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A comment on 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office. Parent comment

Re:11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought polit... by ajross on Friday November 03, 2023 @02:43PM (#38133108)
> instead of going into politics and then getting rich, which seems to be standard-operating-procedure these days.

I can't think of a single billionaire who made their wealth while in politics, or after. You can come out of politics and get a kushy low-seven-figure lobbying job, at best. Maybe if you were really senior (congressional leadership, VP, president) you can write a few books and give a bunch of speeches and get to the tens of millions in income, but that's as far as it goes.

Basically "politics" produces maybe 5-6 people per decade able to pull what a median FAANG acquihire founder gets. That sounds... pretty democratic to me, really.

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Re:11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought polit... by rsynnott on Friday November 03, 2023 @03:00PM (#38133392)
> I can't think of a single billionaire who made their wealth while in politics, or after.

Common in extremely corrupt authoritarian regimes; Putin would be an obvious example. But yeah, less common in democracies; I'm struggling to think of a modern example.

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