Most practitioners will tell you that politics is a mug's game. It's a thankless task with little financial reward, they say. Maybe it is, in Ireland at least, but elsewhere the indications are that politics and big money go hand in hand.
The American Forbes magazine names quite a few famous politicians in the current issue's list of 200 of the world's wealthiest people.
No one would be surprised at the immense wealth of hereditary rulers such as King Fahd of Saudi Arabia ($25,000 million) or of Sultan Hassan al Bolkiah of Brunei, who is worth $36,000 million.
But there are other names on the list which may cause an eyebrow or two to be raised.
Not many, for example, will have thought of including Dr Fidel Castro; President Saddam Hussein; the former South African trade union leader, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa; and the former deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation, Mr Vladimir Potanin, among the super rich of the world.
Forbes names the Cuban President as being worth $100 million from nickel, sugar and investments, though it does not elaborate on how it arrived at the figure. Dr Castro, mind you, is a virtual pauper in comparison with some of his former "comrades".
Mr Potanin (37) has not had as much time to amass wealth as have the kings and emperors. His country has only allowed free-market dealings for six years, but he is rated by Forbes as being worth $1,600 million - $100 million more than Dr Tony O'Reilly, the only Irishman on the list.
Mr Potanin has made his money from banking, oil, gas and telecommunications.
The latter business, represented by the Russian telecommunications giant, Svyazinvest, has caused a great deal of comment in Russia and may have caused the former privatisation minister, Mr Anatoly Chubais, to lose his job.
One of Mr Potanin's companies won the privatisation auction for Svyazinvest, but when it emerged that another of his companies had paid Mr Chubais and a number of other influential politicians in the privatisation section of government $90,000 each for their contributions to a book which was never written, questions began to be asked.
Strangely, another Russian politician, Mr Boris Berezovsky, a shadowy member of Mr Yeltsin's security council - who has become General Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and who was listed at $3,000 million in 1977 - does not make the list at all this year. Could he have spent it all?
One lesson to be learned from the latest list, however, is that success in politics and success in money do not always coincide.
The former Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, is listed at $5,000 million, but his political career is not in very good shape. Forbes puts President Saddam down for the same amount.
Mr Ramaphosa had a much later start than other entrepreneurs following his successful negotiations, on behalf of the African National Congress, which led to the institution of democracy in South Africa in 1994.
Forbes puts him in at the extremely poor end of its list, at a miserly $25 million, from his involvement in New Africa Investments Ltd, which has interests in South African breweries and Anglo-American.
Mr Ross Perot is the only US politician on the list. He is worth $3,300 million from his electronic data management businesses. Strangely, there is no mention of Mr Malcolm "Steve" Forbes, an unsuccessful candidate in the Republican primaries in 1996 and, co-incidentally, the wealthy owner of Forbes magazine.
And spare a thought for the poor Suharto family. Rated at $4,000 million from "investments" their family business, "Indonesia Inc", has been going through a pretty bad time of late and with the patriarch out of power, they could soon be down to their last billion.