If someone won $500,000,000 in the lottery, what would be the most effective way to spend it to change the political situation in America?
Edit: Asking for a friend. Also; as much as I appreciate the violent suggestions, I’m thinking more positively focused.
Since there no other comments yet, I’ve always had the idea to pick anyone running across any race in the US under the democratic socialist party and donate the max amount to each of them individually. I think all the max values are under $2,500 per individual but so many races are in small towns and whatnot where that could go a long way. I mean folk like Bernie Sanders would also get the max value per individual but it will go further for the downstream races. I have zero background or knowledge in this area so maybe that is just super naive.
Y’know, I don’t think that’s enough to make any significant change. It takes more than money - it takes generations. Nothing will change until things get so bad that the comfortable (I assume they’re comfortable if they’re not engaged) majority get involved at all levels. I’m not pessimistic…
Relentless advertising the week before the election. Any sooner than that and you’re wasting money. The electorate has the collective memory of a goldfish so wait until the few days, and especially the weekend, before the election and dump it all into an overwhelming advertising campaign. Every other commercial that comes on TV should be one of your attack ads listing everything horrible the candidate you oppose has ever done wrong.
Buying politicians won’t work, that kind of money will either buy one for a few years or many for a few months. But $500m is less than a million dollars a year for just the house of representatives and when that money dries up their normal donors will be there with big fat checks ready to change policies back to the way they were before.
In order to enact real change you’ll need to actually replace the people in power. And even then the major sticking point is making sure that the candidates you endorse actually make the changes that would limit future corruption.
Considering the small amounts of money we do know about in corruption, I would day you massively overestimate how much someone costs.
They’re not all Lauren Boebert, but there’s a lot more money than half a billion being thrown around in politics. If half a billion were enough to just buy all the politicians Musk would have done it a long time ago, that’s about 1/400th of his net worth when he keeps his mouth shut.
In total, yes, maybe more. But over, likely, thousands of people and, mostly, for minor things here and there.
Also, just throwing money at people is not somehow a failsafe way to get something. Not everyone can be corrupted and not everyone seeing the corruption is going to be quiet about it.
You’d be competing against multi-billionaires and huge corporations. It wouldn’t be enough, even though it’s a ridiculous amount of money for one person.
Changing the US would probably be impossible. Maybe changing your state would be possible. Changing your local community would be much more realistic.
Helping people get homes and food would likely help reduce crime.
Helping people get educations would help some people escape certain situations.
If you’re fixed on changing the US political situation and you think there’s a party that can change the situation, you can go with political donations. I believe whichever party spends the most money on their campaign is the one that wins more often than not.
Having multiple billions and dumping half a billion at once are two very different things.
Donate to GOP’s campaign, so they win next presidential election. This will effectively change current political situation
