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I'm curious why a million dollars a year? Wouldn't that create its own problems? We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right? Enough to liv

I'm curious why a million dollars a year? Wouldn't that create its own problems? We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right? Enough to live on while still driving your own car and buying your own groceries is, i feel, the right pay balance for congress, lest they detach even further from the lived experience of civilians. Their finances should be monitored and heavily restricted. No one should think of money as a benefit of civil service

lumost 10mo ago
There are 100 senators controlling a budget over 4 trillion effecting more than 300 million per year. To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state. Anyone capable of doing the above competently can make 10+ million per year in the private sector. Underpaying for these positions simply invites corruption or plutocracy.
- BLKNSLVR 10mo ago
  > To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state. Only because that's become the normalised way of 'winning', ironically where society generally loses because being 'friends with every important person in your state' generally means you pander to them in a way that costs everyone else. Having had that rant, I don't know a better way, and your description is what US politics has (d)evolved to over time; water finding its own level.
- zbentley 10mo ago
  Sounds like we should federally fund campaigns and place strict limits on non-federal campaign funding/PACs/etc. There's a very thorny line we'd have to draw there re: speech and protection--what's a forbidden PAC and what's a citizen who chooses to use their time and resources to support a candidate they like? I happen to believe that we as a country should trace that line rather than falling back on constitutionally-protected-speech absolutism, but I'm aware that's a minority opinion and unlikely to ever bear fruit.
cogman10 10mo ago
> We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right? That's actually probably the best reason for someone to get involved in civil service. If the salary is lucrative enough, the incentive to stay in office will be high and, importantly, money won't be a factor keeping people from getting into office. The problems we currently have is: - Money is an incentive to get into office, but that money comes from interaction with wealthy individuals. - Nothing stops congress people from leveraging their public actions into lucrative private industry. - Independently wealthy individuals have a much easier time getting elected than an average citizen. Think of it this way, if the salary is 0, then you effectively lock out all but the wealthy from office. If the salary is just enough to get by, that still locks out potentially qualified people simply because they can get better jobs out of congress. But if it's a lucrative salary, then you not only make it so people can make it in congress, they can be more competitive against a wealthy competition. They also don't need things like "contributions" to stay afloat. You'd simply be less tempted to take a $10k bribe if it jeopardizes your $1m salary. That alone significantly raises the barrier for bribery. But we should do that in tandem with cutting off obvious corruption routes. Being a representative should mean you can't work in private industry for 10 years. You should only be allowed to trade 2 ETFs, an all stock and all bond ETF. And the insider trading laws should result in immediate expulsion from congress.
- bumby 10mo ago
  You’re saying finding the people most incentivized by money is the feature we should be optimizing for? If you select those people, what’s to keep them from creating a system that gives them ever more amounts of money, to the detriment of their constituents? Maybe a better system for selecting civil servants is…I dunno…a system that optimizes for that “service” part? It’s shocking how in the last few decades we’ve convinced ourselves that money is the only filter that motivates people and is the inherent driver of all human action.
  - InitialBP 10mo ago
    "If you select those people, what’s to keep them from creating a system that gives them ever more amounts of money, to the detriment of their constituents?" That is literally the system that exists today, except instead of in the open (e.g. salary) it's through stocks with insider information and who knows how else. The point isn't to optimize for people who are most incentivized through money, the point is to make the position more accessible for anyone who actually wants to do the "service" part, and to minimize the reasons that it's hard. As the previous commenter pointed out, right now independently wealthy people are some of the only ones who are actually capable of running, and someone who isn't independently wealthy who wins is even more susceptible to bribes because they may be in a tenuous financial position. I would agree with you that we want individuals who's goal is to do "service" for their society, but our current system obviously isn't working and there are a lot of solid reasons why something like this _could_ improve the situation, what alternatives would you recommend?

lumost 10mo ago

There are 100 senators controlling a budget over 4 trillion effecting more than 300 million per year. To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state. Anyone capable of doing the above competently can make 10+ million per year in the private sector. Underpaying for these positions simply invites corruption or plutocracy.

BLKNSLVR 10mo ago
> To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state. Only because that's become the normalised way of 'winning', ironically where society generally loses because being 'friends with every important person in your state' generally means you pander to them in a way that costs everyone else. Having had that rant, I don't know a better way, and your description is what US politics has (d)evolved to over time; water finding its own level.
zbentley 10mo ago
Sounds like we should federally fund campaigns and place strict limits on non-federal campaign funding/PACs/etc. There's a very thorny line we'd have to draw there re: speech and protection--what's a forbidden PAC and what's a citizen who chooses to use their time and resources to support a candidate they like? I happen to believe that we as a country should trace that line rather than falling back on constitutionally-protected-speech absolutism, but I'm aware that's a minority opinion and unlikely to ever bear fruit.

cogman10 10mo ago

> We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right? That's actually probably the best reason for someone to get involved in civil service. If the salary is lucrative enough, the incentive to stay in office will be high and, importantly, money won't be a factor keeping people from getting into office. The problems we currently have is: - Money is an incentive to get into office, but that money comes from interaction with wealthy individuals. - Nothing stops congress people from leveraging their public actions into lucrative private industry. - Independently wealthy individuals have a much easier time getting elected than an average citizen. Think of it this way, if the salary is 0, then you effectively lock out all but the wealthy from office. If the salary is just enough to get by, that still locks out potentially qualified people simply because they can get better jobs out of congress. But if it's a lucrative salary, then you not only make it so people can make it in congress, they can be more competitive against a wealthy competition. They also don't need things like "contributions" to stay afloat. You'd simply be less tempted to take a $10k bribe if it jeopardizes your $1m salary. That alone significantly raises the barrier for bribery. But we should do that in tandem with cutting off obvious corruption routes. Being a representative should mean you can't work in private industry for 10 years. You should only be allowed to trade 2 ETFs, an all stock and all bond ETF. And the insider trading laws should result in immediate expulsion from congress.

bumby 10mo ago
You’re saying finding the people most incentivized by money is the feature we should be optimizing for? If you select those people, what’s to keep them from creating a system that gives them ever more amounts of money, to the detriment of their constituents? Maybe a better system for selecting civil servants is…I dunno…a system that optimizes for that “service” part? It’s shocking how in the last few decades we’ve convinced ourselves that money is the only filter that motivates people and is the inherent driver of all human action.
- InitialBP 10mo ago
  "If you select those people, what’s to keep them from creating a system that gives them ever more amounts of money, to the detriment of their constituents?" That is literally the system that exists today, except instead of in the open (e.g. salary) it's through stocks with insider information and who knows how else. The point isn't to optimize for people who are most incentivized through money, the point is to make the position more accessible for anyone who actually wants to do the "service" part, and to minimize the reasons that it's hard. As the previous commenter pointed out, right now independently wealthy people are some of the only ones who are actually capable of running, and someone who isn't independently wealthy who wins is even more susceptible to bribes because they may be in a tenuous financial position. I would agree with you that we want individuals who's goal is to do "service" for their society, but our current system obviously isn't working and there are a lot of solid reasons why something like this _could_ improve the situation, what alternatives would you recommend?