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How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges. If you want the

by retrac 3y ago

How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges. If you want the best you have to at least be moderately competitive with what's on offer. I have a similar opinion about legislators -- we probably want top tier doctors and executives and lawyers as our legislators. Being elected to office should not be a step down in their lifestyle. I see private compensation for elite talent being completely out of whack -- the prices the public service must compete with -- as basically a separate issue. Historically, a generous salary for legislators and various other high offices was part of the progressive/left platform in both the UK and France. They weren't paid before the 19th century, ensuring only the independently wealthy could hold those offices.

ilovetux 3y ago
> How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges. That would maybe make sense if we were able to reign in their conflicts of interest. The private market would set a fiduciary duty on many lawyers in a number of capacities, but nothing like that exists for the SCOTUS. As it stands now, there is no way to hold the justices (or really any elected or appointed official) accountable.
scrubs 3y ago
I'd support this (higher pay mabe 5x to 10x) provided: - no security trading - recuse if conflicted - cleanup of political fund raising - criminal penalties on violation You want control and just compensation? Can do. But not without commensurate accountability.
johndhi 3y ago
To answer your question, lawyers of the capacity of the SCOTUS justices could expect to make about 4 million a year.
- Kye 3y ago
  What's the value of a lifetime appointment?
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Depends a lot on whether they can take bribes, accept gifts, etc. during that appointment.
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    AS the final arbiter of the legal system…
amrocha 3y ago
I don't disagree with you, but at some point the number stops mattering. What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? And even if there is a difference, is that worth the opportunity cost of paying everyone else a little bit better? It's not a very popular opinion, but there should be a maximum salary imo. Beyond a certain number money is a means of acquiring power and influence, and it feels wrong to reward people with that. Set a maximum to give people something to work harder for, but without inadvertently giving individuals the power to subvert democracy through money.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? Pretty massive, particularly when it comes to taking vacations and bringing friends who can’t afford them with you. $300k barely permits that domestically. $1 or 2mm lets you do that comfortably all over the world. Or, alternatively, single handedly saving restaurants you love or a buddy’s small business.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    "Saving" a business isn't really a lifestyle thing, that's more of an investment really. Realistically, your life isn't meaningfully worse if you find a new restaurant to go to. Paying for friends to vacation with you is a very good one though. But idk, I feel like you can extend that so far that it feels like a copout. For example, maybe you can afford a nice home on 300K, but you can't buy your mom a nice home as well. And you can't pay your brothers student loans. And you can't gift them a car every couple years. That's not your quality of life, that's paying for someone else to live the same lifestyle as you. At that point I'd just argue for raising wages across the board so that you don't feel the need to pay your friends, they just want to go on vacation with you.
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    Why do you have to have ultimate power and oversight of an entire branch of government AND flit comfortably all over the world? Shouldn't ultimate power be its own reward? That and ten times the salary of most people…
SoftTalker 3y ago
It may be idealistic, but I think that those elected to office or appointed to influential positions such as judges should do so largely out of a sense of public service instead of personal enrichment. For people who are motivated by greed or power, no amount of compensation will be enough, they will always be tempted to to increase their power and wealth by taking bribes or political favors. Pay them a respectable salary but you do not and should not try to match what the private sector pays. It not the same playing field and should not attempt to be.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  This. You cannot simply normalize graft on the grounds that somebody might exist who can out-bribe a government. Any more than you normalize murder because everybody eventually dies some way or other. Having it act like the same playing field got us in this mess. I'll note there are some supreme court justices who apparently don't take bribes or suggest their power should be supplemented by enough bribery to equal that of the best private sector lawyers and/or the best mob bosses…
- lumb63 3y ago
  I don’t understand this position. It feels to me like you’re proposing we financially exploit those who are magnanimous and duty-driven enough to tolerate public service. Do you have the same opinion regarding other organizations operating for public good, rather than financial self interest? For instance, what you’re saying feels logically equivalent to me to saying we should tax charities more heavily since they aren’t driven by greed, or that we should underpay active duty military personnel since they’re driven more by love for their country than by self interest. It seems to me that it should be the exact opposite, and we should incentivize people to make sacrifices for the greater good. Underpaying people who choose to enter a certain sector because of a personally held belief that they ought to be financially unmotivated, then ceding massive power to those people and allowing them to take bribes, seems to miss the forest for the trees. EDIT: I’m also curious how you rectify your position with the empirical evidence that our current system, wherein public service is financially discouraged, has led to direct and indirect bribery and corruption in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It seems to me that the current system isn’t working, and leaning further into the aspect that makes it not work is not a good idea. Maybe a more fruitful route would be reducing the power of individual representatives so that there is less incentive to bribe them, or outright banning the quid-pro-quo agreements that run rampant in our country currently, like prohibiting regulators from working for companies in the industry they regulated after their time in office.
darth_avocado 3y ago
1. Supreme Court justices historically haven’t been the best, just the most cozy with politicians 2. Even if Justices were paid $10M, the corruption wouldn’t go away, because greed never goes away Instead of focusing on the fact that justices are taking bribes because their salary is modest, therefore we need to pay them more, we should focus on nominating justices who don’t have such weak morals and ethics.
mistrial9 3y ago
" good lawyer " ??

by retrac 3y ago

ilovetux 3y ago

> How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges. That would maybe make sense if we were able to reign in their conflicts of interest. The private market would set a fiduciary duty on many lawyers in a number of capacities, but nothing like that exists for the SCOTUS. As it stands now, there is no way to hold the justices (or really any elected or appointed official) accountable.

scrubs 3y ago

I'd support this (higher pay mabe 5x to 10x) provided: - no security trading - recuse if conflicted - cleanup of political fund raising - criminal penalties on violation You want control and just compensation? Can do. But not without commensurate accountability.

johndhi 3y ago

To answer your question, lawyers of the capacity of the SCOTUS justices could expect to make about 4 million a year.

Kye 3y ago
What's the value of a lifetime appointment?
- epistasis 3y ago
  Depends a lot on whether they can take bribes, accept gifts, etc. during that appointment.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  AS the final arbiter of the legal system…

amrocha 3y ago

I don't disagree with you, but at some point the number stops mattering. What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? And even if there is a difference, is that worth the opportunity cost of paying everyone else a little bit better? It's not a very popular opinion, but there should be a maximum salary imo. Beyond a certain number money is a means of acquiring power and influence, and it feels wrong to reward people with that. Set a maximum to give people something to work harder for, but without inadvertently giving individuals the power to subvert democracy through money.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? Pretty massive, particularly when it comes to taking vacations and bringing friends who can’t afford them with you. $300k barely permits that domestically. $1 or 2mm lets you do that comfortably all over the world. Or, alternatively, single handedly saving restaurants you love or a buddy’s small business.
- amrocha 3y ago
  "Saving" a business isn't really a lifestyle thing, that's more of an investment really. Realistically, your life isn't meaningfully worse if you find a new restaurant to go to. Paying for friends to vacation with you is a very good one though. But idk, I feel like you can extend that so far that it feels like a copout. For example, maybe you can afford a nice home on 300K, but you can't buy your mom a nice home as well. And you can't pay your brothers student loans. And you can't gift them a car every couple years. That's not your quality of life, that's paying for someone else to live the same lifestyle as you. At that point I'd just argue for raising wages across the board so that you don't feel the need to pay your friends, they just want to go on vacation with you.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  Why do you have to have ultimate power and oversight of an entire branch of government AND flit comfortably all over the world? Shouldn't ultimate power be its own reward? That and ten times the salary of most people…

SoftTalker 3y ago

It may be idealistic, but I think that those elected to office or appointed to influential positions such as judges should do so largely out of a sense of public service instead of personal enrichment. For people who are motivated by greed or power, no amount of compensation will be enough, they will always be tempted to to increase their power and wealth by taking bribes or political favors. Pay them a respectable salary but you do not and should not try to match what the private sector pays. It not the same playing field and should not attempt to be.

Applejinx 3y ago
This. You cannot simply normalize graft on the grounds that somebody might exist who can out-bribe a government. Any more than you normalize murder because everybody eventually dies some way or other. Having it act like the same playing field got us in this mess. I'll note there are some supreme court justices who apparently don't take bribes or suggest their power should be supplemented by enough bribery to equal that of the best private sector lawyers and/or the best mob bosses…
lumb63 3y ago
I don’t understand this position. It feels to me like you’re proposing we financially exploit those who are magnanimous and duty-driven enough to tolerate public service. Do you have the same opinion regarding other organizations operating for public good, rather than financial self interest? For instance, what you’re saying feels logically equivalent to me to saying we should tax charities more heavily since they aren’t driven by greed, or that we should underpay active duty military personnel since they’re driven more by love for their country than by self interest. It seems to me that it should be the exact opposite, and we should incentivize people to make sacrifices for the greater good. Underpaying people who choose to enter a certain sector because of a personally held belief that they ought to be financially unmotivated, then ceding massive power to those people and allowing them to take bribes, seems to miss the forest for the trees. EDIT: I’m also curious how you rectify your position with the empirical evidence that our current system, wherein public service is financially discouraged, has led to direct and indirect bribery and corruption in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It seems to me that the current system isn’t working, and leaning further into the aspect that makes it not work is not a good idea. Maybe a more fruitful route would be reducing the power of individual representatives so that there is less incentive to bribe them, or outright banning the quid-pro-quo agreements that run rampant in our country currently, like prohibiting regulators from working for companies in the industry they regulated after their time in office.

darth_avocado 3y ago

1. Supreme Court justices historically haven’t been the best, just the most cozy with politicians 2. Even if Justices were paid $10M, the corruption wouldn’t go away, because greed never goes away Instead of focusing on the fact that justices are taking bribes because their salary is modest, therefore we need to pay them more, we should focus on nominating justices who don’t have such weak morals and ethics.

mistrial9 3y ago

" good lawyer " ??