8 ms·
Congressional salaries should be exactly the median US salary. That way their incentives are aligned with the median citizen and not just the 1%.
by weberer 1y ago
Congressional salaries should be exactly the median US salary. That way their incentives are aligned with the median citizen and not just the 1%.
- plantain 1y agoThey do not have the same employment security as the median citizen.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoThat's a good way to ensure that only the very wealthy run for office. A professional might make $200k/yr, which is a nice household income - but "only" 85th percentile - and their family probably can't afford(with their lifestyle) to make only $50k/yr.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoOr the very dedicated.
- tjwebbnorfolk 1y agoDedicated to obtaining power? I'd much rather have a person there who doesn't need the money vs. one who does.
- runako 1y agoEven the very dedicated would have trouble maintaining two residences (DC & home district) on the median income.
- notahacker 1y agoYep. Perversely it probably increases the chance of them being out of touch with the average citizen, because the average person doesn't have the connections or drive or paper credentials to run for Congress anyway, and if the people that do are sacrificing the chance to earn much higher salaries it's probably because they're rich enough to be completely indifferent to their paycheck.
- t-3 1y agoThe way election campaigning works already ensures that only the very wealthy or incredibly dedicated can run for office. Who else can afford to take time out of their schedule to travel, give speeches and attend campaign events and fundraisers, do interviews, schmooze donors, etc? A representative democracy already selects for the wealthy from the get-go, so the $174k current Congressional salary is more or less inconsequential to those folks that do run.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoModulo benefits like health care, pension, etc.
- roenxi 1y agoPay peanuts, get monkeys. And if US politicians are expected to be free of corruption and draw an average salary nobody would even be willing to do it. Statistically the US president is one of the most dangerous jobs around [0] and all the politicians are subject to tides of abuse whether they seem to be doing a principled job or not. The US would be far better off figuring out how to make its politicians do a good job before worrying about how outrageously they are compensated. Even the current fog of corruption they manage isn't as big a deal as the policies they push through as part of their routine above-the-counter activities. It's a sausage factory, the process of making the sausage isn't going to be pretty. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden... alone and you just need to look at Obama before and after to see what the stress does.
- sumeno 1y ago> Pay peanuts, get monkeys As opposed to now with all the highly qualified congresspersons.
- lesuorac 1y agoName 1 company that makes over $1 Billion in annual revenue where somebody 2 links below the top makes less than a congressional salary. Congress critters are paid peanuts and also rent in an above-median cost of living area as well as their own district. ~150k sounds like a big salary but when you're very much in charge of trillions of annual revenue it's not.
- potato3732842 1y agoEverything you do to make them poorer will just make it cheaper for moneyed interests to buy them. The root problem is abusing their office for financial gain. Reducing their above the table pay doesn't actually change the abuse aspect much and the degree to which it does change things is not in a good direction.
- Supermancho 1y agoLike most things in DC, a pegged salary would be about optics. Maybe, just maybe it would allow for self reflection.
- rayiner 1y agoBut then you’ll just get median americans for the job. And even median americans don’t want to be governed by other median americans. They want to be governed by exceptional people who share their values and whose judgment they trust. That’s what makes representative government difficult. (You see this in juries for example. They select the smart or authoritative person among them to be the foreperson and look to that person for direction. This is how humans naturally form hierarchies.)
- lapcat 1y ago> You see this in juries for example. They select the smart or authoritative person among them to be the foreperson and look to that person for direction. This is how humans naturally form hierarchies. This is a mischaracterization of juries. It's not a hierarchy. Every juror has an equal vote. And each juror gets paid the same, including the foreperson (not much, but they usually get paid something for their service). The foreperson has two special roles: (1) to announce the verdict in court and (2) to guide the deliberations. Neither of those roles has any personal benefit to the foreperson. The second role exists merely to keep deliberations orderly, prevent them from devolving into cacophony and chaos. And in fact the foreperson is charged with making sure that every juror is allowed their input, otherwise one or a small number of jurors might dominate the discussion. Some kind of order is needed in group discussions. This is why Robert's Rules of Order exists, for example. Democracy itself always requires some form of order: people entrusted with scheduling, administering, and counting the votes. But that doesn't make these people our leaders.
- tjwebbnorfolk 1y agoThis comment represents a lack of understanding of human nature. You can't effectively represent the interests of others when your own needs are barely covered. I want my elected representatives paid quite well so that they have fewer excuses to succumb to the various temptations of holding such a position. You can wish all you want that people with incredible power and responsibility should live like spiritual monks and possess only the purest and noblest of intentions, but that's not how people work, and it sure as hell isn't how politics works.
- beepbooptheory 1y agoIf a median salary barely covers your needs, then that's a problem with what the median salary is, not that you've set it to that.
- ch4s3 1y agoThe median US pay is a good bit below median pay in DC.
- card_zero 1y agoPay peas, get monks? Anyway the idea of preventing corruption by bribing them officially is weird. It means they aren't any more morally upstanding, and would still do corrupt activities in their minds, we just hope that when they're well paid they won't make the effort. On the basis that they're immoral and lazy, so it balances out.
- Goronmon 1y agoAnyway the idea of preventing corruption by bribing them officially is weird. Labeling the act of someone getting paid to do a job as "bribery" is even more weird. While I certainly wouldn't do by current job if I was paid minimum wage, I don't know if I would say I'm being "bribed" by my employer to stick around. Even if it does appear to align with your new definition.
- 1y ago
- koolba 1y ago> Congressional salaries should be exactly the median US salary. Congressional salaries should be $1m+. It would only half a billion dollars a year. A pittance of the $6.75 trillion federal budget. Combine that high salary with mandatory life sentences for accepting any form of graft and you have a recipe for honest people to enter government. Pretty much the Singapore model for compensation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Singapore The problem with low or median salaries for politicians is the ratio of power to compensation. It directly encourages the griftiest of grifters to accept the low salary and abuse their positions of power. With a high enough salary, you will attract honest people who will do the job functions knowing that any deviation from working on behalf of the people will not only make you broke, it will land you in prison for life.
- t-3 1y agoHow do you convince Congress to pass a law subjecting themselves to the death penalty? What do you do about the legal bribery? Do you really think that you can raise congressional salaries high enough that "speaking fees" or "campaign contributions" won't make them a drop in the bucket? Why is salary imagined to be an important factor when the majority of elected officials are not in any way wanting for money? The basic structure of representative democracies ensure that representatives are largely drawn from the class of the idle rich and upper-class who can afford to stop working at a relatively young age.
- Mountain_Skies 1y agoA constitutional amendment, brought about through a constitutional convention of the states, is probably the only way. Even then, the state legislators might be concerned that they too will be held to similar standards.
- koolba 1y ago> The basic structure of representative democracies ensure that representatives are largely drawn from the class of the idle rich and upper-class who can afford to stop working at a relatively young age. That's what this purports to solve. By having the direct compensation for being an elected member of Congress be high enough that it would provide a well compensated life for someone who is not rich before becoming a politician.
- exasperaited 1y agoIf you pushed through that legislation there would be an armed uprising led by DC landlords.
- bentt 1y agoStates should pay their reps.
- IX-103 1y agoThat seems like a recipe for corruption. Representatives would need to supplement their salary somehow just to afford housing. The easiest means would be to leverage their position. Even if you make it illegal, the demand will make it happen anyway. We could make it something like 10x the median salary and still have the alignment you want, but would be more resistant to that effect.
- mritterhoff 1y agoHow about p75 or higher instead? Nothing special about the median, and as others have pointed out, it's probably not enough to live in on given DC prices.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoOr this incentivizes either corruption to make up for the low salary, or else attract those of means as they don't need the money.
- Spartan-S63 1y agoIf you pay the median salary, you’ll end up with Congress consisting of only independently wealthy people whose priorities don’t align with the median citizen.
- Supermancho 1y agoUnsubstantiated
- chrisg23 1y agoSingapore has high politicians salaries and low corruption as measured by international standards. They also have extremely strict anti-lobbying or to use the sane word anti-corruption laws. Their reasoning as I understand it is to attract and keep good people in government, competing with the public sector, instead of attracting what amounts to an endless stream of grifters that work for lobbyists and not the government. https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024 Singapore is number 3 for the most recent report. USA by comparison is number 28. It’s an apples and oranges comparison given the vast differences in the two countries of course, and raising politician’s salaries isn’t a black and white fix for the problems in the USA.
- shaftway 1y agoIt should be some multiplier of the mean salary of the population you represent. In California this would be about $96,000. In Mississippi it would be about $54,000. There's a congressional district in New York where it's $31,000. You want your pay to be higher? Work to raise the median salary in your state.
- elevation 1y agoSalary caps do nothing to prevent an elected official from accepting deals on the side, and it can be impossible to incriminate the bad actors. Will the salary cap prevent a congressman’s daughter from accepting a lucrative job offer? Will his wife’s law firm have to turn away new clients? Will his non-profit have to turn away donations? Any system that could prevent personal enrichment of elected officials would require every freedom be taken away from them. You’d have to imprison them (and anyone who could proxy wealth for them) as soon as they take office and for decades after if you want to be sure that they were not motivated by self interest.