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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32894 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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What's most interesting to me about Walz, though I've been uncharacteristically out of date with politics the last week or so, is that I did see that he has a pathetically low net worth. Without his pension, it's only like 300k or something like that. Which is actually quite nice and rare! I can't remember the last time we had a major presidential or VP candidate who hadn't at least made a million off of books or something. So at least in one sense, he has a legitimate claim to the everyman title.

I don’t really believe his asset disclosure. He’s been making six figures for long enough that it’s suspiciously low.

The disclosure doesn't include mutual funds, ETFs, or individual stocks under $10,000. So he could easily have a few hundred grand (and I would assume probably does), or more, in reasonable investments that wouldn't be disclosed.

Is that (mutual funds, ETFs, or individual stocks) under $10,000; or mutual funds, ETFs, or (individual stocks under $10,000)?

https://cfb.mn.gov/pdf/forms/public_officials/eis_annual.pdf

List all businesses whose securities are valued at more than $10,000 that you or your spouse individually or jointly held at any time during the reporting period. Use the definition of business from the Sources of compensation section on the previous page.

“Securities” means stocks, shares, bonds, warrants, options, pledges, notes, mortgages, annuities, debentures, leases, and commercial paper in any corporation, partnership, trust, or other association. “Securities” does not include shares of mutual funds, shares of exchange-traded funds, or defined benefit pension plans. For stocks, list the name of the business. Do not list the exchange symbol, total shares, or value of a security.

So the second. If he didn't own more than $10,000 of any individual business, he wouldn't have to disclose it. ETFs and mutual funds are excluded entirely.

The form also says for real property not to report your homestead.

My net worth is multi-million but on this form I think I'd only have about $500k of assets to report, most of that in the house I helped my mother to buy, and so which my name is on. I'm not landlording and haven't made any individual stock or option bets in awhile.

The form doesn't even require you to disclose cash or cash-like assets.

He doesn't own a home, though.

@ToaKraka says he didn't report dividends or capital gains, but if it's in ETFs he may just have some which managed to avoid capital gain distributions.

The article also states that he didn't report any dividend or capital-gains income on his 2022 tax return. But maybe the mutual funds are in an IRA or something.

It seems unlikely that he owns 70 individual stocks, ETFs, or mutual funds, which he would need to secretly have a million dollars.

See my reply to ThenElection, it's to be parsed the other way.

It's tautilogically true that, without their most valuable assets, most people have a pretty low net worth.

I actually find the complete reliance on public pensions and no IRA or 401k like the vast majority of Americans a little concerning.

Well yeah, he’s either lying or Mother Theresa or really bad with money. He certainly doesn’t seem to have taken a vow of poverty(and we’d expect it to come up) and he almost certainly knows better than to have no independent assets. So we’re left with ‘he’s probably lying’.

Or...as 5 people have pointed out, the disclosure form doesn't require he disclose certain assets.

Well yes, I'll lump that in under 'lying' even if it's technically within the letter of the law. Obvious bias is obvious and you can disagree, but using it to try to say he isn't a rich guy is just stupid.

You have a very different definition of rich than rich people have. Even having the level of assets that could be hidden within the constructs of that form puts him firmly in the poor house among the PMC.

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