We pay our legislators incredibly low salaries and expect competent leadership. We act surprised that our political institutions are dominated by power-hungry politicos, mediocre lifers, and lazy part-timers. At the end of the day we have ourselves to blame..

if we doubled their salaries overnight it would be only a fraction of what they're paid to do speeches. why would a big salary cause any change at all? making 10 mil per year will make them care more about common people? odd take.

And we don't have any meaningful protections against corruption and actively rolled what little we did have over the past 60 years

Salary doesn't mean anything here. We pay them many times more than the average and they can vote to raise their own salaries.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Oct 28 2022 10:01am

Do we want politicians who are paid to "speak", i.e. "provide access", to large financial institutions? I say no.

Politicians have power but lack money. So they trade power for money. And if they are caught with their hand in the cookie jar, there's almost always a higher paying job on the other side.

Higher salaries serve two functions, they draw in talent from the private sector, and they're desirable, which raises the cost of losing your job. Ultimately, that needs to be paired with tougher regulation and enforcement, to simultaneously increase the risks associated with corruption.

Singapore turned theory into practice decades ago, and they rank top of the world in accountability, competency, and (lack of) corruption.



How popular do you think it is when politicians give themselves a raise? You'd probably have to defer any raise to incumbents to make it palatable to the American people.

"More than average" is meaningless here. It's far better to be commissioner of the NFL than it is to be a governor. It's astronomically more lucrative to be CEO of Disney than it is to be president. And while we won't get to paying civil servants 8-figure salaries, we should be far more competitive with the private sector than we are today.

Raises always take place the following congress. That was an amendment although IDR which one off the top of my head.

You are forgetting (intentionally leaving out because you're a hack) that being in a position of power gives you connections to do exactly those things you're talking about. They get out of office and immediately work for the companies they just got done regulating and get paid tens of millions of dollars a year, and then go back to office or support somebody from their organization going back to office.

We could pay them 100 million dollars a year and it would not change that one iota.

while i obviously dont agree philosophically that politicians seek money outside of their job and shouldn't, why would paying each house rep or senator 10 million dollars prevent them from doing what they're doing now anyways?

are we going to pass a law saying its illegal to be paid to do a speech at an NRA brunch? no. we can't even pass laws preventing people from doing insider trading based on legislation months before the taxpayers see it.

i'm all for govt accountability, but higher salaries in a vacuum is less than worthless. and what you'd need might no pass the SCOTUS, thank you FREEDOM.

On whose behalf am I "hacking" right now? Get yourself checked out, you've lost it.

I am suggesting we pair steep increases in salary with draconian anti-corruption laws. Singapore has already done this in practice, and the result has been increased competence and lower rates of corruption.

If we pair anything with draconian anti-corruption laws I'm all for it.

Every member of government should be held to the same standard judges are, where even the appearance of corruption is sufficient to be removed. It isn't always enforced, but I think we should enforce it harshly in all areas.

"We aren't grooming anyone btw, it's a choice". It will be glorious once these "people" get what is coming to them.

This post was edited by Dmitriy on Oct 28 2022 01:40pm