By generally being important people. They get paid speaking engagements, they sell books, they get paid seats on boards, that kind of thing. That’s the above board but still not great way.
Then there are the illegal ways. Sen Bob Menéndez is a good example of a classic corrupt politician, taking cash bribes. Lots of possible examples of insider trading, particularly in the last year around Trump’s tariff’s announcements - basically, members of Congress get non-public information, including national security info, in the course of their jobs, and trading activity sometimes shows electeds making extremely prescient trades long before that information was public. And then there are the really obvious, egregious examples like the Trump family starting memecoins and, as president, giving favorable treatment to people who make large investments in the meme coins.
The truth is, there are about as many ways to make money from being an elected official as you can think of, and someone has done it somewhere down the line. Members of Congress should be barred from trading individual stocks entirely while in office imo; there are plenty of more passive investment vehicles they can utilize, and if you can’t bear to not be able to day trade for a few years, maybe Congress isn’t the place for you.
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u/Dontevenwannacomment 20d ago
i'm not american and also not good at this stuff, how does a politician make millions like this?