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We had corrupt politicians in Slovakia who owned literally nothing on paper and were regularly seen inhabiting multiple small palaces in various countries, sailing on yachts, riding in expensive cars owned by other people and so on. You must have a legal term for this - not owning but using property as if you owned it.
Are we supposed to believe this sort of trickery isn't possible in the US ?
EDIT:
Okay, well, this is an alternate explanation:
https://www.themotte.org/post/317/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/54089?context=8#context
Yes, of course it is possible. The question is whether it is likely in this case, given the evidence we have. And, it is pretty common knowledge that Biden was vastly less wealthy than was the norm for Senators. So, are we to believe that he engaged in Slovakia-esque "trickery," but no on else did.
And, remember, the issue here is ONLY what our prior should be. That is all.
Of course that is a bit question begging if the source of the info doesn’t contain the undisclosed payments.
As I said, "So, are we to believe that he engaged in Slovakia-esque "trickery," but no on else did." And again, this is about establishing a prior, nothing more.
Well it seems others did engage in corruption in different ways. For example, it seems obvious that Pelosi engaged in legal insider trading. Others do the “pay me outrageous sums for speaking fees.” These things are technically legal and therefore outside of political embarrassment need not be kept on the downlow.
Biden’s purported influence peddling is arguably illegal and therefore would need to be kept on the downlow. The question would be why he didn’t do the legal methods. My view is Biden isn’t particularly intelligent.
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That link estimates his net worth in 2008 as $24,000. That doesn't sound reasonable to me. Even the $360k for total investments it has below that sounds preposterously low given that he'd sold his mansion for over a million back in the 90s.
Given the performance of the stock market in 2008, the 360K is not surprising. Had he had it all in the SP500, it would have been 586,000 at the beginning of the year.
As for the house, if I buy a house for 500K and put 20% down, then sell it for 1 million, I walk away with $600,000. (And that does not count the apparently extensive renovations that were done on the house, which can easily run to the hundreds of thousands). But if I then buy a slightly nicer house for $1,100,000, my net worth, looking only at the house, is -100,000. And, depending on timing, given the housing market in 2008, it might be a lot less: If I bought in 2006, the house I paid $1,100.000 for might be worth only $900,000. It is completely believable that, because 2008 was such an outlier, his net worth would be unusually low that year. And note that the subsequent numbers are what you would expect from the recovery of the stock and housing markets.
And, don't underestimate the cost of putting three kids through private school, college, and in two cases, law school (and I guess in one case, rehab).
More to the point, as I said, the chart indicates that he was vastly less wealthy than the norm for Senators. Unless you think that he is somehow much, much better at hiding assets than are other Senators.
The chart only indicates anything if it's accurate. It looks auto generated to me, maybe scraped from public data. It's conceivable that a 65 year old lifelong senator had less savings than your average boomer but I'm gonna go with that unsourced website being bullshit. If it's not then he's certainly done well since then, Forbes put him at $9 million in 2018, so almost 400x as wealthy as he had been a decade before according to your numbers.
It is a very well known website, as it happens. Its parent organization was founded 40 years ago by two retired US Senators to shed light on the role of money in politics.
And, it is common knowledge that, after leaving the vice presidency, Biden unsurprisingly made a bunch of money on books and speaking engagements. [Edit: As noted by your own source, Forbes. It is easy enough to find his returns online, and given the behavior of the stock market and housing market since 2008, pretty much everyone did well.
Finally, look more closely: his savings in 2008 were not $24,000. His net worth was 24,000. Not at all the same thing.
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