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We should pay politicians more
- nindalf 6y agoThis gets bogged down discussing Boris a bit too much. But I do that pay for politicians needs to be improved. For me, the biggest issue is that politicians who lose their jobs are left without any pay. They know they can't win elections forever, so have to plan ahead. They could kowtow to every wish of their electorate, no matter how misguided and hope they do get re-elected. But the more likely option is to do a few small favours for corporate interests in exchange for a revolving door once they're out of power. Most members of Parliament/Congress get seats on the board of companies. Neither of these options is in the interest of our democracy. I don't know what the solution is, but paying them a pittance while not making provisions for future income isn't a good idea I think. (I am aware that pensions are a thing)
- phone8675309 6y agoGraduated pensions based on length of service might work if and only if they weren't paid while the person is doing any sort of government contract or lobbying work afterward.
- beached_whale 6y agoPensions are your money held until later. So I am not sure that should apply as the employer should have no part of it and it should be managed by a third party.
- Ericson2314 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_and_flow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_and_flow saying pensions are money "held until later" is fiction. The "real"/material economy is mostly flows (most goods go bad), and most stock are correspondingly mere social constructs.
- beached_whale 6y agoThat's immaterial here and not the point. The pension is not the employer's, it is the employee's and part of their compensation.
- viklove 6y agoIf you reward politicians too greatly, the allure of being a politician is no longer affecting political change or helping your fellow constituents. It's getting access to a sweet lifetime of cashflow. Politicians shouldn't be paid more, they should require industry expertise and have a term limit of 4 years. You work in industry, you become a politician, and then you go back to industry.
- cmmeur01 6y agoFrom what I see the allure of being a politician is to set yourself up for a corporate job after giving the industry of your choice massive handouts. The revolving door and regulatory capture are the real issues.
- viklove 6y agoSounds like you're talking about the Fed specifically, and yeah, that is a big issue. I'm talking more about congressional representatives.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoIf you reward doctors too greatly, the allure of being a doctor is no longer saving lives or helping cure disease. It's getting access to a sweet lifetime of cashflow
- maxerickson 6y agoSo what? It's likely beneficial for doctors to be intrinsically motivated to heal people, but regulatory mechanisms shouldn't be built on the assumption that it is the case. Or is the idea that motivation is more important than relatively objective measures of effectiveness?
- viklove 6y agoYeah and it's a lot easier to sue doctors for malpractice than it is politicians for corruption/negligence. You're kinda proving my point.
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- pdonis 6y ago> For me, the biggest issue is that politicians who lose their jobs are left without any pay. For me, the biggest issue is that being an elected official is considered a career. It shouldn't be; it should be a temporary thing that people do for a limited time to contribute for the good of society, afterwards returning to whatever they did before serving. A policy that required private sector employers to give leave of absence to people who wanted to serve as elected officials would help to support that. It would also help if the power and scope of what an elected official is expected to do were drastically scaled back, by limiting our expectations of what we expect governments in general to do. Then we would not require elected office to be a career just so politicians could have enough time to learn how to play the political game.
- pm90 6y agoAbsolutely not. You don’t expect a programmer to work in the software industry part time and then work somewhere totally different. Human beings improve their skills in fields with more practice and experience. Politics is a career: there are people who are good at it and we should most certainly expect them to work on it full time. It’s not like there’s any shortage of problems to solve.
- zepto 6y ago> You don’t expect a programmer to work in the software industry part time and then work somewhere totally different. For some programmers I think that would be a great option. Granted there are programmers who are going to do their best work by focusing on code and little else deeply for years on end. But there are a lot of people who’s decision making would be improved by having other experiences as well as coding. And.. coding is decision making.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- labster 6y agoThe fundamental problem is that politics needs a career track for people to become good at it. Would you consider term limits for programmers, after which they get to go back to their normal jobs in the humanities? When politicians are inexperienced, it just lends power to the lobbyists, the entrenched money, and the civil service.
- fludlight 6y agoThe emergency exit plan for junior Republican congresspeople is to join a think tank. But(!), only if they tow the party line. It is so common that there is a name for it: wingnut welfare. I don't think junior Democrats have such an avenue available to them, at least not to the same extent. Senior members of either party go on to join boards of big companies or become lobbyists.
- ricardobeat 6y agoWhat if the solution is Sweden's model of politics not necessarily being a career? That seems to attack the root of the problem.
- 6nf 6y agoHow is that implemented, using term limits?
- ryall 6y agoYou make a convincing argument, how can we conscionably blame these people for wanting to feather their nest, considering the pittance the public pays them? Now replace politicians with police, and corporate interests with criminal interests (I'd wager they're equally as damaging), perhaps we have people with the wrong ideals in these positions?
- LocalH 6y agoI think there should be less money in politics, not more. Politics shouldn't be a lifelong career. Get in, do your duty, get out.
- ravi-delia 6y agoThat's a fantastic recipe for a rotating door of people with disposable income that benefit from political office. The only way to get less money in politics is to pay politicians more, and ban getting money elsewhere.
- timthorn 6y agoI'm of the opinion that MPs with a continuing outside job are incredibly valuable. The obvious example are the many MP doctors (who need to keep their skills current if they are to maintain registration) but wherever they work, having an active link with the "real world" brings another dimension to their policy decisions.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 6y agoWe have a system supposedly designed to do such a thing in Texas - the state legislature only meets for a few weeks every two years. The outcome is that no lower class job allows people to disappear for 8 weeks at a time, so essentially only rich people can participate in the system.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ravi-delia 6y agoThat's definitely worth thinking about, but I just don't know if it outweighs having high quality applicants that really know what they're doing in office. Politics is (or at least should be) a difficult specialist position.
- cmmeur01 6y agoSounds like publicly funded elections, not paying the individuals more.
- pattusk 6y agoThe problem is not limited to politicians, a lot of socially useful and traditionally somewhat prestigious jobs suffer from a pay problem. Education is a clear case in point, both at the K-12 and University level. I've seen a lot of brilliant people eschew an academic career for industry because of financial reasons. The surplus of PhDs means that you can still hire brilliant people for now, but the quality of academics is going to be plumetting in the long run. It's something you can already noticed in some fields in Europe where salaries are even lower than the US. New recruits are bottom of the barrel candidates that adjuncted for 10 years because they could not do be hired anywhere else. Meanwhile, brilliant young scholars spent 2 years on the academic job market before realizing they could take their skills to industry, a political cabinet or a law firm and make 5 times what they'd make in academia for equally if not more intellectually rewarding work. In countries with socialized healthcare systems, medical doctors also tend to be grossly underpaid. The talented ones move abroad or work for private clinics and as a result the quality of care of public hospitals decreases.
- hayst4ck 6y ago> The talented ones move abroad or work for private clinics and as a result the quality of care of public hospitals decreases. I don't doubt this is true, but I definitely would want to see a citation for this. Most Canadians and Brits I've met abroad have been consistently happy with their healthcare systems, so my anecdata certainly doesn't lead me to believe healthcare quality is low.
- AussieWog93 6y agoI'd also like a citation for this. If anything, doctors emigrate from (third world) countries without socialised medicine to CANZUK nations, Germany etc. Also anecdata, but I have family that are dual Australian-US citizens living in the US, with top of the line private healthcare over there. When my great aunt required dialysis, they came back to Australia because the free system was better than what was on offer in the States. Apparently they'd pack patients over there into these rooms with vast arrays of machines, literally over a dozen to a room, and then bill the insurance company for thousands.
- hirundo 6y ago> This can only be fixed by making the role attractive to talented newcomers, avoiding the incongruous position where low quality elected representatives are paid a pittance to set the policies that are followed by council officers on 6 figure salaries. Across the pond our politicians are less frugal when setting their own salaries. Their performance does not seem to be improved in proportion.
- hnick 6y agoPer Wikipedia: "As of 1 July 2019, Australia's prime minister is paid a total salary of $549,250. This is made up of the 'base salary' received by all Members of Parliament ($211,250) plus a 160 percent 'additional salary' for the role of prime minister." I can say it doesn't seem to stop people helping out their mates or avoiding the tough issues on the job over here at least.
- XorNot 6y agoI do wonder what the long term outlook on that is. Politician is an extremely unstable job, so that $210k base for a job you might only have for four years (and then not exactly drop out into a lucrative field like IT) probably doesn't feel like a lot.
- nitrogen 6y agodrop out into a lucrative field Paid speaking engagements appear to be fairly lucrative for former politicians.
- XorNot 6y agoSure provided you greased the right palms when you were in office and towed the right lines.
- hnick 6y agoThat's what the higher salaries supposedly avoid, you are less beholden to moneyed interests. I think the reality is that people often get accustomed to money and seek more of it unless there is a true downside. Singapore has a very similar mindset on political salaries, and they are much higher even than the Australian PM. But as an outsider with one foot in due to family, it seems that they are culturally very anti-corruption after living near their neighbours which makes it work better.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoIt's not like these people just pop in to be the prime minister of Australia for a brief four years then go back to pulling coffee shots at their low paying hospitallity jobs. The overwhelming majority of Australian politicians are career bureaucrats of one form or another. It'll take me five years of 60 hour weeks in a noise dirty dangerous environment to earn what the PM makes in a year.
- forgingahead 6y agoSingapore pays its cabinet ministers exceedingly well. But the other side of that coin is that the ruling party, the People's Action Party, which has won re-election every time since independence, has a pretty strict standard of who gets to join the party, and the previous generation of leaders have always been extremely judicious in who gets elevated to the rank of minister with the accompanying high salary. The parallel is saying "Pay your employees well". Well of course, but you can't hire all and sundry and expect magic to happen in your startup. Incentives certainly matter, and can lead to great outcomes, but you can't have the wrong people in the seat in the first place. It is not just a pay issue that results in incompetent people in government.
- timwaagh 6y agoI hear the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia also gets paid fairly well, but I'd argue such examples are irrelevant to democracies.
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- darig 6y agoWe should all be politicians, and pay ourselves nothing. I am not represented by anyone other than myself.
- freeopinion 6y agoI tell you what. Let's experiment a little with this. How about we pay teachers better and see how it works out? Let's see if education improves. Then, with those results in hand we can discuss raising the pay of politicians. Right now the best data I know of is the results of raising the pay of CEOs. That data is not promising for politicians.
- sova 6y agoWould it not be wonderful to have a pay cap on the ratio between the highest paid employee and the lowest paid? We could extend this to all sectors.
- correct_horse 6y agoThis would most probably result in corporations laying off the lowest paid employees and paying contractors to do the same work.
- arthurcolle 6y agoCan you share some data that illustrates why you think this is a good idea?
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoNo, this almost certainly would not achieve the outcome you’re hoping for, and would likely create new problems.
- KMag 6y agoYou'd presumably want that limit to also extend to subcontractors and suppliers as well. It would be a wonderful human achievement to substantially raise wages in Bangladesh, for instance. Presumably we'd need garment price assistance for lower-middle class people in Western societies to partially offset the disproportionate impact on their lifestyles. I like the sentiment, and we shouldn't let fear of unintended consequences prevent all human progress, but there are significant risks with regard to unintended consequences and concentrating government powers on wages and social programs beginning to approach failed utopian experiments of the past.
- loloquwowndueo 6y agoSorry, what? No. No politician is doing a good enough job that they deserve a higher salary just because. It’s a job like any other - doesn’t pay enough? Go find something else.
- LanceH 6y agoWe should align their benefits with those they serve. Letting them buy health insurance on the open market would be my move #1.
- maxerickson 6y agoIn the US, they do (with generous employer subsidy): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/members-congress-health-care/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/members-congress-health-ca...
- Ericson2314 6y agoProportional representation can also help, where those on top of the party list can be assured of a job, and those father down can have other careers.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> where those on top of the party list can be assured of a job So how do normal voters remove these individuals if they don’t like them?
- Ericson2314 6y agoThat's a non-problem. Politics is a team sport. If there's someone I don't like, the real question why is does the rest of the party get along with them? That usually indicates a bigger problem than some personal beef. Because of coalitions, there is little penalty to making a smaller party.
- mshaler 6y agoExhibit A pro: Singapore, Inc. Exhibit B contra: everywhere else