$300/month with a $1,000 deductible
Where are you getting health insurance from? For that price my deductible is closer to $5,000!
That would further incentivize their corruption
I disagree. Everyone believes that people are greedy and their only goal in life is money hoarding. But if you ask them what their own goals are, getting filthy rich has very, very low priority.
If politicians are greedy, that’s because 1) to become a politician (in the USA), you already have to be rich, and 2) if politicians are paid lots of money, greedy people want to become politicians.
You don’t want to attract greedy assholes to represent you, but that’s exactly what you’re doing if you pay them too much. The people you do want to be politicians are those who aren’t interested in money.
Politicians aren’t paid lots of money, at least not by the government.
They have legitimate travel expenses and need a place to stay while in session and DC is not cheap. $60k would simply make the temptation to take money greater. You dont want your represetative broke and struggling. Their current pay being too high in not a problem because its not. Their ability to trade with insider knowledge and be corrupted by lobbyists and billionaires is.
Thry should get a massive salary but be strictly banned from all other forms of income.
They weren’t ever supposed to represent you, they represent rich white men like they were intended. It’s literally designed to favor the rich because literally every single one of the signers of the bill of rights was a wealthy dude, to a man they were middle - upper class and in general criminals at that.
While this sounds good on the surface, the problem is that requiring legislators to live with the same financial difficulties most of us face would lead to sharp increases in direct bribery and overt corruption. As bad as it is anyway that effectively unlimited campaign/PAC contributions can be used to corrupt them, if their personal finances were significantly more trying, it would be much worse, especially given that most legislators have more personal expenses than the average person, including maintaining resdences in both DC and their home state/district. The much better (but also much, much more difficult) solution would be to raise the incomes of most Americans rather than to reduce the income of the legislators.
Lmao they have all ways been taking bribes. Lobbying is legalized bribery…
yeah i was a hell of a lot more sympathetic to that totally unverified supposition (not argument) when i didn’t believe there was rampant corruption in every branch of local state and federal government. it’s like those pictures of “LOOK WHAT COMMUNISM WOULD GET YOU” and it’s just pictures of homelessness under capitalism.
solution would be to raise the incomes of most Americans rather than to reduce the income of the legislators.
yeah that’s the point. if these chucklefucks kicking back on open corruption were forced (forced) to live on the average american salary they’d be more apt to fix the bullshit holding wages down. that’s my unverified supposition though. actually, now i’ve come to think of it, the fact that our government is subject to corruption despite their high compensation (supposedly) buoying up fragile moralities seems to be evidence against your initial supposition. Let’s try the other way.
“Maintaining residences in both DC and their home state/district” I’ve got that solved: We build a dorm facility in Washington and require them to stay there.
Then investigate, have a process, stop treating them as untouchable prima donas
I don’t know. On one hand, I think it’s naive to think that dragging these politicians down to our level is going to make them see things through a different lens, as most of them are multi-millionaires anyway and the pay they get is just the gravy on top, and reducing their salaries isn’t going to fix any kind of budgetary problem all on it’s own - the money that they earn off of taxpayers is nothing compared to the national debt.
On the other hand, this cadre of politicians who exercise the most power and authority is so openly corrupt now that they do not even bother to hide it anymore. I feel like you can’t get much worse than we already are without them resorting to literal mustache twirling acts of villainy.
Now, if we were somehow able to make them give up their wealth, to divest themselves from the financial consequences of their actions and live with the lasting legacy that they themselves wrought for others, that might have some effect, but that would require people to be altruistic and principled enough to understand that taking a job as a public servant shouldn’t make you rich, and you should do it for the good of the people you represent.
I agree on spirit, but in practice this will just make them even easier to be bought.
As if they aren’t already bought. At least you’ll have one of your own elevated and not some already rich asshole trying to get richer.
I didn’t say they aren’t already, just that it would be even easier if they’re paid less.
I honestly believe that AoC’s personal finances are shit.
I think this is overstated. You can’t even run for Congress without being a millionaire, a millionaire’s family, a lawyer, a lobbyist, or a military officer looking to cash out.
You can’t get in the door of Congress without being in hoc to a constellation of private interests. Capping their pay won’t change that.
you got a point. Also I think that they get bought of either way, so why not safe a little on their salary ;)
Because Congress sets its own salary. I don’t. So, I have no say in the matter.
Also because there’s no real “cost savings” in a material sense. Congressional spending has been decoupled from federal taxation since the Great Depression. Pay congressmen $1/term. Pay them $1M/hr. I don’t see any kind of change in my material condition.
Incidentally, the Gingrich Era Contract with America was billed as a legislation package to rein in the capacity for Congresscritters to personally enrich and profiteer off their positions. Similarly, Pelosi’s For The People Act included a number of reforms intended to prevent Congress from double-dealing and insider trading. Despite both Speakers enjoying a bicameral majority and a friendly President during their careers, neither successfully advanced legislation to handcuff members of Congress.
Asking Congress to regulate itself is a fool’s request.
Hey Thanks. I didn’t know any of that.
🫡
Remember it’s not just the Republicans both sides of the aisle got their pockets loaded with bribe money to not change any of the laws. You get Jeffries on national TV crying about the usual Democratic talking points having everyone shake their head and saying not this shit again. Clearly he does not give a fuck about the $40,000 to $80,000 crowd they can eat cake. He wants to help the poor and there’s nothing wrong with that but the main priority is helping everybody but don’t forget the middle ground which they always do.
70? They shouldnt be electable after 60!
Make it 70, but they have to live off the same pensions as everyone else after 60 years old.
I get the idea behind it, but this very much would backfire in that only the rich could become representation. Remember they made it a rule that they aren’t allowed to sleep in their office while in D.C., and 60k not only won’t afford a place in D.C, it most definitely won’t allow for someone to have a home near their constituents AND D.C.
So we would end up with just having first or second sons of oligarchs, 1 trained to run the companies, the other trained to represent their families best interests.
That can easily be fixed. Salary is the median (not average, because making more ultra-wealthy shouldn’t be encouraged) US income + median COL in DC. Maybe add some extra on top to cover travel and other expenses.
The goal is to make enriching the American people equivalent to enriching themselves. Currently it’s usually the opposite.
Or, and hear me out in this one, if the average is not sustainable they would need to raise the average or lower costs until a balance was reached. By forcing them to play by the very rules that are writing, there is an incentive to make them fair.
While this may not be there exact way too achieve that, the goal is still a good one to work towards.
And how is that supposed to work ? You can’t fix the healthcare care system or economy in a day, so non wealthy people would still struggle to live as politicians whilst those changes are being worked on, meaning there’s little motivation for them to join politics, and independently wealthy people who are just in it for the power wouldn’t give a fuck about being badly paid. Look at Trump. He doesn’t even take a salary, because he’s corrupt and wealthy enough to not need it, so his salary being low would matter fuck all to him and other corrupt pieces of crap like him.
You could have just posted the image again, but this was slightly less cheeky. I did enjoy the hear me out.
The problem is, representatives and senators don’t live average lifestyles. They need to pay for two residences, one of which is in one of the most expensive metro areas in the country. Then the constant transit costs between the two. They also pay their staff out of their own pocket if I remember correctly.
Truth is they need to be paid much more. With 100% of salary in retirement. And they need to be barred from any kind of employment after.
Hear me out, maybe we could build some sort of large building/s with a lot of small houses in them for them to live in while in DC. The government could even give them some sort of vouchers that helps them pay the rent or the buildings could just be owned by the government.
Six of one, half dozen the other.
You provide housing directly, or money for them to choose housing themselves. Seems a distinction without a difference.There’s also value in it being decentralized.
if the average is not sustainable they would need to raise the average or lower costs until a balance was reached
I think you misunderstood what you’re responding to. This would create a situation where being in politics is only not sustainable for people of average means. People who are already independently wealthy would have no trouble at all sustaining themselves on an average salary and have zero (0) incentive to do anything to make life easier for you or I.
The problem isn’t that people in Congress get paid a decent wage. The problem is they have so much money from their families, from their businesses, and/or from lobbyists that they’re more or less totally divorced from what life is like for most people
We don’t need the entire country to have a second home in DC and to be resistant to bribes.
Congress should make good enough money that they don’t need to invest in the stock market and they don’t care about negligible bribes. Bigger bribes are theoretically easier to catch in the legal system and/or public accountability.
I get the idea behind it, but this very much would backfire in that only the rich could become representation.
Not only the rich but also the corrupt that would then sell their voice to the highest bidder.
Good thing neither of those are the case in the current system!
The point is, these changes wouldn’t help any of those things.
I agree, and maybe not on their own, but combined with other changes, maybe. Eg. Build dorms and have them stay there when in DC, owned and paid by the state.
I’d like to see draconian controls and transparency on their finances during their time serving and a few years into it.
Well that’s easy then. Federally owned dorm housing for congress.
There are easy solutions to that problem. $60k plus cost of living stipends for the two homes, which can’t be spent on anything else, and only modest homes are eligible.
For people complaining about the cost of living to cover in DC, build them some public housing barracks they can stay in so they have that covered.
Agreed, but mostly why would a rep not be able to sleep on their office and return home? That’s rediculous
Some of the poorer reps were doing that and Congress decided they didn’t like it.
Some state legislatures already do stuff like this. Full time job for a few months out of the year that pays like $40k.
The people who run for office are the people who can afford to.
That’s BS, you could definitely afford to live there, it’d just be in a shithole. Which is exactly the point.
How many people do you know making $60k per year that maintain two homes in cities a thousand miles apart,and frequently travel between them?
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How about this:
We pay politicians in “X times the minimum wage”; for the sake of this example I’ll say 30x the minimum wage (too much? Too little? I don’t know, that’s not important rn)
The thing is, they can’t change this number, at all. The only way they can increase their salaries is to increase the minimum wage.
I love this idea, if they want a raise they’d have to raise the federal minimum wage.
Okay, we need you to throw your hat in the ring and start representin’. I would def vote for you.
I think the government should switch to a random lottery. Every term a random person is selected from all available and eligible citizens. It would be our civic duty, put your regular job on hold for a few years and do your part.
Most would hate it, but that’s kinda the point. If we all had to eat our own dogfood, we’d eventually start making it taste better.
I’ve said this for years. Live in dorms. Cafeteria food. Minimum wage. All assets put into trust and in a vanilla total market fund for 5-10 years after service. It should be like jury duty. I’ve not met a single person who disagrees with this system.
I’ve not met a single person who disagrees with this system.
Well consider me the first.
Then first the plan won’t work, those dorms will be run by the very government politicians they are supposed to make miserable. so they won’t.
And why must that be a goal in the first place? Instead of improving democracy so that politicians aren’t in the pockets of PACs and actually represent the people, you want to just make them both miserable and now unelected.
If you want that random people are in charge instead of politicians a direct democracy system will work far better then this.
Who said anything about making them miserable? That isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the goal. The goal is to remove incentives to be corrupt.
A nice dorm and high quality food provided to them removes some of that.
Locking assets into total market funds removes incentive to inside trade, because you can’t.
Think this assumes those selected have no friends or family. You can’t uproot a whole family, and it would be unreasonable to break up a family for the extended period of time you imagine.
In practice, it does become making them miserable, because it’s literally forced relocation and isolation from their friends, family, and financial resources.
Live in dorms. Cafeteria food. Minimum wage
I got that from this statement, my mistake then.
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Dorms, cafeteria food, and minimum wage are not things that most Americans would want. It would really only be a benefit to those already making minimum wage (or unemployed) and without families. For the rest those would be motives for corruption, rather than the opposite.
Oh look! You’ve made the bribery problem even worse.
Most importantly, 24/7 surveillance. No secrets. No back room deals.
No one should live under 24/7 surveillance.
Lots of us, maybe even most, are under surveillance every minute we are at our job. A politician’s job is 24/7 while they are in office. It wouldn’t be necessary if politicians never lied or took bribes, but we live in reality.
Have you met a random person?
Know any politicians?
Think the rough analogy is Jury duty. After going through that, I was frankly surprised how generally decent the folks were that were being vetted. Sure a couple were a bit off, but on the whole the folks seemed pretty reasonable. I didn’t agree with some of them, but at least they seemed to be roughly rational and open to thinking about things.
Probably why they’re here instead of Reddit.
I have indeed, I still trust them more than anyone who actually wants to be in politics.
Couldn’t we all just vote on shit regularly from home and do away with representatives altogether?
Maybe not everything, but we could certainly vote on a lot more directly. There’s no reason we couldn’t. Representative government was a necessity when we only used horses to get everywhere. Now much less reason for it.
The other point of representative government is that the people making the decisions can spend the time to research what they’re voting on.
No I don’t think that tracks, I’d say it’s kind of a modern interpretation really. Historically it’s a a darker seedier reasoning really. Traditionally representative government has been favored because the wealthy delete didn’t think the people could be trusted. Unwashed uneducated masses couldn’t be allowed to make decisions. The liberal bourgeoisie in no way wanted the people making any decisions. There’s a reason most liberal revolutions did not result in widespread suffrage, much less universal suffrage.
After all it’s not like Representatives had extra time to do research. When they weren’t traveling by horse or mule they were conducting their own affairs, not researching well into the night. No it’s much more about class than actual dedication.
It doesn’t really matter whether it’s modern or intended or accidental. The point is that it’s best that the people making the decisions are educated and informed, and that takes time. That takes the kind of time that makes it a full time job, not one you can do on the side.
And yes, I understand that current representatives spend most of their time trudging up donations for campaigns, but that’s less than ideal. I might even argue that makes the idea not modern at all.
How do you determine if they’re educated? How do you determine if they’re informed? Who decides? How would you even go about enforcing the fact that they spend their time researching? Instead of campaigning or getting donations or just fucking around?
It could be from macro to much more micro, e.g.: what portion of the budget should be allocated to education? And then how is the budget allocated, etc. everyone must vote in the first few votes and then as the issues get more nitty gritty and local the only people voting are those in the localities and/or those who care. You could vote on everything but realistically you’ll just set the main direction and the rest just happens.
The more you think about this the more complicated it seems, even if the concept isn’t that complicated. I’ve thought about this a lot for a long time and I honestly think we’d get so much more done.
I honestly think we need representational government. One of our big problems in this country is regular people thinking they understand all the nuance of an issue. Not that random assholes completely solve this issue, but the law of averages is enough that some would take this seriously and actually learn, listen and think before acting.
It’s mostly a joke though, obviously a random lottery will never happen, but I absolutely would choose it over what we have today.
Who decides what a random person is and what a knowledgeable person is in your scenario though? Where are these knowledgeable people? Our current Speaker of the House every time he gets in front of a TV Camera claims he knows nothing at all whatsoever. He’s never heard anything he’s never read anything he’s never seen anything and he just doesn’t know about anything. So knowledgeable people aren’t in charge now.
Sortition. It’s a system that sounded crazy decades ago when I first heard it, but the more and more you think about it the more and more it doesn’t seem that bad.
There are also several proposals of random voting that have a lot of good things about them. In one system, you pick a random ballot out of all ballots, and whoever that person voted for wins for all positions.
Or, you can do it per elected position. Take all of the votes for each elected position and pick a random vote.
One advantage of random ballots is that no elected official is safe. A candidate who gets 60% of the vote can lose to a candidate who got 20% of the vote.
Why is this good?
Well, for one thing, it would be much harder to gerrymander. Gerrymandering generally means you have one party win most districts by a tiny amount, and the other party wins very few districts by a large amount. This strategy simply doesn’t work with random ballots.
Another benefit is that politicians would be incentivized to get as many votes as possible, far beyond 50%. Even a politician who gets 90% of the vote would lose 1 in 10 elections. So, politicians would work for everybody’s vote, not just for the slim majority’s vote.
It has other advantages beyond that. Mostly in the realm of the fairness of votes. You vote feels completely fair. It’s just as likely that your vote will decide the winner as anybody else’s vote.
One big disadvantage is that there might be an extremely popular politician, who has 99% of the vote, and who still loses. This can be mitigated a bit by keeping terms short. The politician could come back in a couple of years.
Another disadvantage is that it is very difficult to recount the ballots. You basically just pick another random ballot and all of the winners might change. And related, it’s more difficult to detect cheating after the fact. Like, what if the ballot wasn’t completely random?
Seems like that would cause massive voter dissatisfaction and less people to vote. Not many vote now because they feel like their vote doesn’t count
Literally exactly the opposite of what you said. I addressed those exact two points in the comment you replied to as being strengths of random ballot.
The most obvious specific benefits of random ballot to the voter are less voter dissatisfaction and feeling more like your vote counts.
Less dissatisfaction because politicians will try to appeal to every voter. They don’t want to leave it up to chance.
More like your vote counts because your vote has an equal chance of choosing the winner as anybody else’s vote. It doesn’t matter how anybody else votes.
If you want to say that the opposite will happen, then you not only need to give specific reasons, but you should also know that there is already a lot of research on these types of elections. That’s why my comment seemed so informed, while yours didn’t.
Your comment makes you sound like an ass.
There are many thing wrong with it off the top of my head
- logistics
- electronic vs paper, many different ballots, how is it chosen, etc
- different ballots in every single city for local issues
- pushes further for vote disenfranchisement
- massively increases minority power
Having someone with 90% support lose to some racist nazi seems like a shit system
You sound like much more of an ass. You obviously first responded without actually reading my comment. Wasting everyone’s time instead of simply reading the comment you were responding to that had that info in it.
And now you can’t even defend your previous points. You have to move the goalposts and bring up new points, half of which, again, I already addressed in that first comment you didn’t read. I’ll address your points and then I am done with you.
- Trivial. Number all ballots the same then pick one of those numbers randomly. The votes already have to be counted together. If what you’re saying is hard, then normal voting would also be hard.
- That already happens with our current ballots. Sounds like you don’t even vote if you don’t know that.
- No. Rephrasing something isn’t an argument and it doesn’t make it true.
- The minority power point is by far your worst one. Random ballot actually gives better proportional representation on average, and makes gerrymandering more difficult, again, as I said in the first comment you didn’t read. Unless you really believe democracy is supposed to strive to be “the tyranny of the majority,” in which case, you’re beyond help.
I’m done with you but if you try to argue things in the future, how about doing the absolute minimum and at least read what you’re arguing against? Other ideas: Read a tiny bit of a related Wikipedia article. Double check your arguments before submitting them.
Maybe you should yourself?
The author of it even says its not fair or practical
The rule is rarely, if ever, proposed as a genuine electoral system, as such a method (in Gibbard’s words) “leaves too much to chance”.[5] However, the rule is often used as a tiebreaker to encourage voters to cast honest ballots, and is sometimes discussed as a thought experiment.
Please again tell me how someone with 90% of the vote losing to some racist psycho due to a random ballet doesn’t disenfranchise the 90% and doesn’t give the minority extreme advantages?
60/40 is even worse. What should be a definite win becomes a toss up.
And I was asking how they handle determining which ballot to use when there are many different ones as each town or even districts in towns have their own ballets and would need to pull their own random ballot as well.
Minority already has far too much power, this just makes it worse not better. Some kind of ranked voting is needed, not more minority power.
And I called you an ass because of your last paragraph on your initial reply.
OP has no idea what health insurance cost these days.
Nor do international members, care to share?
More like $1000+ a month for a policy with a $7000+ annual deductible. If you’re lucky and have a job with subsidized health insurance, it’s much more reasonable. I’m a school bus driver and have excellent health insurance (which is rare for school bus drivers); I pay $129 a month while the district pays the rest and I have essentially no deductible.
The idea behind a high salary for representatives is that they don’t need to take on extra money from lobbyists to survive. Keep the salaries, but make bribery illegal again and things will get better. Make the salaries low AND get the money out of politics and you’ll only get rich people becoming politicians. Oh and term limits should be a thing.
Bribery is still illegal. But it’s not a “bribe” unless it’s paid directly to the politician in exchange for something specific (quid pro quo). So you just need to obfuscate that deal enough so that you can’t prove it’s a bribe, in the legal sense. (SuperPACs, etc).
Tbf yes, that’s what I meant. The legal form of bribery, shouldn’t be.
99% of a lawyers job is to find loopholes in the law.
Yes, and thus we should endeavor to find and close the loopholes as they come up.
Can we do that faster than AI can find new loopholes?
Just pay well in advance of whatever you ask for and it’s fine apparently
pretty sure most of them are millionaires, because the billionaire donors are giving them money, in other forms. even with those restrictions, they get millions from the billionaires in thier pockets. Thats why Dinos are fighting just as hard to keep that way.
Also politicians wouldn’t exactly be less corruptible if they were poorer.
i think it makes them more susceptible to it, because they need money, and will do anything for it. mtg and boeboe were poor by congress standard, after less than 2 years they became millionaires overnight. Mitch in the 2010s, was only 3-ish millions and increased his wealth 10times in less than 10years.
The billionaire donors are giving their campaigns money - direct bribery is still illegal. They make their millions from either a) book deals and speaking tours (generally legal and legitimate), b) insider trading (illegal but rarely enforced against congresspeople), or c) leaving Congress to influence peddle for private companies for inflated salaries (needs to be much more heavily regulated).
I guess the idea of paying them well is that they can’t be bought with bribes. Then again, when has any wealthy person ever been satisfied.
If the job didn’t pay a salary, the only people who could do the job would be the rich who don’t need a salary, or those willing to accept bribes.
If you make the salary too low, it will discourage anybody who can make a better living doing something else. And, if the people doing it don’t think they’re being paid what they’re really worth, they’re more likely to take bribes or “donations” to boost their salary back up to what it should be.
Really, the salary should be high. It should be a job that people who are really qualified will want to do. It should be one where you have no need to take a bribe because you’re already doing so well, and you’d be afraid of throwing away such a well compensated job.
Honestly, there’s a load of satisfied wealthy people - you just don’t hear about them because, well, there’s literally nothing to report about them.
I wouldn’t say it’s so that they can’t be bought, so much as so they don’t have to be bought. It’s part of the reason they haven’t voted for a pay raise and so long. Their owners don’t want them to have other options.
Lawmakers don’t vote for their pay raises, they don’t need to. The increases were made automatic in 1989. Even with the annual increases, their pay is nothing compared to what they can make from insider information and contributions from anonymous PACs. They can be bought, government salary just can’t compete with dark money.
That isn’t quite accurate. Congress hasn’t gotten a pay raise since 2009. Because they vote against giving themselves one.
Ah, I’d read they didn’t have to vote to get a pay raise. Didn’t see that they had been actively voting against it. But who needs a raise when you know you’ll get waaay more money from corps and special interest groups? Heck, they’ll even write the bills they want passed for you, so you don’t even have to work hard.
Ah, that makes sense.
They also carry a hell of a lot more responsibility than the average American worker. Is be in favor of a party raise along with restricting other income streams like stock investments.
Why are you all so eager to prop up the corpse of a dead system? I genuinely can’t make any sense of it.
