YSK that 158 families made up 50% of all US Presidential Campaign Spending

Comments

• whostosay@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  “mainly selfmade wealth”

  That doesn’t exist, let’s stop fucking pretending it does.

  source

  • dhork@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What they really mean is that they didn’t inherit their immense wealth, which means there was a time in their lives when they weren’t obscenely wealthy.

    source

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      they didn’t inherit their immense wealth

      Except even that doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. A big component of the market cap of any Fortune 100 company stems from equity and debt held by the generationally wealthy. Amazon and Tesla aren’t worth $1T without the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies and the Adelsons and the Waltons bidding up asset prices.

      What’s more, the biggest source of market capital is inevitably government contracts. You can’t tell me that Michael Dell is “independently wealthy” when the bulk of his fortune came via the Texas public school system buying all his company’s computers. Particularly when the governors, legislators, and board members making these decisions are (a) big shareholders of the Dell corporation and (b) legacy scions of wealthy Texas families.

      source
    • jimjam5@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      To them, poor is probably like just a few dozen million USD.

      source
    • whostosay@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I get what they’re getting at, but selfmade has that connotation with it.

      They could say not inherited vs inherited wealth

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• DrFistington@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So another way to look at it is that by eliminating a few thousand parasites, we can reshape our political landscape…

  source

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Just 158 examples

    source
• yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Should figure out where they live and protest on their street instead of burning down the local 7/11.

  source
• sartalon@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  And this article is 10 years old. It has gotten so much worse.

  source
• TooPoor@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If my math is correct 158 families would be around .00005%. They have no clue what life is like for the average person yet they have so much influence. Gross.

  source
• galoisghost@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  And they all have addresses.

  source
• cabron_offsets@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Fuck scotus. John Roberts is the most damaging traitor in American history.

  source
• Eyekaytee@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  wasn’t there some billionaire that ran for president, spent hundreds of millions and got like <1% of the vote?

  source

  • awesomesauce309@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah Michael Bloomberg bought his way through the rest of the primary debates then when it came time for the primary vote nobody wanted him.

    source

    • Eyekaytee@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Michael Bloomberg

      That’s the one!

      Bloomberg spent nearly $1 billion on his three-month presidential campaign

      nbcnews.com/…/bloomberg-spent-nearly-1-billion-hi…

      So my next question is:

      Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House

      Just how effective is advertising in the presidential race when you can spend a billion and go no where?

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • Stern@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Perot did pretty well on his runs iirc. But I don’t think he’s the one you were talking about.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot

    source

    • Eyekaytee@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yep sorry it was Michael Bloomberg

      source
• ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Yes, and so what? $5.5 billion was spent on the 2024 presidential election. That’s very little. There are individuals capable of spending more than that. So if spending more could actually affect the outcome in a significant way, why wasn’t much more spent? Surely the difference between Harris and Trump is worth more than just $5.5 billion to some group. My conclusion is that while some amount of money is necessary to run a campaign, even the relatively small amount being spent now is so far past the point of diminishing returns that spending more isn’t worth it even to billionaires who could easily do so and care a lot about the outcome.

  source

  • Pringles@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think you have lost all sense of how much a billion is from it being thrown around so much. 5.5 billion is an enormous sum of money. Think of how much 1 million is, then imagine spending that 5500 times. It’s an obscene amount. Sure, some people have more wealth than that, but it’s still an absurdly large amount.

    source

    • whostosay@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      OPs username checks out

      source
  • stickly@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is bad because it means if you want to run for office, your campaign is mostly floated by this tiny group of people. $5.5 billion sounds small until you realize that breaks out into millions of dollars for any individual. Unless you’re rich enough to ante up (and repeat that every election cycle), you’ll never play the game.

    More isn’t spent because it doesn’t need to be, not because it isn’t effective. The policy goals of the 0.01% are basically in lock step, why would they bid against each other? Regardless of the raw number, the average politician has to equally weigh their representation between the needs of the 0.01% and the 99.99%.

    source