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It’s a step up in prestige. Being anything (or at least above janitor) in an Ivy League school is prestigious just for the name on the door. And for most people who go into high level politics, the money is rarely the issue, they already have generational wealth, connections, and access to the prestige of being able to walk into a room and be respectable.
Even failing that, the real money in politics isn’t the paycheck, it’s the graft that happens during and after. Insider trading, lucrative lobbying jobs, free tuition and guaranteed entrance to the elite schools. Being able to move your money around the stock market to take advantage of information that you have and others don’t is a pretty lucrative perk. How many millions were made when politicians knew covid was coming months before the plebs did?
Let's talk about the fact that we can see Nancy Pelosi using insider knowledge to make stock trades. EVERYONE knows she's doing it, but she's never even forced to fucking acknowledge it because the whole journalism class is effectively a captured entity, and they couldn't impose any consequences on her if they wanted to anyway.
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