US Elections - Why spend $1000,000,000 for a $400,000 a year job?

Unfortunately, since the last election, which already had enormous problems with big money in politics, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same free speech rights as people. They had previously ruled that money can be a form of speech when spent on a message. Now, corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose a politician. They can't give that money directly to the politician, but they can use it to help or hurt their campaign without directly coordinating with their message with the politician.

It is very difficult to get money out of politics without violating the 1st amendment (free speech). Now, it is even harder than ever before. Part of the difficulty, every politician in office got there under the current system, so all of them are hesitant to change that system. The Republicans get far too much money from special interests to allow any real campaign finance reform to get through and the Democrats, while not getting nearly as much, also get enough to influence such decisions.

In order to compete with all the private political spending, politicians now need to raise more money than ever. President Obama estimated that his reelection would cost $2 billion.

As for the austere times, well, corporations lately have been sitting on piles of cash as the stock market has come back, largely on speculation, but, without enough money in people's pockets, there aren't enough consumers to encourage investing that money. Products created would largely sit on shelves. Rather than focusing on demand, unfortunately, the Democrats have been capitulating with Republicans who want to focus on supply (and they don't do that well either), but that isn't the problem right now.

In strictly economic terms, having a few billion dollars invested in marketing wouldn't hurt, especially since most of that money would actually be spent in the US, rather than having a good portion of it being spent overseas. There are better ways to inject that money into the economy, ways that don't have such damaging side effects, but the austere times aren't really a major factor here. The impact they do have, though, is that corporations and the wealthy have an even larger percentage of available money than ever before, so they will have an even larger influence.

And yes, many of us here in the US see this as a big problem. Many of us see it as the biggest problem we have, actually, the source of many of our other problems.

That is the problem with Americans and their politics, they are more concerned about raising money for campaigns than they are running their country. This is not a new thing it has been the case for a long time. It is a shame because just look at their mountain of debt.

Say what you like, the commies were right about one thing - western capitalism IS inherently wasteful.

If only there were a way to deal with this without falling into the trap of big-brother style government...

Hussein needs lies to win and lies need money to be decorated and money need fools to donate and stealers to loot the federal funds!

It's a power, prestige, and look at me thing.