Chelsea Clinton Makes $900,000 for Doing Almost Nothing

[Dominus Atheos]

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/0 ... t-nothing/#

A feature of oligarchy is the dynastic ascension of new leaders, children who rise to positions of power and wealth simply by the luck of birth. We welcome Chelsea Clinton to the club.

Earning $445 Per Second at NBC

Unlike most well-to-do young people who, after a decent education, take a series of unpaid internships and entry-level positions to begin working their way up some corporate ladder, Chelsea jumped more than a few rungs. Despite never having attended journalism school or otherwise having worked in the field, Chelsea was hired by NBC News to do feel-good stories as part of their “Making a Difference” series. Though the starting salary for such positions is already a chunky $100,000-200,000, Chelsea is being paid $600,000 a year for the same work.

Or less work. Here is a list of Chelsea’s recent NBC stories:

– June 10, NBC Nightly News, on diabetes.
– June 10, Today show, on a car accident in New Jersey.
– June 5, NBC Nightly News, General Motors safety scandal.
– June 4, Today show, missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
– June 4, NBC Nightly News, about people pointing lasers at aircraft.
– June 3, NBC Nightly News, food-borne illnesses.
– June 2, Interviewed the Geico gecko, an animated character who sells insurance.

All told, in her almost three-year tenure at NBC, Chelsea has worked on all of 14 stories.

Business Insider calculated since starting work in November 2011, Chelsea earned about $26,724 for each minute she appeared on air, or $445 per second. As in one-two-three = $1335, there’s your month’s rent.

NBC has an eye for talent, at least the talent of children of important politicians. In 2009, it hired George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna to serve as a correspondent on the Today” show. In 2011, it hired Senator John McCain’s daughter Meghan as a contributor on MSNBC.

More Chelsea $$$$$$$$

But back to Chelsea. She told the New York Times in 2011 when hired by NBC she intended to donate most of the money she earned to the Clinton Foundation. In addition to her gig at NBC, Chelsea also serves Vice Chair of the recently renamed “Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation,” where she was “a major force in steering her parents’ charitable work” in the final years of her mother’s time at the State Department.

Chelsea also benefits from a job as a board member for Barry Diller’s IAC/InteractiveCorp. Salary for Chelsea: $300,000. The board position also pays an annual retainer of $50,000 and a $250,000 grant of restricted stock.

Chelsea, though she only graduated with a master’s degree in 2010, started teaching graduate level classes two years later at Columbia University’s School of Public Health. Her exact salary is unknown. However, the average salary for a Columbia lecturer is $51,671.

Chelsea holds another academic post, salary unknown, as assistant vice provost for the Global Network University at New York University.

Chelsea has also presented an award to her mother at Diane Von Furstenberg’s International Women’s Day event and hosted her father’s 65th birthday at a Hollywood benefit for the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation with guests Lady Gaga and Bono.

Chelsea’s personal fortune is estimated at $15 million, most earned as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and by working for Avenue Capital Investment Group as a hedge fund manager. Chelsea and her husband live in a $10.5 million condominium in Manhattan.

Chelsea is only 34 years old and has already accomplished so much. What a bright future lies ahead! America is still a country where any child can grow up to someday become president.

Oligarchy is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

[Simon_Jester]

How has Chelsea Clinton worked on seven stories during an eight day period in June... and only fourteen during a three year period? Did she just suddenly decide to do a huge burst?

[Lagmonster]

The News-networks-employing-political-family-members thing makes a great deal of sense if you think of them less as employees and more as investments for the network, in the event that their immediate family members make headlines.

[Channel72]

It's not really a symptom of oligarchy - it's just a general symptom of the economics of fame. Chelsea Clinton brings in more viewers than an unknown journalist, which increases ad revenue for the network. Therefore she's worth more to the network. It's pretty simple.

[Ralin]

The News-networks-employing-political-family-members thing makes a great deal of sense if you think of them less as employees and more as investments for the network, in the event that their immediate family members make headlines.

Aren't the Clintons known for being adamant that their daughter be allowed to live her own life and not be drawn into their politics, and for blacklisting journalists and organizations that went against that? Seems like the sort of thing that could backfire.

[Simon_Jester]

Re: Lagmonster:

That may be why the network does it. But it has the effect of creating oligarchy, because it gives an otherwise unaccomplished 34-year-old far more access to the levers of wealth and power than all the other 34-year-olds out there.

Re: Ralin

Well, at this point, Chelsea is 'living her own life.' She just seems to be doing it while taking full advantage of the name recognition and social connections that come from having been the First Princess Daughter.

Back when Clinton was in the White House, she was an adolescent, and therefore quite vulnerable to any attempts to manipulate her politically or score human interest points by playing paparazzi with her. So her parents acted to protect her. Now she's very much an adult in her own right, so I suspect they've decided she can take care of herself.

[Patroklos]

It's paying for access to their parents. The question is whether these freebies which seem far more transparently frivolous than the last few generation of political fortune inheritors will bar them from entry into politics in their own right.

[Mr Bean]

It's not really a symptom of oligarchy - it's just a general symptom of the economics of fame. Chelsea Clinton brings in more viewers than an unknown journalist, which increases ad revenue for the network. Therefore she's worth more to the network. It's pretty simple.

It's also a long bet in the idea that her mother will be President.
Keep in mind even if Chelsea is only spending a few hours on TV in the past few years she's not spent just a few hours in the network. She most likely attending meetings, talking with staff and doing meet and greets.

So if we get President Hillary they will be well placed to get better access to the President. After all she has Chelsea there to vet which of the reporters are friendly, who's nice to who and if you don't think Hillary asked how work was you don't know Hillary. She will be interested at least second hand at any friends Chelsea might have made at work and the like. Our future potential President will be biased in their favor even if she actively tries not to.


Think of the 100 and one ways NBC gains better treatment

• Getting called on first in white house press briefings
  Always being part of the two or three journalists to come personally with the President
  A "good friend" of Chelsea gaining interviews that are good copy and make Hillary look good
  Getting first dibs on Bill

Anyone want to take bets on how long it took Billy boy to hit on Chelsea hot friend at NBC?

[ArmorPierce]

Wrong thread

[Irbis]

It's paying for access to their parents. The question is whether these freebies which seem far more transparently frivolous than the last few generation of political fortune inheritors will bar them from entry into politics in their own right.

More frivolous? Maybe more visible, if that. Just look at Bush clan, looking at them I would wonder how some passed high school, yet all of them were pushed through major universities and into highly paying posts.

And that's just one family, I don't know much about say Kennedies or other prominent US playmakers but I am sure if you dig you will find quite a lot of pork dumped on people whose only accomplishment were sharing a few letters after name with someone important.

[PainRack]

Having said that, she does have a long history of working in her father charitable foundation and there hasn't been any real big scandals in her management there.

Shrugs. She's overpaid compared to what other journalists pull and its definitely due to the luck of her family but somehow, I don't see how this is her fault or just why she shouldn't capitalize on her good fortune.

[K. A. Pital]

Capitalism sucks donkey balls. Who knew.

[Darth Tanner]

Capitalism sucks donkey balls. Who knew.

How is this a feature of capitalism? Every society and economic structure known to man has had the people with good family connections benefiting over those without.

[K. A. Pital]

Capitalism sucks donkey balls. Who knew.

How is this a feature of capitalism? Every society and economic structure known to man has had the people with good family connections benefiting over those without.

In capitalism, there is market pricing for labour. Which means unequal rewards are everywhere, on all levels. Good connections are the other word for corruption, which is universal. But capitalism is legalized and instituitionalized corruption itself.

You disagree? Humans are humans; there is no logic in the unequal rewarding like that outside the capitalist system. It is not even skill- or intellect-based, which is the primary inequality in a technocratic selection mechanism. It is pure capital. As people said, the girl is a piece of human capital and that is all she is.

[Siege]

She's getting paid this much money because of her contacts. That's just as much a skill as anything else, especially in journalism. Well-connected people get paid more all the time, and creating useful social networks is a journalistic skill just as being able to concisely present information is.

Is this particular skill a direct result of her family's money and influence? Sure! Is her salary insanely high for what she's apparently done for it? You bet! But it's odd to me to say that there is "no logic" in "unequal rewarding like that outside the capitalist system". Even in a purely meritocratic system where money didn't exist and audience recognition wasn't a thing someone with an in with the Powers That Be (for whatever reason) would be meritocratically more valuable to a news agency trying to report on those Powers That Be.

If in the future the son or daughter of the former Supreme Technarch of Soviet Mars wanted to become a journalist, they'd automatically be more attractive to news agencies than all the people who aren't related to the Supreme Technarch. Getting hung up on the salary or the way she came to possess her contacts is missing the forest for the trees. It's got nothing so much to do with capitalism. Unless I suppose you define social networking opportunities as a form of capital, but somehow rolling out socialist redistribution of networking opportunities (and social skills, etc.) seems a bit unfeasible to me.

[K. A. Pital]

Callling inherited wealth or contacts a skill is wrong. It goes against the very concept of skill. No effort.

Better call it what it is, inheritance.

I do not mean to say inherited ties would be meaningless in hierarchic societies, they would carry a lot of weight either way unless children are brought up collectively. But in anarchic prehistoric ones, especially pre-class ones, they are. In chiefless Hadza tribes there is no great reward for knowing someone from birth. It simply cannot be.

An ideal technocracy might as well throw children into a great melting pot, then determine the most valuable by skill tests as opposed to ties. This would mean a zero start for all.

EDIT: To clarify a bit: I meant the real tribal socities that exist outside the capitalist framework now. As the hierarchy there is very weak, and compensation generally small and more or less equal, to them such a thing is meaningless.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, empirically, in a highly technocratic society the media is usually state-controlled. In which case journalism still prizes contacts with highly placed persons. But those contacts run the other way: they are the conduits by which the media finds out what to say about the state because the state tells them to.

Now, in a totally anarchic society, sure, 'connections' have no value. But then again, neither do media organizations. The very existence of media as anything other than an informal grapevine is a consequence of our living in a hierarchical civilization.

So within that context, what does it mean to have "merit" or "utility" as a journalist? Clearly, being well-connected gives a journalist utility... but in that case, maybe utility is not the same thing as merit?

Is that underlined passage plausible?

[K. A. Pital]

The compensation levels, however, can be different. Does a royal family member get greater pay in the military just because he is a royal, or do they nonetheless try to keep the evaluation purely professional? That is the question.

And of course merit does not equal utility. A worthless, merit-wise, human being can have utility due to external circumstances in which he or she had no role.

[Ralin]

The compensation levels, however, can be different. Does a royal family member get greater pay in the military just because he is a royal, or do they nonetheless try to keep the evaluation purely professional? That is the question.

If a member of the royal family is in the military (I assume we're talking about about the British royal family?) then they've clearly decided they don't need the money and are doing it because of tradition or a sense of duty or whatever

But in anarchic prehistoric ones, especially pre-class ones, they are. In chiefless Hadza tribes there is no great reward for knowing someone from birth. It simply cannot be

And societies like that also tend to be poorass hunter-gathers who don't have a whole hell of a lot to reward people with.

An ideal technocracy might as well throw children into a great melting pot, then determine the most valuable by skill tests as opposed to ties. This would mean a zero start for all.

I have no idea why you think this would be a good idea.

[K. A. Pital]

I have no idea why you think this would be a good idea.

I said it would be consistent with the guiding principle, not that it is great. But I wonder why you think that while billions are suffering, some should be free from it by birthright. I remember people being killed or dethroned for trying to rule by birthright, and that was considered right, since being born does not mean shit about one's human qualities. How is that any different?

Or you are of the opinion that among the suffering billions there isn't a single person deserving to take the place of the born-into-aristocracy, because they are actually more skilled and thus more deserving?

[Ultonius]

I said it would be consistent with the guiding principle, not that it is great. But I wonder why you think that while billions are suffering, some should be free from it by birthright. I remember people being killed or dethroned for trying to rule by birthright, and that was considered right, since being born does not mean shit about one's human qualities. How is that any different?

Or you are of the opinion that among the suffering billions there isn't a single person deserving to take the place of the born-into-aristocracy, because they are actually more skilled and thus more deserving?

In Britain, most hereditary peerages created in the post-feudal period (with the exception of those created for members of the royal family or their spouses) were awarded for military, political or judicial service to the state, which would have required intelligence or skill. I think this highlights a problem with your idea of a 'zero start': one of the biggest motivations for people to succeed is to give their children a better life than they had, whether in the form of financial security, educational opportunities or hereditary honours. How many parents would be in favour of a truly level playing field if it meant that all the sacrifices they made for their children were worth nothing?

[K. A. Pital]

Humans are egoistic enough to wish improved conditions for themselves; the 'my children!' motivation is only additional. Besides, it is very much possible to wish better conditions for your children even if they start from scratch - improve the society for everyone, make the zero level itself better.

[Thanas]

Meh, this is not really capitalism. Communism had the same problem, only then it was sons and family members of Politburo members receiving preferential treatment.

[K. A. Pital]

Soviet socialism was a hierarchic society; though at first the leaders were extremely ascetic, it weared off as corruption took place. Corruption is the bane of hierarchy, but like I said, it is simply legalized in capitalism. It is not a result of breaking the rules; it is the rules themselves.

[Thanas]

Fair enough though I don't really see the difference here in communist or capitalist systems. One is more open-handed about it, sure, but is it really that different from all those bureaucrats in china suddenly having funds to buy Mercedes and BMW luxury cars?