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Lifelong Politicians

Tim Marting

Updated: Mar 21, 2023

All right, guys. Welcome back to Thoughts of a Random Citizen. I'm your host as always, Hugh Sifu. Hopefully, you guys have enjoyed your week as I have. Still traveling. Still recording. Hopefully, you guys are about to do the same. I don't know where you're at. Hopefully, you're traveling. Hopefully, you're enjoying your life as I try to enjoy mine. I've been doing a pretty good job. I say try, but I'm enjoying my life.


A quick episode today. Don't really want to go too long. Not as much about entrepreneurship or investing, but it is about politics. I know. Another episode about politics. Yes, but it's quick. My thought on lifelong politicians is an intriguing one for me. Hopefully, it is for you guys as well. Lifelong politicians. Why the actual do we have lifelong politician? Why do we not try to have politicians on a volunteer basis? What kind of person is attracted to life as a politician? One who creates laws. Think about that in your own way.


On top of that, why do we allow these people to forfeit a career to only make money and then have their livelihood based on that. In meaning, if you're a lifelong politician, and your campaign is coming up, and it's not looking very good, and you got corporations saying, "Hey, take this money from us, we'll help you win your campaign, but you have to do this, this and this for us?" What choice do they really have?


They can say, "No, no, no, no, I'm not going to take that money, because I don't want to do that," but then their livelihood, in meaning, what gets them paid, their job is gone. They don't win that reelection because then that company just goes to the other politician that they're running against and say, "Hey, do this, this, this and this, and we'll help you win," and they're, "Heck, yes." We realize that, right? That this is the way that the system works.

Instead, if we put term limits on them, then we could get actually good people, people who make a lot of money and maybe want to take a pay cut, a very big pay cut, in my opinion, to help serve their country. I think I've talked about this in another episode, but it's something that just drives me wild, that lifelong politician in the US, in the Senate, in the House, get to just continue their entire career doing that. Then the president only exists for eight years. I'm not saying we should extend that, but I'm just saying, "What is that about?"


Also, in regards to balance of government, we have three branches of the government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. All three checks and balances-- I'm pretty sure you remember that in history in school, are supposed to balance and check one another. What happens when we have lifelong politicians? I've really been harping on Joe Biden lately, so I apologize for that.


When we have a president like Joe Biden who has literally been a lifelong politician in the Senate-- just think about this. The legislative branch is supposed to check and oppose the executive branch, but when we have a lifelong legislative member, then all of a sudden jump over to the executive position. There's not really a check there because it's essentially a legislative member who is running the country, and so then that's two branches of the government that are supposed to be opposing of each other to check each other, essentially, one.


When you have members of a legislative branch for their entire life, go to the executive branch, are they really members now that are going to oppose the legislative branch? Or are they just going to work with the legislative branch because that's all they've done their entire life? I don't think Mr. Joe Biden, President Joe Biden, excuse me, is going to really oppose much of what the legislative branch is going to want to do. Essentially, the legislative branch is very happy because they got what they wanted in power of the executive branch, something that is supposed to check the legislative branch.


Just a thought from a random citizen. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that. I will try as hard as possible to get back to the entrepreneurial and investing side of things in the next episode. Again, these are all thoughts. This doesn't really have a niche, and hopefully, you guys enjoy that about this podcast. As you never know what you're going to get or how along it's going to be. I will talk to you guys next week on Thoughts of a Random Citizen and enjoy the soon-to-be hot weather. Cheers.

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