benmmurphy wrote:
| I think sortition is a great idea but you would probably
| need a constitutional amendment if you wanted sortition
| in Congress or the Senate. I think the State's have some
| discretion over how elections are run but I don't think
| its enough discretion to allow appointment by RNG. I
| think the strongest argument you could make is its an
| election where everyone is forced to vote for themselves
| and tie-breaks are chosen by RNG but I don't think that
| would be valid because I assume the courts would demand
| electors execute some agency.
|
| The text of the constitution for electing congress says:
|
| > The House of Representatives shall be composed of
| Members chosen every second Year by the People of the
| several States
|
| and there is something similar for the Senate after the
| 17th amendment. I think pre-17th amendment States may
| have been able to use Sortion to appoint Senators but it
| would not have been legally enforceable. The State
| legislature could pre-commit to elect Senators by
| Sortition but then they could bail out and just decided
| to choose who they want when it came to the actual
| selection.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I am definitely not a lawyer, but "chosen... by the
| People of the several States" does not say the method of
| this choice. If the people of my state decide that the
| RNG decides, is that not "chosen by the People" of my
| state? Or if we still hold elections but one of the
| choices on the ballot is "RNG-chosen candidate"?
| otikik wrote:
| I would like to mention that this is not just "Bernie's
| idea". It's how elections are run in a lot of countries,
| including mine (Spain).
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Publicly funded elections & doing things like repealing
| citizens united would address the expense. It is very
| time consuming though.
| phantasmish wrote:
| Citizens United isn't a law, it's a shitty Supreme Court
| decision. It's on the long list of obvious problems we
| can't fix without first reforming the courts (I favor
| increasing the justice count to match the number of
| circuits, and also drawing the Supreme Court justices by
| lot for each session from the "lower" courts--shouldn't
| be any constitutional issues with that approach, so it's
| just a normal law, and it ought to be easier to sell than
| simply expanding the court and "packing" it since it's
| less-partisan)
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I don't know how you repeal citizens united. That
| decision basically fucked the US over for a very long
| time. I'll probably be dead before it's fixed.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It's an interesting idea. Is that what's happening? The
| article doesn't suggest it. People like Richard Burr, Chris
| Collins or Nancy Pelosi were certainly wealthy enough cover
| these expenses. It didn't stop them from seeking other ways
| to make money via their position. If your goal is to stop
| insider trading, you should focus on stopping insider
| trading.
|
| If your goal is to make it easier to travel to and live in
| DC, well, congress has the power to address housing
| (especially in DC) and airline costs _for all Americans_.
| stetrain wrote:
| The comment above specifically also said to create and
| enforce laws against insider trading, in addition to the
| pay increase.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| You've just been presented evidence that your law makers are
| doing something immoral, something that should be illegal, and
| your idea is to pay them more. Do you also advocate putting a
| little pot of cash at the front of every walmart so the shop
| lifters can just take the cash and pay for the stuff they were
| going to steal?
| hypeatei wrote:
| > Do you also advocate putting a little pot of cash ...
|
| Yes, obviously I would support that /s
|
| The idea of increasing pay for members of Congress is that we
| naturally discourage seeking out other forms of building
| wealth and/or paying bills while in office regardless of
| existing laws. You can also have laws that explicitly stop
| things like insider trading too, but obviously you can't
| solve for _every scenario_ so this would be a blanket
| solution.
|
| I understand that corruption can't be solved by this one
| action and that members can still be corrupt after a pay
| increase, but on the whole, I think it'd be a positive
| change. It's a hard problem to solve without burning
| everything down... which only sounds good in theory and may
| not result in a better system.
| rs186 wrote:
| "create very strict laws"
|
| Who's going to draft those laws?
|
| Definitely not the _lawmakers_ who could benefit from this.
|
| See the problem?
| misiti3780 wrote:
| the solution is dont let them pick individual stocks, only
| indexes. they also should have to publish all trades publicly
| the day the trade takes place
|
| CA doesnt care about this -- you continue to re-elected Pelosi,
| she is one of the worst violators of this
| tptacek wrote:
| In what way? Because she's long a lot of high-variance tech
| stocks? You could probably outperform her just going all-in
| on QQQ.
| lfuller wrote:
| From my perspective it would make a lot more sense to only
| allow index fund purchases as an elected official. If the
| economy does well you still do well, but there would clearly be
| no insider trading going on.
|
| Or at least there would be less - you could only trade on the
| knowledge of full-market swings rather than per-company swings.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > From my perspective it would make a lot more sense to only
| allow index fund purchases as an elected official.
|
| The new leader[1] of the Norwegian wealth fund[2] had a large
| stock portfolio. There was some debacle given the influential
| nature of the wealth fund.
|
| He agreed to sell the stocks and buy index funds instead,
| until he resigned from that position.
|
| As you say, I think that's very reasonable. They can still
| make money off the general stock market lkkd the rest so
| they're not disadvantaged, but have very limited opportunity
| to benefit significantly from inside deals.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Tangen
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of
| _Nor...
| jjk166 wrote:
| The logic of paying lawmakers well is that if they have enough
| money they won't be at tempted to do bad things to get more
| money. All of human history has shown that "enough money" is
| not a meaningful term for people attracted to such positions.
|
| Lawmakers should be paid enough that they are not destitute, so
| that low income people are not excluded from participating in
| government, but the price of power should be that one can not
| become wealthy during or shortly after their stint. Tax their
| household 100% on all income and capital gains over the
| congressional salary (which should be comparable and pegged to
| the average DC area household income) for their term and over a
| reasonably small multiple of that salary for 10 years after
| they leave office. They can insider trade all they want, they
| can take a cushy job with a company that lobbied them, but all
| the money they would make by these efforts will go to the
| people. In practice I think most would not bother. Some people
| may choose not to go into government because they have better
| earning opportunities elsewhere, I consider that a feature not
| a bug. Some may leave office earlier than they otherwise would
| because they don't like the low income, again that's a good
| thing. Non-monetary quid pro quo is still an issue, but it's no
| worse than the current situation and frankly power will always
| come with perks.
|
| Exempt sitting congresspeople from the change they implement
| and any of their past potentially ill gotten gains will be
| exempt from prosecution. Passing a major anti-corruption bill
| while legalizing your own grift? It may very well pass
| unanimously.
| james_marks wrote:
| Unpopular opinion, but couldn't this be explained by something as
| innocent as seeing what changes are likely to be coming?
|
| By having lawmakers as peers, you'd have a natural feel for what
| laws have momentum, who would benefit, etc.
|
| I'm not ruling out corruption, just that assuming malicious
| intent often masks underlying dynamics.
| someguyiguess wrote:
| "Seeing what changes are coming" is insider information.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Exactly. The corruption is systemic and structural, rather
| than individuals' moral failings. (Though of course there's
| plenty of the latter, too.)
| kortilla wrote:
| That's not insider information following the legal definition
| in the US. That's why people want to make special laws to
| prevent this.
|
| It's not insider information to buy or short a stock knowing
| you're about to do something that will impact a company.
| tedggh wrote:
| Geniuses.
| commiepatrol wrote:
| Is there like a TL;DR of what I should do to also get 47% better?
| Happy to copy someone's profile
| clevergadget wrote:
| hey and if we all do it we could all get 47% more!
| trentnix wrote:
| Every single one of these scoundrels will stand up at a college
| graduation and exhort the virtues of public service and sacrifice
| for country. But somehow they all manage to get rich in the midst
| of their own service and sacrifice.
|
| They shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks. When you do so,
| corruption is inevitable. It should be an expected price of
| public service that you remove yourself from most other
| ambitions.
|
| I'd hope that if they were required to live off of their (rapidly
| depreciating) savings and income, like most Americans, they might
| consider some of their legislative choices differently.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It should be an expected price of public service that you
| remove yourself from most other ambitions.
|
| Countries like Singapore already figured out that if you pay
| public servants very well you can attract high quality people
| to government jobs.
|
| If you make part of the job requirements that you sacrifice
| your retirement and financial well being for the good of the
| country you're just targeting a type of politician you wish
| existed, not real people.
|
| > I'd hope that if they were required to live off of their
| (rapidly depreciating) savings and income
|
| The problem with your line of thinking is that "they" is not a
| fixed set of candidates. If you forced them to have "rapidly
| depreciating" financial states to take the job, you'd lose a
| lot of candidates. I know you'd like to imagine they'd be
| replaced by perfect utopian candidates who only have your best
| interests in mind, but in reality if you make people
| financially desperate they're actually more likely to look for
| ways to commit fraud for self-benefit. Imagine the desperate
| lawmaker watching their family's retirement "rapidly
| depreciate" who gets a visit from a lobbyist who can get their
| kid a sweet $200K/yr do-nothing job if they can just slip a
| little amendment into a law.
|
| The populist movement to punish lawmakers is self-defeating.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Countries like Singapore already figured out that if you
| pay public servants very well
|
| So insider trading is not a thing among Singapore's ruling
| class?
| toephu2 wrote:
| Singapore pays its public officials high salaries primarily
| to ensure the integrity and quality of its government. The
| official justification centers on attracting top talent who
| could otherwise command high incomes in the private sector,
| thereby establishing a "clean wage" that reduces the
| financial incentive for corruption. Salaries are explicitly
| benchmarked to the median income of the nation's highest
| earners.
|
| e.g.,
|
| Singapore PM annual salary: ~$1.63 million USD
|
| Singapore President salary: ~$1.14 million USD
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Compare the observation that in superhero comics, wealthy
| villains can be self-made, while wealthy heroes invariably
| get that way through inheritance.
|
| The only acceptable leader is someone who was born so rich
| that he leads as a hobby.
| delecti wrote:
| That strategy is pretty hit or miss though. Sure we've got
| Kennedy or FDR, but we've also got Bush and Trump.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I'm not saying that's a useful thing to believe. I'm
| saying that's what people do believe.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Alternately: Self-made wealth is so frequently derived from
| evil that those who are born rich and come good owe penance
| for the sins of their forebears.
| greedo wrote:
| Nebraska has a unicameral legislature that isn't in session
| year round. Pay is $12k/year (with travel per diem). This low
| salary leads to an older cohort of senators, either retired
| or wealthy enough to work part time. This low salary
| completely neuters the ability of younger people to enter
| state politics until they've amassed enough money to survive
| for four years.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > requirements that you sacrifice your retirement and
| financial well being
|
| Holding index funds seems reasonable (Total Stock Market, S&P
| 500)... not a huge sacrifice imo
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Definitely prefer something like Total market, even 500
| companies is too much of a bias towards one group.
| Especially with the S&P500 currently looking like an
| S&P10...
| sidrag22 wrote:
| this feels like a no brainer solution, but just seems like
| a wonderful wishlist that won't happen, ive heard it a lot.
|
| I am wondering why i don't hear anything like: if a church
| or group representing a church get involved with politics,
| through lobbying or any other type of means, their tax free
| status is revoked and they are treated like a normal
| entity.
|
| it seems like a similar type of thing that in my eyes at
| least, is a no brainer, but is just as likely to be chopped
| down because of how our current system functions.
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| > Countries like Singapore already figured out that if you
| pay public servants very well you can attract high quality
| people to government jobs.
|
| I see this argument a lot, but I think it treats people as
| uniform input-output machines. Singapore is successful in
| this regard because of much more severe and very real
| penalties for corruption, and because not "everyone does
| this". You can't bribe immoral people into behaving morally,
| because in the absence of morals they have no incentive not
| to just take your bribe and keep doing what they're doing.
|
| A significant number of corrupt public "servants" are multi-
| millionaires, no amount of money will ever be enough for
| them.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Or we can recruit lawmakers how we choose juries: randomly.
| Every two years we randomly select 435 individuals to serve
| in the House and 100 random people for the Senate. We pay
| them well, and they pass a basic literacy test. No money in
| politics, no parties. You have to for a coalition to govern.
|
| One objection could be this: but what if we hire unqualified
| people. The counterargument: do you think are current
| legislators are more or less qualified than an average
| person?
|
| Another objection: but what if they don't want to do it?
| Counterargument: when a juror does not want to be on a case,
| they are almost always dismissed from it. Doesn't mean you
| get to skip jury duty, just that you don't get to do that
| one.
|
| One last one: this will disrupt those people's lives. Counter
| argument: what Congress is and isn't doing right now is
| disrupting everyone's lives as are lobbyists and special
| interest groups.
|
| Something similar has been done in Ireland with their
| assemblies. And I do think that if you cannot convince 535
| randomly selected average citizens that a law should be
| passed, that law is probably not worth passing.
|
| Democracy is a terrible form of government. It's just that it
| is about 5x better than anything else we have invented so
| far. Doesn't mean we should stop looking for a better system.
| ragebol wrote:
| Sounds very interesting, but one more counter-points I'd
| like to see counter-countered:
|
| These random people will have to rely on experts a lot for
| knowledge they lack on any topic, because the world is
| complex. Now, these experts can be biased, bought,
| influenced etc. Or be accused of being in some sort of
| "Deep State" if you're into that.
|
| But then again, this can already be the case, now I
| counter-countered myself.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| That's exactly it: we already have this in the form of
| the lobby industrial complex. Except it is possibly quite
| a bit worse because if you stay in Congress for a long
| time and form a trusting relationship with your lobbyists
| who by the way also pay to your reelection campaign or
| support you in other ways, over time you get to accept
| their expert opinion with less skepticism. If a lobbyist
| has to start over every 2 years, they can't sink their
| teeth as hard into you. And I doubt many congresspeople
| are experts on most subjects on which they write laws.
| Some have economics degrees. Some are doctors, some are
| lawyers. Very few engineers, it seems.
|
| If you wanted an alternative system: you could always
| have a professional group of law writers and a
| professional group of law opposers try to present
| arguments to a large assembly of law jurors. If they
| can't get 2/3rds majority on a law, it doesn't pass. This
| is better than something like direct democracy where
| everyone votes on an issue because you can't get the
| voters' attention on any one thing for more than a few
| minutes or a few hours at the most (except a small
| fraction for whom it is their life for a while). In this
| law jury setup you can properly brief them.
|
| You could have some other body of professional governors
| who do things like emergency resolutions and maybe basic
| budget stuff but anything beyond that goes to the
| assembly for approval. You could create a new assembly as
| often as every 6 weeks and process a batch of laws at
| once so that you really rotate out the jurors before they
| can be influenced. And selection of law writers and law
| opposers can be something that is reviewed by this kind
| of assembly too, or just some large pool of professionals
| who are chosen at random for any given period of time and
| given the power to present before the assembly. A lot of
| options here for how to amortize bad behavior such that
| over the long haul it averages out to close to zero.
| jkartchner wrote:
| Assuming, arguendo, that corruption is somehow not a
| factor in your scenario, it still doesn't account for
| ignorance. Consider that jurors in jury trials have one
| binary decision to make based on the facts and law given
| to them. They don't need to decide if the law is just (in
| fact that's explicitly NOT what they're supposed to do).
| They don't need (and are not supposed) to decide if the
| situation is fair. That happens elsewhere by folks
| trained to consider these things. Jurors in jury trials
| literally apply the law they are given to the evidence
| they are presented. That's it. Even this burden is often
| more than a lot of folks can wrap their head around.
|
| The legislature, however, is not there just to nod its
| head when they think something is a good idea and voting
| no when it's not. Even if we were to create a space for
| exactly that, all we've done is push the fallibility to
| those who are doing the work to write and revise law--but
| now they're pitching to those off the streets who don't
| know anything about governance! If anything, lay
| congresspeople would magnify, not reduce, the problems we
| have with our current system.
| projektfu wrote:
| Currently, the Congressional staff is mostly recruited
| and retained by the congresspeople, and they become the
| experts in many situations. They can also be retained by
| the committees, in which case they are often more non-
| partisan. They do have some ability to influence the
| debate, but they usually do not frame it.
|
| If we had national assemblies by sortition every 2 years,
| I would worry that the the tail (the current structure of
| Congressional support staff) would wag the dog. A better
| system would need to be designed to enable good decision-
| making.
| angiolillo wrote:
| For reference, this is referred to as "sortition", and at
| least the Athenians felt that it was more democratic than
| elections. The randomization machines they used for picking
| winners (kleroterion) are quite ingenious.
|
| In modern times, sortition sometimes shows up in some
| deliberative democracy proposals.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| Athens is a tiny community. And within that the citizens
| are the aristocrats who know each other by name. Ordinary
| residents are merchants or slaves.
| angiolillo wrote:
| Sure and when the US was founded the majority of
| residents were similarly not allowed to vote because
| voting was restricted voting to a minority of property-
| owning white males over the age of 21. Democracy has
| evolved from its Athenian origins, presumably sortition
| would as well.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| I think their point was that it only worked because of
| such a cohort to randomly select from.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| We elect leaders - people with skills, knowledge, and
| expertise.
|
| Does the average citizen even understand discounted cash
| flows or opportunity cost? And not to mention legal
| concepts I'm ignorant of.
|
| I don't see why lowering the quality of candidates by 10x
| would improve things.
| sagarm wrote:
| Do our current elected leaders understand discounted cash
| flows or opportunity cost? I'm not seeing evidence our
| current process results in people skill, knowledge, and
| expertise, especially given the over representation of
| people from entertainment.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| Yes. across parties senators typically have prestigious
| law degrees and piles of accomplishments.
|
| I'm not saying that makes them great. But if you want to
| see the pool of average citizens walk into a Walmart or
| DMV outside the Bay Area.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Yes. They just don't talk about it because the voters
| don't understand and feel insulted when they hear
| politicians talk about stuff they don't understand.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > We elect leaders - people with skills, knowledge, and
| expertise.
|
| I admire your optimism but saying it doesn't make it so.
|
| We elect people able to convince others they should be
| elected. Often that means they possess the ability to
| convince others they have the skills, knowledge, and
| expertise you describe.
|
| If you think that's the same thing as actually having
| skills, knowledge, and expertise, well, I have bad news
| for you...
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| Optimism would be believing people on the street are as
| capable as Us senators.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Literally laughed out loud about this. You might have
| missed some of the things that prominent leaders with
| "skill, knowledge, and expertise" have been doing:
|
| https://www.kennedy.senate.gov/public/2025/9/kennedy-
| calls-f...
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/james-inhofe-
| sno...
|
| Or an even older one:
| https://rollcall.com/2018/02/16/flashback-friday-a-
| series-of...
|
| We are definitely not sending our brightest.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| - literally a Kennedy - has BA from Harvard - has law
| degree
|
| That's not an ordinary person even if we think his health
| views are dumb.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Isn't literally a Kennedy a point against proving merit?
| Do you think many professors would fail a Bush, Clinton,
| Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc? Do such bloodlines even have to
| apply for admittance to prestigious institutions?
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Those advanced concepts are what gets used to dupe people
| into letting themselves be ripped off.
| benmmurphy wrote:
| sortition is just democracy but with a weird probabilistic
| form of voting
| IgorPartola wrote:
| As opposed to the determinism we have now?
| jkartchner wrote:
| As a prosecuting attorney who selects and works to convince
| the "average" juror 5+ times a year, this is not a good
| idea. You are vastly overestimating what the average level
| of competence is. Most people, when given unfamiliar
| knowledge work to do, are so hopelessly biased and ignorant
| that I definitely think the average congressperson is more
| qualified to do that kind of work. We are spoiled by
| selection bias when extrapolating what "average" means in
| the USA.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| I'm reminded of the famous Carlin bit: "Think of how
| stupid the average person is, and realize half of them
| are stupider than that."
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Speaking of "average", every political debate moderator
| should ask the candidates where they shop and how much
| milk and eggs cost. Ask them how much it is to fill up
| their car's gas tank. I don't necessarily think sortition
| is the answer, but I have more faith that the so called
| "hopelessly biased and ignorant average person" would
| address issues that affect me than I do with hopelessly
| biased and ignorant people like Trump, Johnson, Thune,
| Schumer and Jefferies, because I _know_ they 're only
| looking out for themselves.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Or we can recruit lawmakers how we choose juries:
| randomly. Every two years we randomly select 435
| individuals to
|
| If anyone doesn't like that number (435), there's already a
| constitutional amendment to bump it up to 6000ish. It's
| been ratified by 12 states, so only 26 more needed. Call
| your state legislator today and ask why they're not
| ratifying it.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Whoa. Gonna have to congregate in the Capitol One Arena
| if that happens.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Let's fuck up Congress. Help make it happen.
|
| (In seriousness, they'd be forced to explore other
| solutions, possibly even regional capitols with some sort
| of high-tech teleconferencing. Anything that
| decentralizes and claws back power from DC can't be a bad
| thing if you ask me.)
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Hong Kong already showed that paying public servants well
| doesn't stop corruption.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| On a similar note, the NHL has a lot of problems with its
| referee program (they only recruit washed up AHL players with
| zero passion or experience in officiating), but one thing
| they seem to get right is that they pay the NHL ref's full
| time professional salaries up to 250k. Just to ref. With the
| goal that they're compensated enough to not worry about
| betting scandals or anything that can ruin the integrity of
| the game.
| akudha wrote:
| _Countries like Singapore already figured out that if you pay
| public servants very well_
|
| Congressmen get paid 170K/year, get pension after only 5
| years (MTG is leaving just after she becomes eligible), plus
| they only work like 6 months in a year, right? Not sure about
| healthcare and other benefits. While they can't get rich on
| this salary, this does seem pretty decent salary and perks,
| right?
|
| How do other democracies solve this problem?
| ookblah wrote:
| maybe capital gains for politicians should be increased to like
| 80% and redirected entirely to public service funds lol. i'm
| just throwing random crap out there but haven't thought it thru
| at all for 2.
| earlyreturns wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure they'll vote for that.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Then we shouldnt vote for them...
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > They shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks.
|
| I'd be okay letting them invest in S&P500 and that's about it.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| This is called the PELOSI Act:
|
| https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-advances-pelosi-act-
| to-...
| newsoftheday wrote:
| The idea sounds tempting at first but the founders set it up so
| congressmen could be voted in for decades or voted out. The
| real issue in my view is, why are constituents not voting the
| scoundrels out.
| hopelite wrote:
| Or maybe if they do trade, their trades have to be on a month
| long delay. The transparency should take out any corruption on
| the duration and it will incentivize their investment on long
| term gains and allow the public to also participate and make
| their insider knowledge.
|
| The current lag timed reporting requirement is a decent start,
| but fact of the matter is that it still allows Reps to take
| advantage of insider knowledge to profit and thereby basically
| be bribed in circuitous ways not really all that different than
| a mobster/teamster accidentally leaving behind a suitcase of
| cash after they dinner party the politician invited him to,
| just even more obfuscated and structured.
| testfoobar wrote:
| It is instructive to ask why voters are uninterested or
| incapable of selecting honest politicians?
|
| Or another way to state my point: voters are getting exactly
| the politicians they voted for. There is no majority-
| constituency that seeks a different group - because majority
| voters already have the ballot power to select different
| politicians.
| trentnix wrote:
| Indeed, an informed electorate voting in self-beneficial ways
| is the only perfect answer.
|
| As Milton Friedman said: What is important is
| not the particular person who is elected President or the
| party he belongs to. I have often said we shall not correct
| the state of affairs by electing the right people; we've
| tried that. The right people before they're elected become
| the wrong people after they're elected. The important thing
| is to make it politically profitable for the wrong people to
| do the right thing. If it is not politically profitable for
| the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will
| not do the right thing either.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| I would rather congressional representatives be paid more and
| have much stricter rules (with sufficient oversight and
| penalties), than what we have now. Also the "revolving door"
| where congress members become lobbyists when they leave is no
| good. Not to mention that campaign fundraising starts the day
| they swear in, so they become beholden to their donors. Bribes,
| campaign contributions, what's the difference?
|
| Federal US politician incentives are pretty much designed for
| corruption.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Can I find one of these people in congressional leadership
| positions, who is willing to accept a sizeable campaign
| contribution in exchange for joining their mailing list which
| contains their list of stock purchases in real time?
|
| Or is that one of those, "Of course that exists, but if you have
| to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it" kind of things?
| a4isms wrote:
| It is not illegal for them to trade on their inside
| information. It is illegal for you to trade on their inside
| information. So they can send you their stock picks list and
| gloat about their ROI, but if you invest on the basis of the
| newsletter, you go to jail.
|
| Wilhoit was right about everything: _America is in-groups who
| are protected by the law, but not bound by it. Alongside out-
| groups who are bound by the law, but not protected by it._
|
| You and I? An out-group. And it although we make a lot of jokes
| about leopards ripping faces off, MAGA know they're an out-
| group too, it's just that as long as somebody else is getting
| it worse, they're fine with that.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I've seen those empathy circles, where liberals care more
| about people on the fringe of society, and conservatives care
| more about people in the middle of society (apologies, if I'm
| butchering the explanation.)
|
| I'm curious, has anyone done schadenfreude circles, where
| they measure how much people enjoy watching someone else
| suffer? I mean, of course they have, that's why we have TV
| shows like Cops and Jerry Springer, right?
| randomtoast wrote:
| > It is not illegal for them to trade on their inside
| information. It is illegal for you to trade on their inside
| information. So they can send you their stock picks list and
| gloat about their ROI, but if you invest on the basis of the
| newsletter, you go to jail.
|
| All the Congress member trades are public. There are even
| ETFs now that track the Congress member trades. So you can
| just buy such an ETF and have a one-to-one replication of the
| Congress member portfolio.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Yes, but delayed by 30 days or more.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| You're wrong on both counts
|
| It is illegal for Congress to trade on insider information
| (it just isn't well enforced)
|
| It is NOT illegal to trade based on a list of stocks they
| bought after the fact. That's not insider information.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Great, so I can copycat their portfolio and do 47 pts better.
| bradhilton wrote:
| The problem is that they have a lot of time to report their
| purchases. If they were required to report before they
| purchased the problem would probably resolve itself.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Anyone seen similar research at least the same depth for other
| countries?
| regnull wrote:
| Just to be fair, they compare every congressperson who becomes a
| leader with a "regular" (non-leader) congressperson who entered
| Congress in the same year and is from the same political party.
| Alternative view: people who becomes leaders are just more
| capable and better at selecting stocks?
| fjni wrote:
| > we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership
| positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but
| outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after
| ascension
|
| If what you're positing were true wouldn't they have
| outperformed their peers before ascension as well
| mdavidn wrote:
| The very first sentence of the linked article contradicts your
| alternative theory. These leaders performed similarly to their
| peers before ascending to leadership.
| Havoc wrote:
| Between this and the comical definitely not corruption lobbying
| system it's pretty hard to take any of it seriously
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Politicians shouldn't be allowed to own private property. Only
| the people that really, really want to see a better future for
| their country will get involved in politics. This isn't my idea
| by the way, it's Plato's.
|
| Right now the people entering politics are people who just want
| more money. They don't care about anything or anyone else. The
| sooner Americans realize this the better off we'll be.
| jimbohn wrote:
| I'd rather politicians have no privacy as long as they are in
| office, i.e. all their communications, acquisitions, etc.
| should be hard-monitored, automatically sent to an anti-
| corruption office and perhaps public. The loss would be
| temporary and harder to skim around, imo it's just better
| incentives all around.
|
| But I'd definitely be okay with the property part if removing
| privacy isn't feasible :)
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Who's more of an insider than the person who writes the rules of
| business?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| the congresspeople on the house arms and means committees who
| approve massive defense budget spending to companies X and Y,
| then buy shares in X and Y before the spending approvals are
| public?
|
| (another post pointed out you can track all this at
| https://quiverquant.com)
| danirogerc wrote:
| / pelositracker
| hermannj314 wrote:
| The one thing that stirs the hearts and minds of the American
| people is a 67 page deep dive statistical analysis of an issue.
|
| If only Congress and Americans had access to more figures and
| math, then we would do the right thing. This paper is going to
| change things. We finally did it.
| tencentshill wrote:
| This is a primary source. Journalists can now read (low-quality
| ones will use AI summaries) this information and dramatize, cut
| up and cherry-pick as necessary to get their readers to care.
| anovikov wrote:
| Indeed the very foundational idea of Republican system ("no
| titles of nobility") makes this inevitable. It doesn't happen on
| similar scale in Europe simply because our stocks are shit and
| can't be profited much in any case, politicians just make money
| on bribes and kickbacks.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Extremely weird take. I can see why this system tends towards
| this kind of corruption but what do titles do except make the
| system even more profoundly corrupt?
| anovikov wrote:
| Because people with titles of nobility were forbidden from
| participating in business at the risk of losing their titles;
| projecting to modern era, they'd be also forbidden from
| owning stocks at all. They must derive their means of
| existence from land rents and public/military service.
| Pretext was that engaging in commerce or business was
| "dishonourable" and below their status, in practice, it was a
| useful tool to avoid conflict of interest.
|
| To think of it, there's something tempting in physically
| separating owning class from ruling class, isn't it?
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I find all this rather flaccid, frankly. While the advent
| of capitalism provided an avenue for non-titled people to
| become wealthy, a lot of titled people also took that
| opportunity and I would guess a lot of generational wealth
| today still finds its ultimate source in entitled people.
|
| In any case, I doubt society could successfully enforce
| this behavior in a contemporary context.
| burkaman wrote:
| > people with titles of nobility were forbidden from
| participating in business at the risk of losing their
| titles
|
| I had never heard of this so I tried to look into it,
| here's a starting point for anyone else curious:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rogeance. It seems
| like this was true in some countries, like France, but not
| all, and where they did exist these restrictions were
| beginning to fall in the 18th century.
|
| Projecting to the modern era, it seems obvious that a
| societal ruling class would not voluntarily block
| themselves from the center of power and make themselves
| irrelevant. Commercial restrictions made sense to them when
| the main mechanism of gaining power was acquiring and
| holding land, but they stopped restricting themselves once
| commercial activities became more important.
|
| > it was a useful tool to avoid conflict of interest
|
| I couldn't find any evidence for this and I find it pretty
| hard to believe. I don't even think the concept of
| "avoiding conflicts of interest" would make sense to
| historic nobility. Their interest was ruling over others,
| what would be the conflict in amassing wealth to expand
| their rule?
|
| Edit: For a literal example, see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose_Duchy_Organic. This
| is a fairly successful company created by King Charles when
| he was the Duke of Cornwall, and is still owned by the
| current Duke. And obviously modern British royalty do own
| stocks, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_B
| ritish_royal_..., and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance
| s_of_the_British_royal_.... These are immense conflicts of
| interest that nobody seems to be in a hurry to resolve.
| ajaimk wrote:
| My personal opinion is that Nancy Pelosi is an anomaly in the
| dataset. Her husband is a VC/stock trader.
| complianceowl wrote:
| Look, I have my political views, but this is why the whole divide
| and conquer thing is 100% true. As long as we, whether left or
| right, allow our entire mind and emotions to be warped and
| subverted by those in power, we will never effect change and
| unite against this kind of corruption, which none of us stand
| for.
|
| It doesn't require us to change our views on areas where we don't
| agree. It simply requires uniting on the numerous areas where
| there is common ground.
|
| I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this.
|
| Your average Joe does this and gets ripped away from his family
| for 10-years. Politicians do it and it gives them job security.
|
| The two-party system amounts to two wings on the same bird. While
| we're fighting about left vs. right, we're soon going to find
| ourselves in a new system of lords vs. peasants.
| amavect wrote:
| We need to change the voting system in order to dissolve the
| two party system, per Duverger's law. Ranked choice voting will
| not work. Approval voting or STAR voting would work.
|
| https://www.equal.vote/
| complianceowl wrote:
| Totally agree. I haven't looked into that before, but taking
| a look now. Thank you for including that link.
| amavect wrote:
| You're welcome. Here's also a video on simulating
| plurality, RCV, and approval voting.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU
| johnohara wrote:
| It's been five years since key lawmakers deftly navigated the
| market implications of covid-19 after being briefed in a closed-
| door session [0].
|
| It's one thing to use insider information, it's another to be
| blatant and unapologetic.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra...
| NickC25 wrote:
| Maybe a better solution is to crowdfund someone to run for
| federal office under the guise of purposeful naked corruption.
| Their whole platform will be "I'm doing this so I can get access
| to information before the market does, and I will immediately
| disclose that information to my constituents, and provide
| realtime trading updates".
|
| I'd vote for that person in a heartbeat even if the rest of their
| platform was non-existent.
| gaudystead wrote:
| Who knows? That may have already been an angle somebody
| campaigned on, but only behind closed doors and to particularly
| generous campaign donors...
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| They would need quite the bankroll. The most powerful
| congressional committees are pay to play and lobbyists usually
| foot the bill to get their guy on a committee.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I want to see Nancy Pelosi in jail for insider trading the same
| as I want to see Trump in jail for inciting insurrection. It's
| ridiculous that we have as many signs of insider trading as we
| have and yet we do nothing about it. In a proper system, there'd
| be an investigation and we'd have proof and we'd do something
| about it.
|
| I think if you asked average USA citizens, the majority would
| support more restrictions, or an outright ban on trading, for the
| legislature. But our country isn't even pretend-run according to
| the will of the people at this point. The veneer of listening to
| the people is practically completely gone.
|
| I remember writing to one of my reps about a decade ago, urging
| that she vote a particular way on an issue. The canned auto-reply
| that I got in response told me why she was right to take the
| opposite stance and didn't even pretend to value my feedback. It
| used to be part of the job that a politician would lie to you and
| say they valued your opinion, even if we all knew that was bs. It
| was a real mask-off moment that I didn't realize was about to
| become the norm throughout our country.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Shout out to Nancy pelosis husband, one of the most successful
| investors in history. He has managed to turn 800k into anything
| up to 250 million dollars. I wonder what his secret is. He could
| be giving tips to Warren Buffet.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what to make of this study, and their wording is
| careful:
|
| "After ascension, however, leaders outperform their matched peers
| _by up to_ 47 percentage points per year "
|
| They looked at the 20 congressional leaders from 1995 to 2021
| that traded stocks. They found _up to_ a 47% outperformacnce per
| year.
|
| It's not clear (without trudging through the data) what the
| average outperformance was (or if there was any).
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| The majority of people with insider knowledge that are trading
| stocks will either use their knowledge to increase their gains or
| will tell their close friends and family.
|
| Anyone who disagrees must be new to humanity.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| How is insider trading only 47% better. Knowing what they know...
| I'd do way better than that.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Imagine my shocked Pikachu face.
|
| We're now at the point where the most accurate predictor of what
| the administration and Congress will do comes from stock trades.
| You want to predict a land war in Venezuela? Just watch defense
| contractor and energy stocks.
|
| We should force all elected officials and senior public servants
| to put their assets into a blind trust for their entire term plus
| two years. They should be forbidden from investing directly. So
| should their immediate family.
|
| But the problem is so much larger than that. The government as a
| whole is captured by the donor class. It's so well known that
| even without an explicit quid pro quo, you and your immediate
| family will be looked after if you play ball. Vote for tax cuts,
| deregulation or th einterests of some industry and after your
| political career, you will have a nice 6 or 7 figure job for
| life. So will your spouse and children.
|
| What brought the most recent government shutdown to an end? The
| evidence points to politicals who were beholden to the aviation
| industry. The disruption to air travel was really starting to
| bite. Tim Kaine in particular. But it's not just one guy. Chuck
| Schumer whipped votes to end the shutdown and subbed out John
| Ossoff who would otherwise face backlack in 2026. Every single
| Senator who "broke ranks" is either retiring or won't face a
| primary until 2028 or 2030. That's not an accident and many of
| them are highly funded by the commericial aviation industry.
|
| What's depressing is how little money it takes to buy our
| government.
| yread wrote:
| So... where is the index that tracks their investments, so that
| we can also profit off their wisdom and foresight?
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Unrelated: Nancy Pelosi made $130M in stock profits during
| Congress career -- a return of 16,930%
|
| https://nypost.com/2025/11/08/us-news/nancy-pelosi-made-130-...
| gereshes wrote:
| "Our baseline finding is that both congressional leaders in their
| pre-leadership years and their matched 'regular' members
| underperform the benchmark by similar magnitudes"
|
| "Earlier studies of lawmakers' trading by Ziobrowski et al. (2004
| and 2011), found their portfolios to outperform the market.
| However, this conclusion is reversed in later studies. In
| particular, Eggers and Hainmueller (2013) and Belmont et al.
| (2022) document the opposite--members of Congress underperform
| the market during 2004-2008 and 2012-2020, respectively."
|
| I guess the title of "Congress members suck at trading stocks,
| but suck less once in leadership positions" was already taken
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The discussion here seems to assume that insider trading is the
| only corrupting influence on politicians.
|
| But there are many other interests that heavily influence
| politicians.
|
| For example, in many districts you can not get elected without
| the endorsement of certain unions.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > in many districts you can not get elected without the
| endorsement of certain unions.
|
| It bewilders me that people vote whatever a Union says.
| arnonejoe wrote:
| I think you can see the actual numbers on capitol trades.
| https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians
| canucktrash669 wrote:
| Many people mention unusualwhales.com to follow lawmakers's
| holdings.
|
| Do you get insights early enough or is it too late to turn a
| profit? Anyone knows how they get the data?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Not sure but there used to be a Nancy Pelosi tracker account on
| Twitter, and they would follow those trades, person made a bit
| of money, nowhere near what Nancy's estate has made though.
| jonfw wrote:
| They have 30 days to disclose trades. Even with that massive
| limitation, the NANC fund that tracks pelosi does well-
| https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/etf/nanc/advanced-cha...
| canucktrash669 wrote:
| Neither of them tracks leaders. They just say:
|
| "This fund, which we like to refer to by its trade ticker,
| "[NANC/GOP]," invests in equity securities purchased or sold
| by [Democratic/Republican] members of Congress and their
| spouses
|
| https://subversiveetfs.com/nanc/
| https://subversiveetfs.com/gop/
|
| So far my YTD is right in their range. But if leaders have a
| 47% edge, then I'm interested.
| crest wrote:
| So make all congressional stock traded public information in
| realtime?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Just make their trades public in real time. Their alpha will
| evaporate
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| We have seen the opposite in crypto recently. Celebrity buys
| something and then people followed drives up the price like
| crazy
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Proposal : A congressman can trade to their hearts content but
| must publicize their intentions to purchase or sell a stock with
| a minimum of at least 24 hours. This gives the public the open
| view of their intentions however they come to that decision, but
| the open market can then decide how to react to the congressman's
| decision before they actually finalize a trade.
| torginus wrote:
| Although this sounds like a sensible idea, I think it's
| impossible to prevent insider trading - if you introduce a rule
| like this, politicians will just find a middle man or work
| around it in some other way - the corruption schemes getting
| more elaborate is the last thing you want.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The goal isn't to make it impossible to do insider trading,
| it's to set some controls and have consequences when they
| aren't followed.
|
| The middle man scheme you mention would be illegal under OP's
| idea. So prosecute everyone involved. The more people
| involved, the harder to hide it.
|
| Your argument is basically "it doesn't make sense to have
| murder be illegal because the law won't prevent the bullet
| from flying."
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| Yeah, unfortunately.
|
| This is _pervasive_ in China; the politicians kid is the
| middleman. One child policy, so there 's at most one kid --
| makes it easy to know who to give the stock tips to.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| That should make it incredibly easy to weed out then,
| surely?
| expedition32 wrote:
| Corruption is not weeded out because no matter how much
| people complain they WANT the corruption.
|
| Bernie Sanders is not the president of the United States.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| But they hold influence as congresspeople. Announcing their
| favor or disfavor for a thing influences people and
| corporations. The market would swing more from their
| announcements and citizens would invest or divest along party
| lines. Neither are good economics.
|
| At minimum they shouldn't be allowed to trade individual stock.
| I don't think this stops workarounds but it's the least we
| could do.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| That creates more trading opportunities tbh and eventually
| the market will calibrate. Similar has happened to trump and
| his tarrifs plus all those truth/xitter messages.
| Ikatza wrote:
| I've made thousands of dollars just by following the Pelosi
| tracker on X. Most of the time a stock soars just on the effect
| of a congressman buying that stock.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just buy QQQ. She doesn't have a magic strategy. In fact, she
| probably underperforms given how long she is in tech and how
| leveraged her trades are (people forget she's married to a
| venture capitalist).
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| underperforms what? Certainly not the market
| tptacek wrote:
| What their returns should have been given their leverage.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Has anyone actually studied their trading activity at a finer
| grained level? I doubt many of them are day trading, so I think
| the 24 hour rule wouldn't have much of an effect.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| 24 hours? Representatives should have similar restrictions as
| high level leadership of companies. Their trades should be
| scheduled months ahead of time.
| agosta wrote:
| No. They simply shouldn't be able to trade individual stocks.
| Requiring them to tell the world the exact second they're
| buying a stock doesn't change that that purchase was made to
| make money. If you're the elected authority who, by your rule,
| creates corporate winners and losers, we should not merely have
| to hope that your rule benefits us more than it does you. The
| job description is clear - you're a civil servant. If doing
| your job as a senator is unappealing to you because you can no
| longer invest in individual companies, then don't let the door
| hit you on the way out. Goodbye
| joquarky wrote:
| Public service should come with a permanent loss of financial
| privacy.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Obligatory Unusual Whales mention...
| https://unusualwhales.com/politics/profile/Nancy%20Pelosi
| Whatarethese wrote:
| They should not have this ability. They can invest all they want
| into ETFs but nothing specific. This is such absolute bullshit.
| Run for congress and leave with generational wealth. Pisses me
| off.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Isn't there a fund indexed to their portfolios?
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| In other news, cats vote down popular House of Mice measure to
| bell themselves unanimously.
|
| And before anyone mentions she whose name is nauseatingly always
| mentioned on this subject, here's the list of Congress members by
| net worth so you get the whole picture instead of just how bad
| the situation has become.
|
| Because in the end, the mice keep voting the same cats back in.
|
| https://www.quiverquant.com/congress-live-net-worth/
| tronicjester wrote:
| The USA has a Constitution that allows and historically demands a
| massive expansion of Representation in the House, Senate and
| Court. We need 6500 House, 1000 Senate Reps, 99 Justices and 1
| alternating Chief, with 25 new states.
| intalentive wrote:
| The assumption is that the stock picks come from insider
| knowledge gleaned from congressional duties like sitting on
| committees. Another possibility is that they are a form of off-
| the-books campaign donation or bribe, and the knowledge comes
| straight from an insider who wants to influence congressional
| decision making.
| tronicjester wrote:
| Its almost as if private encrypted chat networks are a thing.
| Oh, look at that, Mets owner, Steve Cohen paid record fine for
| insider trading using just that.
| rglover wrote:
| This makes far more sense. "No, no, it isn't a bribe. It's a
| _sure thing_! "
| dwa3592 wrote:
| They have found legal ways to do anything that's considered
| illegal. "They" is literally anyone who's rich and powerful.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| If a normal person did this, the SEC would almost certainly call
| it insider trading.
| recroad wrote:
| How is this not the top story on US news networks?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I have a relative who mentioned that his investments were doing
| pretty well as of late. I asked him what his trick was and he
| sheepishly admitted that he just pinned his investments to the
| Nancy Pelosi Index.
|
| Whatever she's investing in, he chases the money.
| egypturnash wrote:
| so where's the Top Congresspeople Index Fund then
| freddealmeida wrote:
| lol. Sure they are. Totally massive skills.
| doe88 wrote:
| Is this the _high-frequency trading_ for humans?
| Kapura wrote:
| Deeply corrupt country we've created here, and it seems
| impossible to back out of it. How are you gonna get congress to
| cut their effective pay? I would bet money that there are people
| who go to congress _solely because_ of the advantages it will
| give them back in the private sector. If you even got it on a
| ballot or something where the general populace could vote on it,
| you can bet your ass that, thanks to citizens united, the pro-
| owning-stocks lobby would outspend the anti-corruption folks 10
| to 1.
|
| I guess the way to start is by shaming these obviously corrupt
| officials and practices. Much like racism, people don't mind
| being corrupt but they seem to mind being _called_ corrupt.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Philosophically speaking, this is what people want though.
|
| The only reason people make money off of stocks is because at
| the end, someone gives those companies money. And everyone has
| a choice to vote with their wallets and through their actions
| in general.
|
| For example, take Elon and his actions over the past few years.
| What should have happened is that Tesla sales dropped across
| the board, and everyone who owns a Tesla should have been in a
| rush to sell it for fear of it getting scratched or them
| personally blacklisted from stuff and ridiculed for driving a
| Tesla. Tesla employees should also have faced the same public
| pressure and quit.
|
| But people don't care - at the end of the day, politics on
| Capitol hill is mostly a meme, but what matters is their
| personal satisfaction. And you look ridiculous if you refuse to
| get in your coworkers Tesla. So now Elon is a trillionaire.
|
| On the flip side, in a capitalistic sense, it honestly doesn't
| matter if people are rich, the thing that should matter is what
| power the money gives them. Rich people buying mansions is a
| good thing - thats money to workers for construction, staff for
| housekeeping, and so on. Rich people doing things like being
| able to buy whole media platforms and censoring things is
| definitely not good though.
|
| The question is, is society headed in a direction where people
| have more and more apathy and eventually nothing will matter as
| things get progressively worse and everyone is just complacent,
| or is there a bottom line where people start paying attention
| enough and actually fighting for change when it gets bad
| enough.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >Philosophically speaking, this is what people want though
|
| No- it's what the rich and powerful want and they have forced
| their ways on everyone because there's nothing we can do to
| stop it.
| kelipso wrote:
| Right. Under a dictatorship, you wouldn't just say
| philosophy speaking this is what people want because if
| they didn't, they would revolt.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| You have a point, but I think the situation _can_ be
| framed as a question of "what people want" by modelling
| the decision better. (People under a dictator sometimes
| do revolt, but often don't.)
|
| The choice people have is not between a dictator and no
| dictator, it's between a dictator and a period of
| instability and chaos, possibly including bloody fighting
| or even famine, the outcome of which is (a) completely
| uncertain even in the unlikely event that you know that
| ~everyone wants the dictator gone and (b) might be that
| the dictator's forces still come out on top, or that
| someone even worse is installed into power.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > The only reason people make money off of stocks is because
| at the end, someone gives those companies money. And everyone
| has a choice to vote with their wallets and through their
| actions in general.
|
| This 'voting with your wallet' argument always ignores the
| problem of collective action. Even if every individual would
| prefer the bad companies to not exist (or at least to not
| behave the way they do), the rational choice is still to
| purchase products from them if their product is superior
| and/or cheaper.
|
| Take something like Walmart or Amazon. I think a majority of
| people dislike the way they do business (the way they treat
| their employees, the environment, and competitors), but the
| only choice a consumer has is "shop there and get the cheaper
| prices, and the company continues to exist like it does" or
| "don't shop their, pay more money for things, and the company
| continues to exist like it does"
|
| Me, as an individual customer, can't make the company stop
| existing in its current form. They aren't going to miss my
| business. It isn't even a rounding error on their balance
| sheet. My only choice is to get the cheaper prices or not.
|
| Even if the company would change if everyone stopped
| shopping, I don't get to make that choice. Hell, if everyone
| else is stopping shopping there and they are going to go out
| of business, it is STILL in my best interest to shop their
| while I can and save the money... it isn't like my business
| is going to SAVE them any more than it will kill them.
|
| You can't kill a business practice by voting with your
| wallet.
|
| The only time consumer choice will work is when the
| individual consumer has a better alternative; if I get a
| better PERSONAL experience (either cheaper or a better
| product) by shopping somewhere else, then voting with your
| wallet makes sense and will work (because everyone will have
| the same incentive). Companies won't be punished for their
| external costs by their customers, since the customers aren't
| choosing to suffer those costs or not; they suffer the
| external costs no matter what, they only can choose to enjoy
| the benefits or not. Why suffer the external costs AND not
| even get to enjoy the benefits?
|
| This is why change has to come from some binding collective
| action (like legislation or regulation or something), not
| individual consumer choice.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
| bumby wrote:
| > _The only reason people make money off of stocks is because
| at the end, someone gives those companies money._
|
| Small quibble. The reason why people make money off stocks is
| largely because _people think people will give those
| companies in the future_. People aren't just trading on
| dividends, they're trading on PE ratios.
|
| Otherwise, companies like Tesla would be worth much less than
| Toyota (which gets more revenue, higher gross profit, and
| higher profit margins).
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Tesla has the best charging network - which you don't need a
| Tesla to access - and all other charging networks seem to be
| poorly incentivized by not having their own cars that they
| need to improve the user experience for, as those network's
| chargers are broken and poorly maintained
|
| Tesla becomes a power and taxi company, diversified away from
| the car sales
| carlCarlCarlCar wrote:
| You're conflating "what people want" with "only choice"
|
| If you look at polling this is not what the majority want
|
| Since much of this truth is merely rhetorical, socialized
| truth, not immutable physics, the fix is to propagate a new
| narrative about how the economy works, how politics work, and
| threaten the elders the way they threaten the youth. They are
| older and weaker naturally. End the one sided ageism
| MisterTea wrote:
| > or is there a bottom line where people start paying
| attention enough and actually fighting for change when it
| gets bad enough.
|
| As long as the majority of people are comfortable while being
| apathetic they will not care. They will happily maintain that
| status quo. When things get uncomfortable for the majority,
| then will there be action. Just make sure the people are fed
| and entertained just enough and you're safe.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _For example, take Elon and his actions over the past few
| years. What should have happened is that Tesla sales dropped
| across the board, and everyone who owns a Tesla should have
| been in a rush to sell it for fear of it getting scratched or
| them personally blacklisted from stuff and ridiculed for
| driving a Tesla._
|
| I think you overestimate the number of people who make
| principled stands on their product buying decisions based on
| the actions of company executives. I don't think that's the
| same thing has "people don't care"; I think some people just
| don't think they should compromise on their needs/wants for
| what they see as unrelated reasons.
|
| > _Tesla employees should also have faced the same public
| pressure and quit._
|
| In an ideal world, sure. But we live in a country where
| health insurance is tied to employment and employers, and
| it's not exactly a wonderful market for job-seekers these
| days. I expect there were many people at Tesla who were
| unhappy with Musk and wanted to leave, but felt that the
| risks of doing so were too high. Again, this is not the same
| as "people don't care".
|
| > _And you look ridiculous if you refuse to get in your
| coworkers Tesla._
|
| As you should. Making a fuss over this sort of thing when
| you're all trying to get to an offsite business meeting, or
| just a group lunch, is eye-rollingly immature.
|
| I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that people are
| apathetic and don't care. Like with many things, the
| situation is more complicated than that, and people have to
| weigh their needs and (personal, financial, etc.) security
| against whatever principles they may have. On top of that,
| there are _so_ many things that we "need" to care about and
| consider, that if we tried to actually take everyone's pet
| outrage into account, we'd literally do nothing.
|
| And some people don't think it's necessary to group people's
| politics or general malfeasance with their "art". (E.g.,
| should people stop watching and enjoying movies produced,
| written, or directed by convicted sexual harassers or
| abusers? Maybe? But that's an individual decision, and I
| don't think there's a right or wrong answer there.)
|
| I think there's also an aspect of "who's the loudest shithead
| today?" going on too. Musk seems like a truly reprehensible
| person, and I wouldn't buy a Tesla. But what about GM's
| leadership? What about the history of some German car makers
| supporting the Nazis back in the 1930s and 40s? Musk is loud
| about his shittiness, but others are quieter and sometimes
| their misdeeds go farther in the past.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > Much like racism, people don't mind being corrupt but they
| seem to mind being _called_ corrupt.
|
| not to be too pithy, but there's been a pretty major erosion of
| what most of us probably thought was a relatively safe constant
| in that regard :(
| cmckn wrote:
| In September, there was a bipartisan bill in the House to ban
| individual stock trading. Members of Congress must divest before
| being sworn in under this proposal:
| https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5485340/congress-stock-...
|
| I think that one died in committee:
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106
|
| There's another from earlier this year
| (https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1908...)
| that is currently being pushed by a Republican member from
| Florida. It was blocked by the Speaker. There's currently a
| discharge petition: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-
| congress/house-resolutio...
|
| Over the summer, Josh Hawley of all people introduced a similar
| bill in the Senate.
| y-curious wrote:
| In a shocker to nobody, the people profiting AND making the
| rules are not ruling against themselves. An annoying system to
| be sure
| morgan814 wrote:
| This is why neither party will truly save us. Candidates from
| both parties seem to mostly focus on social issues (Democrats
| are 110% preferable here imo). There are very few politicians
| who speak to the level of corruption and economic inequality we
| all see.
|
| The way America was designed may have been pretty novel /
| innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then
| about how to build better democracies. Switzerland has a
| council of seven members as their executive branch, not a
| single person. It's brilliant stuff. I worry that the only way
| to do better is through an incredibly painful collapse of
| things. Unless politicians start deciding to write laws that
| force them to give up power. Which seems almost humorous to
| suggest.
| foolswisdom wrote:
| Why is a council of seven better for the executive branch?
|
| > The way America was designed may have been pretty novel /
| innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then
| about how to build better democracies.
|
| Well, a lot of dysfunction in government is the result of
| later evolution, whether evolution of circumstances or of
| government.
|
| As an example, the combination of senate filibuster (which
| was around from the earliest days) with the reconciliation
| workaround (which is pretty recent) results in omnibus bills,
| which is a well-known driver of partisanship (because you
| don't talk to the other party at all in order to pass your
| bill on the floor), and also has significant consequences to
| individual responsibility (for the same reason, that omnibus
| bill must pass for your party to do anything, so you can't be
| faulted for voting for it, and instead you look for carve
| outs for your interests. If you do decide to hold up the
| whole bill like the freedom caucus tried, then you get
| everyone against you and you will eventually fold).
|
| This also has repercussions that for things that can't go
| through reconciliations, just because the usual way of doing
| things involves more party dependence (than it would to pass
| bills another way). This of course also gives more power to
| those running the party within the chambers of congress.
|
| My point is that things evolve, and people tend to try to
| explain the current state of things with reference to the
| 18th century, and while I definitely believe we should evolve
| systems to be better, we shouldn't ignore evolution that's
| already occurred.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Light is a good disinfectant.
| shevy-java wrote:
| I'd be more interested in how corrupt a system in this context
| is.
| RagnarD wrote:
| Can you spell "Insider Trading"?
| gorgoiler wrote:
| This is insider trading. We have investigators and prosecutors
| dedicated to combating insider trading. Of all the fascinating
| ideas being punted around in this thread, perhaps the most
| tractable and and effective might simply be to ramp up and enable
| law enforcement.
| avipars wrote:
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34524/w345...
| mhb wrote:
| Did that edit to the title really help people understand what the
| paper is about?
| chis wrote:
| There are a lot of strong claims that the paper could, but does
| not make. It never says that Congressional leaders outperform
| index funds. It just says very specifically that leaders
| outperform other members of congress. The paper also does not
| include any clear charts on the actual returns the congressional
| leaders were getting.
|
| Having done some reading on this myself I don't think it's the
| case that Congress as a whole outperforms SPY [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
| sakopov wrote:
| It's pretty incredible to see how public data puts this
| corruption out in the open with specific names at hand and these
| officials couldn't care any less. The level of corruption here is
| astronomically brazen. They know no one will do anything and
| people will just bend over.
| vkou wrote:
| My friend, in 2025, the president is auctioning off criminal
| pardons. _So far this year, these pardons have cost the
| government and fraud victims 1.3 billion dollars._
|
| His friends, none of whom are elected officials, meanwhile, are
| making massive options trades before his yo-yo tariff
| announcements or his Argentinian bailouts, or, or...
|
| _That_ is what brazen corruption looks like, enabled by a
| corrupt court[1] that has made him unprosecutable.
|
| All this, on the other hand, is what _quiet_ , hidden
| corruption looks like. All of the people involved here have
| power and influence and pull, and they use it, but they don't
| control the DOJ, and aren't actually unprosecutable.
|
| ---
|
| And a GOP congress that has handed _him_ (not his office -
| _him_ ) the power of the purse and the power to impose taxes.
| agosta wrote:
| They simply shouldn't be able to trade individual stocks.
| Requiring them to tell the world the exact second they're buying
| a stock doesn't change that that purchase was made to make money.
| If you're the elected authority who, by your rule, creates
| corporate winners and losers, we should not merely have to hope
| that your rule benefits us more than it does you. The job
| description is clear - you're a civil servant. If doing your job
| as a senator is unappealing to you because you can no longer
| invest in individual companies, then don't let the door hit you
| on the way out. Goodbye
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Agree. Also we need retroactive clawbacks on these unethical
| gains they've made historically
| rayiner wrote:
| Correct. We should pay Congress critters a million dollars a
| year like in Singapore and then require them to hold all assets
| in a blind trust.
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