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by shadowgovt 2357 days ago
Nepotism isn't about only salary, it's also about power and prestige. Because for a billionaire family(1), that's what matters past the dollars and cents. Ivanka Trump can afford to forego her salary, but no amount of money can buy the résumé entry "Former Senior Advisor to the President" and that past will open doors for her the rest of her life.

(1) It's also possible that the Trump family isn't actually as wealthy as they claim to be on paper, in which case being in a position to actually directly influence executive regulatory policy can have significant direct financial impact on their enterprises that they have no opportunity to exploit otherwise. For example, they could have a hand in implementing tax programs while owning significant financial interest in companies regulated by those tax programs (https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/crew-files-c...).
1 comments
burfog 2357 days ago
That won't open doors. Neither party will trust her. Republicans think she is a democrat, and democrats would blacklist anybody who worked for Trump. She had plenty of doors open already, not that she needed them. She had her fashion brand, and she married into the finance industry. She doesn't need any nepotism.

The president needs people he can trust. If that means hiring family, I'm fine with that. Other politicians seem to have their kids work for Ukrainian gas companies, which is a lot more disturbing.

Wealth involving real estate is difficult to estimate, but typical estimates are several billion. For example, a drop from 4 billion before the presidency to about 3 billion now is one estimate. This is notably the opposite direction from a typical politician. Increases in wealth are far more suggestive of corruption.

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shadowgovt 2356 days ago
> The president needs people he can trust. If that means hiring family, I'm fine with that.

We'll have to agree to disagree, because that is more or less the justification for every system that devolves from meritocracy into capture by a few trusted by connections and back scratching, be it the aerospace partnerships between the military and trusted contractors that exclude less expensive alternatives, the NSA and CIA becoming composed of family members that the agency already believes it has vetted, the Hapsburg dynasty, or the Trump administration.

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