Talk:List of richest American politicians/Archives/2012

Sources

What is the source of all of this information? --Blue387 08:47, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually there are ways to source this, however the article is inaccurate. John Kerry is wealthy, but it is his wife - whose fortune he does not control, who is the hectamillionaire. Stirling Newberry 14:00, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how this article could ever be complete, since wealth figures are private and (as Stirling mentions) not so clear cut. For instance, the John Kerry figure seems to be calculated by taking the estate of his and his wife's, estimated at $1B, and dividing by two. Not too accurate. And how is Schwarzenegger not on there? Eliot 14:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Found this reference to Kerry's wealth. [1] It says that Kerry's personal assets are in the range of $1-10 million, while his wife's are in the range of $550 million. Should he be on the list? We don't know where his wife's money would go if she died, or if they divorced. Eliot 17:24, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Given the obscurity of the public financial disclosure required of federal office holders, this effort would seem doomed to failures. Independent holdings by spouses complicate the picture even further (Kerry is hardly the only politician with this "problem"). Discrepancies between state and federal laws are another difficulty. Unless someone is referencing external scholarship with a reasonably well-received methodology for broad examination of the issues, this is an exercise in futility. Journalists are unlikely to satisfy this requirement. I reckon this should be put to a VfD. Buffyg 23:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

RFC (?)

rfc comment. Agree it should be vfd'd, and I'd vote to delete for several reasons, not least that the energy would be far better spent on articles on money in US politics in general, than Yet Another Pointless And Contentious Wikipedia List (YAPACWL). Rd232 13:41, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think those are valid reasons for deleting an article. Unverifiability is a valid one, but practically every list here suffers from excess of ambition. Eliot 14:19, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, everyone, the Federal Election Commission mandates a disclosure and also that certain items be held in blind trust. The bit about Kerry is right, also Frist is missing and are we going to count Edwards. 64.250.219.173 04:17, 24 September 2005 (UTC)JJ Glendenning

The Statement above is mine, I wasn't logged in.

One more thing this list would not be hard to maintain everyone does this just to name one, Forbes. [04:18, September 24, 2005‎ JJGlendenning]

Post-Election Editing Time

Some of them aren't candidates anymore. Like Meg Whitman.J'onn J'onzz (talk) 22:57, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I guess it includes former candidates, too... never mindJ'onn J'onzz (talk) 22:59, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I vote to delete the candidates who ran for office but were never elected. At the very least, they belong to a separate list. For instance, Ross Perot ran for office but dropped out and then re-entered and then lost. There are too many people who ran and lost and this will be difficult to keep track and verify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.90.161.165 (talk) 01:05, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Missing

Nelson Rockefeller? Ross Perot? Steve Forbes? And more I'm probably not thinking of. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:37, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

poor code, impossible to edit. possible synth?

How can this list not include John F Kennedy? Thomas Jefferson, Roosevelt 1? All worth 100+ million. Kennedy's family wealth alone was close to 1 billion. The article is essentially a very weak synthesis of equally weak "list" articles from MSM. I suggest a merge to "American politicians by wealth" or whole-sale deletion entirely. There are just too much "rich" American politicians and many of the top aren't even mentioned here. I tried to add some but I kept messing up the code. The way the article is set up makes it very difficult for editors not familiar with Lists to contribute.

Here are my recommendations:

The easy way:

• Move article to "List of American politicians by wealth"
• Merge List of current members of the United States Congress by wealth to the new article

Harder way

• Create new articles for political ranks - e.g, American presidents by wealth, American congressman by wealth, republicans by wealth, democrats by wealth. Something more specific and sortable.
• Delete this article and merge content to the new articles specific to political positions.

Concerning editors frequenting this article and responsible for setting up the ranks, these are my requests:

• Add Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John F. Kennedy. I made an effort but ended up sabotaging the whole system. The real problem is the "rank" box. Must editors manually change the number for each rank? If that is the case a single addition forces editors to change every single spot. Getting rid of the rank box would make the article much easier to edit. The box is somewhat redundant because the "estimated wealth" category effectively acts as a rank system. I am not sure if the number issue can be removed, if so that would make the article much easier to edit. Wikifan^{Be nice} 11:15, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Aftermath of the AFD

Several legitimate concerns were raised by the AFD and I believe that they should be addressed:

1. The rankings are inappropriate since we have no way of knowing whether they are correct. If we are omitting someone from our list that we don't know about who should be #6, then all of the rankings after that are incorrect. Also, since the numbers are out of date or not inflation adjusted, our rankings are flat wrong. Accordingly, I have removed the rankings.
2. The criteria for inclusion are not well-defined. For instance, I offered the example that Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, and Donald Trump all ran for President and are not listed, but a number of people who have never held public office are listed. My thought is that we should remove everyone who has never held public office. If you look at Steve Forbes' bio, there is a huge section there on his political activity and he is clearly more significant of a political figure than some of the ones like Meg Whitman or Linda McMahon who were candidates one time. But neither they nor Forbes have held political office, so you have to draw the line somewhere.

Thoughts? --B (talk) 12:59, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

These numbers should be updated too. Roll Call has a more recent estimate for congressional wealth. Also, we should probably have multiple sources for each estimate. Hot Stop 13:02, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Inflation

This chart is pretty much useless unless we use the same yardstick for all the listed people. In other words, we ought to try to use today's dollar values. For instance, Joseph P. Kennedy was worth $400 million but that's $2.6 billion in 2007 dollars.[2]

This Wikipedia article specifically says "not adjusted for inflation." Why not? What the heck good is it if it's not adjusted for inflation? How can they be ranked?

It appears that Scotchplano99 inserted the ranks on June 14 without explanation,[3] and I'll remove them.108.18.174.123 (talk) 04:19, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

As my AfD vote said, "Delete. Difficult to quantify, especially where spouses are concerned (cf. John Kerry, John McCain) and large family ownings and trusts are involved (cf. Kennedys, Rockefellers), and without including inflation-adjusted historical figures, destined to recentism. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:39, 13 May 2012 (UTC)" But without the rank, people will just click the 'Estimated Wealth' column ... which is a text sort and amusingly puts Bloomberg last. And the list is still missing Nelson Rockefeller, Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Meg Whitman, and who knows who else. It includes Joseph P. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy but not JFK or RFK, why? It doesn't include early figures like George Washington, who according to some analyses was worth more $500 million today ... but other analyses completely disagree. And so on. I still say the fundamental flaws here are unfixable. Wasted Time R (talk) 10:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

You're correct that they will just click the "estimated wealth" column to rank these people. So, I have clarified the heading of the column.108.18.174.123 (talk) 15:17, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

As of

I'm going to be bold and remove the "As of" column. Its meaning is unclear and confusing. The cite for Bloomberg is dated 2011, and the "As of" says 2012. WTF? Does "As of" mean the point during the subject's life when the wealth existed, or does it mean the point in time when the effect of inflation was taken into account, or does it mean the point in time when a scholar tried to estimate the wealth? This column is not useful.108.18.174.123 (talk) 16:49, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, you need to give some indication of whether the amount is in 2012 dollars or not. For example, I honestly have no idea whether the JFK $124 million figure is 1960s dollars or now. A few of the notes (Tilden, Cox) explain the inflation adjustment but most don't. But I think you've put enough work into this that you need to do it right and drop the "not necessarily adjusted for inflation" dodge. You can take a look at List of highest-grossing films and List of highest-grossing concert tours for two ways that other articles have tried to deal with this. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:10, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I will soon be happily back home without a desktop computer again. I take no responsibility for the completeness of this list. To the extent I've worked on it, I've been fair, but there's no doubt that the list is incomplete. People are missing. The inflation aspect is only one aspect of the incompleteness. I do know that Wikipedia elsewhere says that JFK was a billionaire (perhaps crediting him with the entire family wealth), so the figure given here seems quite modest, whether it includes inflation or not.108.18.174.123 (talk) 17:36, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Fremont and Train

There are probably lots of presidential candidates who we're missing. Rich guy John Charles Fremont ran for president in 1856, and rich dude George Francis Train ran in 1872, but I haven't got net worth numbers for them.108.18.174.123 (talk) 00:02, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

You're still missing Meg Whitman (if you're a major-party nominee for a statewide position, I think you should be in). Also, if you're going to count U.S. Ambassadors (Joseph P. Kennedy), there have been a lot of rich ones of those, especially to London and Paris. Walter Annenberg comes to mind right away, I'm sure he was a billionaire. But I'm not sure ambassasors should be included. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:15, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I haven't messed with the non-presidential-candidate ones.108.18.174.123 (talk) 17:12, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Were anybody to officially ask, I would favor removing Joseph Kennedy and anyone else whose only "political" office was as part of the diplomatic corps. For a long time, wealth was pretty much a pre-req for some ambassadorial posts; we wouldn't want to insult the French by sending them somebody who didn't know how to properly eat their escargot, after all. (Other appointive offices are more problematic; for example (and I find no mention of their actual net worth, but just talking points), would Charles Erwin Wilson and Robert McNamara be considered "politicians"?) Fat&Happy (talk) 17:45, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

You could say almost the same thing about secretaries of the treasury. Does Andrew Mellon ring a bell? Robert Rubin? Maybe the best solution would be to raise the threshhold of $100 million up to a billion for office-holders and office-seekers who never sought the presidency. Some are described here (Jeff Greene, Tom Golisano, Meg Whitman, though I'm not sure whether they've actually held any offices).108.18.174.123 (talk) 17:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Clintons

The cited sources for the Clintons don't say that their net worth is $108 million. They say that their gross income from 2000-2007 was $108 million, with a third of it paid in taxes. So, we need to get better sources for the Clintons. This source says she's only got $50 million, which would be below the threshhold for this list.108.18.174.123 (talk) 01:21, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Another problem is that all of Bill's money has come after his political career ended. Same thing with Al Gore. Presumably the point of this list is how rich politicians were when they were politicians. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:25, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see any point of this list, but to the extent there is one, isn't the amount that somebody profited from "public service" as noteworthy as how successful they (or their parents) were in other endeavors prior to entering politics? Fat&Happy (talk) 17:18, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Fat & Happy is Incisive & Correct. I don't think this list is directed to wealth at the time of candidacy. That would be a much more difficult thing for us to ascertain, that's for sure. There are several Wikipedia lists of US presidents that pertain to their time afterward. For example, List of former United States presidents who ran for office after leaving the presidency, Oldest living United States presidents, List of Presidents of the United States by date of death, US Presidents on US postage stamps, et cetera.108.18.174.123 (talk) 17:21, 19 August 2012 (UTC)