8 ms·

Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work. If the US was a company, there'd be no question tha

Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work. If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy. So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a rounding error. Those families then use the power from being in office to enrich their families even more. One solution could be to double or triple pay for US representatives along with banning stock trading and things like "speaking fees."

Sevii 4y ago
Let's do a trade. Congress people get paid 1mil/year adjusted for inflation plus pension, but in return they don't get to own stocks or real estate while they are in office.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
  We should let them own a house in their constituency, at least. I'm open to disallowing real estate speculation.
- mfer 4y ago
  > they don't get to own stocks or real estate So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? I don't see that going over well. Your primary home is real estate. So is that little family cottage. Also, congressional reps need to have a home is Washington. So, they have to rent there?
  - dhritzkiv 4y ago
    Many reps do rent in DC, sometimes in frat-house-like conditions with other reps.[1] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/ind...
    - wyre 4y ago
      Why isn’t this the basis for a tv show?
      - AftHurrahWinch 4y ago
        It was, the cartoonist behind Doonesbury did it for 2 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_House
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Renting may be a new experience for them. And with such a huge bump in salary I think they can take the hit. After all it is positioning real estate as investments that contribute to its unaffordability.
  - rococode 4y ago
    That's pretty trivial to work around... you can own one primary residence, and one additional residence in DC. You can't own 10 buildings. That said, I don't think real estate is as easily abused as stocks. Much harder to influence the value.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? They could always try renting. A lot of people manage to get by doing just that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- _8j50 4y ago
  Better Idea: $300k base and a performance bonus up to 100% more based on sponsored laws and an additional 100% for passed laws with an extra 100k for no votes missed or abstained. So a perfectly performing congressperson gets a mil.
  - zeruch 4y ago
    I'm not sure about the specifics you outlined, but I do think a comp package that incentivizes grown-ass behavior (read: full attendance, voting, actual participation in the legislative process) is a great idea. I don't think rewarding certain behaviors like sponsoring is good, because its too easily abused. When a KPI becomes a target, its no longer a KPI.
    - thebiss 4y ago
      Can you clarify when/how a KPI ever not a target? Bonuses and promotions always go to those who exceed them, and "improvement plans" or "restructuring" is reserved to those who miss.
      - cwkoss 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_original_cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina... Any imperfect measure that becomes a target gets pursued at the expense of the original intent.
        zeruch 4y ago
        You restated what I meant better than I stated it. Thank you.
        _8j50 4y ago
        It's not a perverse incentive, there is a limit to it. And it has a counter balancing incentive in the form of having to run for an election. If you passed bad laws for the sake of metrics you get voted out because there is someone else that wants to do better than you. A perverse incentive is not the same as compensation for doing your job.
- hedora 4y ago
  I'd take it further: $1M/year for life, have to divest all investments they own coming in to office (i.e., turn them to cash). Accepting any third party payment during or after being elected (and during campaigns) is treason. If their kids accept their inheritance, the rules apply to them too. The rules always apply to spouses. Let them invest in whole-market funds / ETFs, but only allow withdrawls 5 years after leaving office.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Nobody sane would take that deal.
    - hedora 4y ago
      Which part? If you get elected to the Senate, you and your kids are set for life. Do you really want people greedier than that running the country?
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      Nobody sane would take $1M USD per year for life? Call me insane I guess.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      A million dollars per year for life? Most people would kill for that deal. Not the HN crowd, but most people without hesitation.
    - wyre 4y ago
      Only on HN is a 1 million dollar salary a bad deal
      - twblalock 4y ago
        It's a bad deal for the kind of people who are capable of succeeding in national politics.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    I agree. Make them wards of the state. Corruption has been far more destructive than incompetence, because corruption filters for and protects incompetence. Let public servants make a sacrifice.
- zeruch 4y ago
  ...or afterwards for 5 years.
oneoff786 4y ago
Stock trading bans are huge detriments to rich people and minor detriments to poor people. 170k is frankly a lot of money. Sure, it could be more. I don’t think it’s all that necessary though. Something that makes it hard for rich people to represent poor people without losing some wealth seems great to me.
devmunchies 4y ago
I could get behind something like this. If you are re-elected, it would raise your salary. At the very least, I don't see a problem with blind trusts or only investing in broad index funds and in a specific trading window. Politicians should be able to invest for retirement like everyone else.
brianwawok 4y ago
Lawmaker pay is a rounding error. Clearly we can't pay lawmakers $0 and expert high effort + no corruption. is there any proof of any way that saying pay from 170k a year to ??? 1 million USD? a year would have any impact on the problems? Do countries with less corrupt lawmakers pay more than the US? I doubt that...
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
- mfer 4y ago
  > Do countries with less corrupt lawmakers pay more than the US? I doubt that... This assumes ones level of corruption has to do with income. Is that true or are there other factors?
- hedora 4y ago
  Manchin has made it clear he will happily (and literally) burn the entire planet down for $5M/year. If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too. I'd chip into the "Pay Manchin a ransom of $50M to not do $50T of damage to the planet" fund.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too. Also selling your vote. Then we can at least choose the pol who sends the biggest check.
  - arebop 4y ago
    Suppose you did pay each legislator $50M to work for the good of the whole country. Do you think this would prevent Manchin from being influenced by a $5M lagniappe? It's an extra 10%! And a certain well-known politician infamously took care to fleece the secret service for overpriced golf cart and hotel room rentals, despite getting hundreds of millions per year in emoluments revenues. Some people are really motivated by every penny despite what economists might tell you about marginal utility.
jc_811 4y ago
I think one issue with this line of thinking is that the USA is completely and fundamentally not a company, and shouldn't be run as such. A company's goal is to maximize profits. A country's goal is to maximize the well-being of their citizens. A company's employees are expendable. A country's citizens need to have their needs looked after 24/7 and are indispensable.
throwaway_4ever 4y ago
How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American? We don't need politicians 15x out of touch with the median American's lifestyle. In NYC governor's last election, there was a question about how much the median house costs in Brooklyn, and two high level candidates gave absolutely bonkers answers like $90k and $120k, when it's actually $900k. You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American? Being dependent on their salary for their lifestyle would make them more in touch than the current "use the power of the office to make money via alternative means" situation.
- twblalock 4y ago
  > You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career. We also want successful, competent people to enter politics and we should not be giving them reasons to avoid it, such as forcing them to sacrifice their financial freedom and success. Also, there is a very clear correlation between low legislator pay and corruption in other countries. Let's not make bribes and kickbacks more attractive by taking away other options politicians have for building wealth.
- vasco 4y ago
  > You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career. Why? I mean you just say that as if it's some universal truth. I don't see how focusing on civic duty is any better as a way to find good candidates than optimizing for high achieving people looking for lucrative fields to work on. I don't know which would yield better results but none is better by default in my view unless you have some romantic view of what politics should be, rather than what it is, a job.
listless 4y ago
"few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work." Is there any data to back that up? Because it seems to me like people are falling all over themselves and saying all kinds of crazy shit just to get into office. It looks to me like we have the opposite problem - certain kinds of people CRAVE this power and attention and will do anything to get it.
- JoblessWonder 4y ago
  I think he is confusing it with "few people can realistically run for federal office already." As you mentioned, people love power. But there is a very, very thin slice of the population that has the ability to run for a federal office.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I agree. Seems like they spend more than one (or two) orders of magnitude more than the salary of the job to get the job.
  - listless 4y ago
    Are we seeing a change to that with folks like AOC, MTG, Boebert, ect? AFAIK, none of them were wealthy by any means.
    - antifa 4y ago
deltarholamda 4y ago
The fix for this was in the founding documents. We just jacked it up over the years. Congress passes laws. They aren't supposed to pass a vague law and then hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. The House is the people's house. Each Representative represents some relatively equal number of constituents. The Senate is the States' house. The state legislatures sends senators. The Senators represent the interests of their State. We jiggered with this, and this is how rich people and corporations can influence so much of what goes on. The original system encourages accountability.
- rgbrgb 4y ago
  Trying to get clarification, as a layman here I think I'm missing your point. My understanding is that laws are by their nature kind of vague because the world is full of edge cases and they always require interpretation as they encounter new cases. > hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs? > We jiggered with this What jiggering are you referring to? Without understanding your point, I'm all for this legislation as we've seen so many recent US officials enrich themselves with the power they wield.
  - Zamiel_Snawley 4y ago
    > hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. I think they mean executive agencies like the FDA, FCC, EPA, etc. These agencies make rules that effectively carry the force of law. For example, the BATFE is (in)famous for arbitrarily changing their rules to criminalize things they don't like, with no new mandate from the legislature. These rules are effectively laws, because if you break them, you can go to jail for many years. > We jiggered with this I think they are referring to the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which made it so Senators are elected by the people instead of selected by state legislatures.
  - pookha 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure he's railing against an EU commission-like government where unelected bureaucrats create legislation. In the US only elected representatives can draft legislation (House or Senate).
runarberg 4y ago
That is the wrong solution. There is no evidence that corrupt behavior decreases when wealth is increased. In fact there is evidence to the contrary. A congressperson that can accept bribes with impunity will continue to do so on top of a larger base salary just like they did on top of a lower one. The real solution is to actually tackle the corruption it self (as proposed by OP).
alexfromapex 4y ago
I hear what you're saying but $170k a year is not small potatoes. Higher wages may be justified to prevent a temptation for accepting bribes though.
nitwit005 4y ago
The length of the campaign season matters more than the pay. People aren't paid while campaigning, and the US campaign "season" has grown to ridiculous length. It's not realistic to work some other job while doing it anymore (unless that job is being a member of congress), so it has become quite expensive.
hazmazlaz 4y ago
I agree with you so much that it's difficult for me to convey. The magnitude of both the upside of good governance as well as the downside of bad governance is so great that it amazes me that we have so few pro-society incentives for competent and well intentioned individuals to serve on the highest governing bodies. If I could wave a magic wand and change things, here's what I would do: 1. Increase pay for senators by 10x, and for congresspeople by 5x. 2. Institute term limits, maximum of 4 consecutive terms. 3. After leaving office, total ban on direct employment of any kind for a period of time equal to the time spent in office. During this 'freeze' period, give them a pension equal to their pay while in office. 4. Strict limits on the nature of employment allowed for spouses/children/close relatives. 5. Strict limits on volunteer/nonprofit work, board positions, and anything else that isn't direct employment. 6. Lifetime ban on political lobbying. 7. Ban on any investing outside of a blind trust for the duration of their time in office plus the duration of the 'freeze'. Overall, my thesis is that we should take away as much as possible of the opportunity and the incentive for corruption for the purpose of financial gain. We do that by paying officials gobs of money and preventing them from participating in the system outside of their defined role as a government official.
- nradov 4y ago
  You can't reasonably impose employment limits on adult relatives of elected politicians. That would legally be considered a punishment without legal due process. If my sister gets elected to Congress, that's not my problem.
  - jdpedrie 4y ago
    You could with a constitutional amendment, which would absolutely be a requirement for much of the GP proposal.
- techdragon 4y ago
  I'd cut those numbers in half, 5x and 2.5x and the pension at half pay... Over a Million a year for a few years is a great way to bank up a "set for life if I'm smart with my money" stockpile (at least it has been until now, and may continue to be for a little while) and so you want it a little lower to avoid a constant churn of people charging at the gates for a shot at that money. Otherwise totally agree. I'd even go so far as to say permanent ban on any employment with a step down salary/pension for life, halving with each multiple of the time in office.
chmod775 4y ago
Why preclude people who may genuinely want to change things for the better? In your opinion there only seem to be power hungry people (wealthy or not) and career politicians.
justnotworthit 4y ago
Official pay was debated by the usa founders. You can imagine a small amount making sense; you can imagine a large amount making sense. You can pretend you're Plato writing The Republic, if you want. The reality is simple: Official pay is irrelevant. It's the system itself that helps or harms, and most countries are plutocracies.
tastyfreeze 4y ago
Paying them more wont change the types of people that are drawn to politics. Power corrupts regardless of the salary. The only way to fix corruption is to make it illegal and prosecute it ruthlessly.
- kelnos 4y ago
  That sounds unrealistic. How do you make corruption illegal when the people who benefit from corruption are the ones who have the power to make it legal? At the very least, they get to decide which cases to pursue.
  - tastyfreeze 4y ago
    The only non-violent way the Constitution affords us. Article V Convention of States. For congress to overturn an amendment requires a 2/3 majority in both houses. That doesn't mean it can't happen. Just much more difficult than passing a bill.
gnopgnip 4y ago
Banning trading individual stocks is not the same thing as banning investing. A blind trust isn't a problem for a huge number of fortune 500 company executives.
alkonaut 4y ago
Why would paying more help? You want representatives that represent the public well. Sure you might not want all of congress to be welders, but I also don’t think parliaments around the world should be filled with people who chose between being high rate lawyers or business leaders and holding public office. The current pay is more than enough. If anything, it could be extended beyond the term to guarantee quarantine periods between office and businesses. Allowing stock trading is insane. Allowing the amount of campaign money currently circulating is also insane. Provide candidates with campaign funds and limit spending, so they can’t be indebted to corporations once in office. Basically: just look at some country where politicians aren’t just racing around raising money, and ask “what’s done there and can the same be done in the US?”. This is the that-would-never-work-here thing again.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I also don’t think parliaments around the world should be filled with people who chose between being high rate lawyers or business leaders and holding public office. I think that the people I pay to write laws and run a large organization should have...substantial understanding and skill concerning the relation of the structure and content of law to it's pragmatic effects and the practicalities of running large organizations. Why would I want anything else? Do I want more diversity of choices? Sure, I want diversity of meaningful policy preference options that would result from having an electoral system that favored proportionality (which is pretty much the best pragmatic definition of representative democracy) rather than duopoly.
sakopov 4y ago
This seems logical, but you're being naïve if you think politicians aren't going to skirt these regulations. I mean, shit, they're already insider-trading out in the open and nobody events wants to spend 3 seconds looking into it. Keep in mind, that's a swift prison sentence for a mere mortal. We need people who truly want to make a difference and take pride in the outcomes of their work. I'm thinking of the likes of "founding fathers" who came out of turmoil and persecutions to build something better. They knew they ain't going back to the shit they came from and they carried that forward for several generations. We no longer have that craving to do better. It's been long-lost during decades of enormous prosperity and chill lives. Our problems are miniscule in comparison to what they once were. So now, we have people who don't give a shit about anything except for their iPhones and daily celeb videos on TikTok. It's this lack of curiosity and any kind of knowledge about the state of things from general population is how you end up with greedy sociopaths running everything in politics. This country needs a decade of actual turmoil to wake everyone up out of their idle stupor. Nothing will change until everyone is fed up and craving for normalcy. In other words - we're kind of doomed.
Tiktaalik 4y ago
The thing is though is that the Senators aren't the people that really need to be top talent, it's the bureaucrats that actually implement the legislation and policies that needs to be top talent. Those are the people that should be being paid CEO level salaries because they're the ones that are genuinely running the massive organizations.

Sevii 4y ago

Let's do a trade. Congress people get paid 1mil/year adjusted for inflation plus pension, but in return they don't get to own stocks or real estate while they are in office.

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
We should let them own a house in their constituency, at least. I'm open to disallowing real estate speculation.
mfer 4y ago
> they don't get to own stocks or real estate So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? I don't see that going over well. Your primary home is real estate. So is that little family cottage. Also, congressional reps need to have a home is Washington. So, they have to rent there?
- dhritzkiv 4y ago
  Many reps do rent in DC, sometimes in frat-house-like conditions with other reps.[1] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/ind...
  - wyre 4y ago
    Why isn’t this the basis for a tv show?
    - AftHurrahWinch 4y ago
      It was, the cartoonist behind Doonesbury did it for 2 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_House
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Renting may be a new experience for them. And with such a huge bump in salary I think they can take the hit. After all it is positioning real estate as investments that contribute to its unaffordability.
- rococode 4y ago
  That's pretty trivial to work around... you can own one primary residence, and one additional residence in DC. You can't own 10 buildings. That said, I don't think real estate is as easily abused as stocks. Much harder to influence the value.
- vkou 4y ago
  > So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? They could always try renting. A lot of people manage to get by doing just that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
_8j50 4y ago
Better Idea: $300k base and a performance bonus up to 100% more based on sponsored laws and an additional 100% for passed laws with an extra 100k for no votes missed or abstained. So a perfectly performing congressperson gets a mil.
- zeruch 4y ago
  I'm not sure about the specifics you outlined, but I do think a comp package that incentivizes grown-ass behavior (read: full attendance, voting, actual participation in the legislative process) is a great idea. I don't think rewarding certain behaviors like sponsoring is good, because its too easily abused. When a KPI becomes a target, its no longer a KPI.
  - thebiss 4y ago
    Can you clarify when/how a KPI ever not a target? Bonuses and promotions always go to those who exceed them, and "improvement plans" or "restructuring" is reserved to those who miss.
    - cwkoss 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_original_cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina... Any imperfect measure that becomes a target gets pursued at the expense of the original intent.
      - zeruch 4y ago
        You restated what I meant better than I stated it. Thank you.
      - _8j50 4y ago
        It's not a perverse incentive, there is a limit to it. And it has a counter balancing incentive in the form of having to run for an election. If you passed bad laws for the sake of metrics you get voted out because there is someone else that wants to do better than you. A perverse incentive is not the same as compensation for doing your job.
hedora 4y ago
I'd take it further: $1M/year for life, have to divest all investments they own coming in to office (i.e., turn them to cash). Accepting any third party payment during or after being elected (and during campaigns) is treason. If their kids accept their inheritance, the rules apply to them too. The rules always apply to spouses. Let them invest in whole-market funds / ETFs, but only allow withdrawls 5 years after leaving office.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Nobody sane would take that deal.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Which part? If you get elected to the Senate, you and your kids are set for life. Do you really want people greedier than that running the country?
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    Nobody sane would take $1M USD per year for life? Call me insane I guess.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    A million dollars per year for life? Most people would kill for that deal. Not the HN crowd, but most people without hesitation.
  - wyre 4y ago
    Only on HN is a 1 million dollar salary a bad deal
    - twblalock 4y ago
      It's a bad deal for the kind of people who are capable of succeeding in national politics.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I agree. Make them wards of the state. Corruption has been far more destructive than incompetence, because corruption filters for and protects incompetence. Let public servants make a sacrifice.
zeruch 4y ago
...or afterwards for 5 years.

oneoff786 4y ago

Stock trading bans are huge detriments to rich people and minor detriments to poor people. 170k is frankly a lot of money. Sure, it could be more. I don’t think it’s all that necessary though. Something that makes it hard for rich people to represent poor people without losing some wealth seems great to me.

devmunchies 4y ago

I could get behind something like this. If you are re-elected, it would raise your salary. At the very least, I don't see a problem with blind trusts or only investing in broad index funds and in a specific trading window. Politicians should be able to invest for retirement like everyone else.

brianwawok 4y ago

Lawmaker pay is a rounding error. Clearly we can't pay lawmakers $0 and expert high effort + no corruption. is there any proof of any way that saying pay from 170k a year to ??? 1 million USD? a year would have any impact on the problems? Do countries with less corrupt lawmakers pay more than the US? I doubt that...

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
mfer 4y ago
> Do countries with less corrupt lawmakers pay more than the US? I doubt that... This assumes ones level of corruption has to do with income. Is that true or are there other factors?
hedora 4y ago
Manchin has made it clear he will happily (and literally) burn the entire planet down for $5M/year. If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too. I'd chip into the "Pay Manchin a ransom of $50M to not do $50T of damage to the planet" fund.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too. Also selling your vote. Then we can at least choose the pol who sends the biggest check.
- arebop 4y ago
  Suppose you did pay each legislator $50M to work for the good of the whole country. Do you think this would prevent Manchin from being influenced by a $5M lagniappe? It's an extra 10%! And a certain well-known politician infamously took care to fleece the secret service for overpriced golf cart and hotel room rentals, despite getting hundreds of millions per year in emoluments revenues. Some people are really motivated by every penny despite what economists might tell you about marginal utility.

jc_811 4y ago

I think one issue with this line of thinking is that the USA is completely and fundamentally not a company, and shouldn't be run as such. A company's goal is to maximize profits. A country's goal is to maximize the well-being of their citizens. A company's employees are expendable. A country's citizens need to have their needs looked after 24/7 and are indispensable.

throwaway_4ever 4y ago

How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American? We don't need politicians 15x out of touch with the median American's lifestyle. In NYC governor's last election, there was a question about how much the median house costs in Brooklyn, and two high level candidates gave absolutely bonkers answers like $90k and $120k, when it's actually $900k. You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American? Being dependent on their salary for their lifestyle would make them more in touch than the current "use the power of the office to make money via alternative means" situation.
twblalock 4y ago
> You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career. We also want successful, competent people to enter politics and we should not be giving them reasons to avoid it, such as forcing them to sacrifice their financial freedom and success. Also, there is a very clear correlation between low legislator pay and corruption in other countries. Let's not make bribes and kickbacks more attractive by taking away other options politicians have for building wealth.
vasco 4y ago
> You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career. Why? I mean you just say that as if it's some universal truth. I don't see how focusing on civic duty is any better as a way to find good candidates than optimizing for high achieving people looking for lucrative fields to work on. I don't know which would yield better results but none is better by default in my view unless you have some romantic view of what politics should be, rather than what it is, a job.

listless 4y ago

"few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work." Is there any data to back that up? Because it seems to me like people are falling all over themselves and saying all kinds of crazy shit just to get into office. It looks to me like we have the opposite problem - certain kinds of people CRAVE this power and attention and will do anything to get it.

JoblessWonder 4y ago
I think he is confusing it with "few people can realistically run for federal office already." As you mentioned, people love power. But there is a very, very thin slice of the population that has the ability to run for a federal office.
pessimizer 4y ago
I agree. Seems like they spend more than one (or two) orders of magnitude more than the salary of the job to get the job.
- listless 4y ago
  Are we seeing a change to that with folks like AOC, MTG, Boebert, ect? AFAIK, none of them were wealthy by any means.
  - antifa 4y ago

deltarholamda 4y ago

The fix for this was in the founding documents. We just jacked it up over the years. Congress passes laws. They aren't supposed to pass a vague law and then hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. The House is the people's house. Each Representative represents some relatively equal number of constituents. The Senate is the States' house. The state legislatures sends senators. The Senators represent the interests of their State. We jiggered with this, and this is how rich people and corporations can influence so much of what goes on. The original system encourages accountability.

rgbrgb 4y ago
Trying to get clarification, as a layman here I think I'm missing your point. My understanding is that laws are by their nature kind of vague because the world is full of edge cases and they always require interpretation as they encounter new cases. > hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs? > We jiggered with this What jiggering are you referring to? Without understanding your point, I'm all for this legislation as we've seen so many recent US officials enrich themselves with the power they wield.
- Zamiel_Snawley 4y ago
  > hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. I think they mean executive agencies like the FDA, FCC, EPA, etc. These agencies make rules that effectively carry the force of law. For example, the BATFE is (in)famous for arbitrarily changing their rules to criminalize things they don't like, with no new mandate from the legislature. These rules are effectively laws, because if you break them, you can go to jail for many years. > We jiggered with this I think they are referring to the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which made it so Senators are elected by the people instead of selected by state legislatures.
- pookha 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure he's railing against an EU commission-like government where unelected bureaucrats create legislation. In the US only elected representatives can draft legislation (House or Senate).

runarberg 4y ago

That is the wrong solution. There is no evidence that corrupt behavior decreases when wealth is increased. In fact there is evidence to the contrary. A congressperson that can accept bribes with impunity will continue to do so on top of a larger base salary just like they did on top of a lower one. The real solution is to actually tackle the corruption it self (as proposed by OP).

alexfromapex 4y ago

I hear what you're saying but $170k a year is not small potatoes. Higher wages may be justified to prevent a temptation for accepting bribes though.

nitwit005 4y ago

The length of the campaign season matters more than the pay. People aren't paid while campaigning, and the US campaign "season" has grown to ridiculous length. It's not realistic to work some other job while doing it anymore (unless that job is being a member of congress), so it has become quite expensive.

hazmazlaz 4y ago

I agree with you so much that it's difficult for me to convey. The magnitude of both the upside of good governance as well as the downside of bad governance is so great that it amazes me that we have so few pro-society incentives for competent and well intentioned individuals to serve on the highest governing bodies. If I could wave a magic wand and change things, here's what I would do: 1. Increase pay for senators by 10x, and for congresspeople by 5x. 2. Institute term limits, maximum of 4 consecutive terms. 3. After leaving office, total ban on direct employment of any kind for a period of time equal to the time spent in office. During this 'freeze' period, give them a pension equal to their pay while in office. 4. Strict limits on the nature of employment allowed for spouses/children/close relatives. 5. Strict limits on volunteer/nonprofit work, board positions, and anything else that isn't direct employment. 6. Lifetime ban on political lobbying. 7. Ban on any investing outside of a blind trust for the duration of their time in office plus the duration of the 'freeze'. Overall, my thesis is that we should take away as much as possible of the opportunity and the incentive for corruption for the purpose of financial gain. We do that by paying officials gobs of money and preventing them from participating in the system outside of their defined role as a government official.

nradov 4y ago
You can't reasonably impose employment limits on adult relatives of elected politicians. That would legally be considered a punishment without legal due process. If my sister gets elected to Congress, that's not my problem.
- jdpedrie 4y ago
  You could with a constitutional amendment, which would absolutely be a requirement for much of the GP proposal.
techdragon 4y ago
I'd cut those numbers in half, 5x and 2.5x and the pension at half pay... Over a Million a year for a few years is a great way to bank up a "set for life if I'm smart with my money" stockpile (at least it has been until now, and may continue to be for a little while) and so you want it a little lower to avoid a constant churn of people charging at the gates for a shot at that money. Otherwise totally agree. I'd even go so far as to say permanent ban on any employment with a step down salary/pension for life, halving with each multiple of the time in office.

chmod775 4y ago

Why preclude people who may genuinely want to change things for the better? In your opinion there only seem to be power hungry people (wealthy or not) and career politicians.

justnotworthit 4y ago

Official pay was debated by the usa founders. You can imagine a small amount making sense; you can imagine a large amount making sense. You can pretend you're Plato writing The Republic, if you want. The reality is simple: Official pay is irrelevant. It's the system itself that helps or harms, and most countries are plutocracies.

tastyfreeze 4y ago

Paying them more wont change the types of people that are drawn to politics. Power corrupts regardless of the salary. The only way to fix corruption is to make it illegal and prosecute it ruthlessly.

kelnos 4y ago
That sounds unrealistic. How do you make corruption illegal when the people who benefit from corruption are the ones who have the power to make it legal? At the very least, they get to decide which cases to pursue.
- tastyfreeze 4y ago
  The only non-violent way the Constitution affords us. Article V Convention of States. For congress to overturn an amendment requires a 2/3 majority in both houses. That doesn't mean it can't happen. Just much more difficult than passing a bill.

gnopgnip 4y ago

Banning trading individual stocks is not the same thing as banning investing. A blind trust isn't a problem for a huge number of fortune 500 company executives.

alkonaut 4y ago

Why would paying more help? You want representatives that represent the public well. Sure you might not want all of congress to be welders, but I also don’t think parliaments around the world should be filled with people who chose between being high rate lawyers or business leaders and holding public office. The current pay is more than enough. If anything, it could be extended beyond the term to guarantee quarantine periods between office and businesses. Allowing stock trading is insane. Allowing the amount of campaign money currently circulating is also insane. Provide candidates with campaign funds and limit spending, so they can’t be indebted to corporations once in office. Basically: just look at some country where politicians aren’t just racing around raising money, and ask “what’s done there and can the same be done in the US?”. This is the that-would-never-work-here thing again.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> I also don’t think parliaments around the world should be filled with people who chose between being high rate lawyers or business leaders and holding public office. I think that the people I pay to write laws and run a large organization should have...substantial understanding and skill concerning the relation of the structure and content of law to it's pragmatic effects and the practicalities of running large organizations. Why would I want anything else? Do I want more diversity of choices? Sure, I want diversity of meaningful policy preference options that would result from having an electoral system that favored proportionality (which is pretty much the best pragmatic definition of representative democracy) rather than duopoly.

sakopov 4y ago

This seems logical, but you're being naïve if you think politicians aren't going to skirt these regulations. I mean, shit, they're already insider-trading out in the open and nobody events wants to spend 3 seconds looking into it. Keep in mind, that's a swift prison sentence for a mere mortal. We need people who truly want to make a difference and take pride in the outcomes of their work. I'm thinking of the likes of "founding fathers" who came out of turmoil and persecutions to build something better. They knew they ain't going back to the shit they came from and they carried that forward for several generations. We no longer have that craving to do better. It's been long-lost during decades of enormous prosperity and chill lives. Our problems are miniscule in comparison to what they once were. So now, we have people who don't give a shit about anything except for their iPhones and daily celeb videos on TikTok. It's this lack of curiosity and any kind of knowledge about the state of things from general population is how you end up with greedy sociopaths running everything in politics. This country needs a decade of actual turmoil to wake everyone up out of their idle stupor. Nothing will change until everyone is fed up and craving for normalcy. In other words - we're kind of doomed.

Tiktaalik 4y ago

The thing is though is that the Senators aren't the people that really need to be top talent, it's the bureaucrats that actually implement the legislation and policies that needs to be top talent. Those are the people that should be being paid CEO level salaries because they're the ones that are genuinely running the massive organizations.