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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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If you get to Director level for anything, you're never going to be unemployed (unless by choice). But reading between the tea leaves, you can see who gets good gigs and who gets forgotten.

Going into campaign work or lobbying is actually pretty close to the bottom (with some exceptions for lobbying). Campaign people and Lobbyists don't make as much as people think (but they do get to spend a lot on stuff) especially over the long term (it's very common for "Senior Advisors" at these kind of places to be rolling 6-month contracts that are cash only, no benefits, no 401k, no equity agreements etc.)

Sure, it isn't at all a bad life and you're probably still a top 5% (maybe 1%) earner, so my heart DOES NOT go out to them. But they also can't really go to "just another" job. They might not have any real qualifications, they're politically exposed, and a lot of them have over-calibrated towards government and government adjacent patterns and so don't even believe they can do anything else. It's a grind.


The other side of the coin are obvious and awesome. Eric Cantor lost one of the biggest house upset elections in history and now is one of the Princes of Wall Street. George Tenent left the CIA to go be a partner at what is the CIA of banks.