First of all this thread is in the right section because it deals with economics and and wealth primarily and politics only secondarily.
I think the fastest and surest way to get rich in any country is to collect an earmark.
The US alone probably allocates 100 billion a year on earmarks.
All you have to do is get a tiny fraction of that - $10 million and no one will even notice or care cause that's too small to even be a rounding error in the federal budget.
When most people think rich they think actors, athletes, entrepreneurs.
However, I suspect that there is a whole class of politically connected people out there that are raking it in thru earmarks and other forms of graft.
Governments lose track of hundreds of billions of dollars every year - that money ends up in someone's pocket.
What if the Forbes 500 list was just a smokescreen to hide the real wealth that political corruption brings. Let people read the Forbes 500 and be satisfied with the idea that they too can make it on that list with enough talent, hard work, or smarts. Meanwhile there is a whole class of people that get billions wired into they accounts directly from the Treasury.
And this is true for every single country.
I bet there are vast sums of money out there that are hidden - billionaires that no one even heard of because you'll never find them on the Forbes 500 list.
It pays to be politically connected. I'm gonna donate some money to my senator and then ask if I can get 10 million to research whether Efficient Market Hypothesis is true or not.
I think the fastest and surest way to get rich in any country is to collect an earmark.
The US alone probably allocates 100 billion a year on earmarks.
All you have to do is get a tiny fraction of that - $10 million and no one will even notice or care cause that's too small to even be a rounding error in the federal budget.
When most people think rich they think actors, athletes, entrepreneurs.
However, I suspect that there is a whole class of politically connected people out there that are raking it in thru earmarks and other forms of graft.
Governments lose track of hundreds of billions of dollars every year - that money ends up in someone's pocket.
What if the Forbes 500 list was just a smokescreen to hide the real wealth that political corruption brings. Let people read the Forbes 500 and be satisfied with the idea that they too can make it on that list with enough talent, hard work, or smarts. Meanwhile there is a whole class of people that get billions wired into they accounts directly from the Treasury.
And this is true for every single country.
I bet there are vast sums of money out there that are hidden - billionaires that no one even heard of because you'll never find them on the Forbes 500 list.
It pays to be politically connected. I'm gonna donate some money to my senator and then ask if I can get 10 million to research whether Efficient Market Hypothesis is true or not.
