- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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My thoughts on that was they got paid the average pay for the state the live in. Down here in the south they would have to get food stamps.
Might be unpopular be politicians should actually be paid a lot. You want to attract actually skilled and capable people after all
But it should also be there only source of income, no speaking gigs, no stock trades, no side business
I’d agree with you except we see politicians selling out for even tiny amounts while having tens of millions in the bank. If you’re willing to sell the food out of the mouths of the poor for $2,500 and you’ve got 12 mil in the bank your inherently corrupt and having a big paycheck won’t change that. They have billionaire brain rot, number go up syndrome, as long as number goes up that’s all that matters no matter how much they are given or have.
No. You see the tiny tip of the iceberg in payments. There is always a ton more beneath the surface.
One of the reasons a lot of government positions track if you have debts is that propensity to financial burdens make politicians more suceptible to corruption.
If you pay them less, they are actually going to be more easily bribed.
If you pay them less, they are actually going to be more easily bribed.
If you keep the same people in office, then yeah. I wonder who else would be up for the job if the pay was lower. Hopefully more Mamdanis.
Nah, it’ll be independently wealthy trust fund kids that don’t need to rely on a paycheck to pay rent, but have a trust that is valued based on policy.
Politicians should be some of the highest paid people in the country. I wouldn’t get out of bed for 70k today, that was my paycheck for my first professional job. Now perhaps you don’t want me as a politician, but…
I would be okay with their salary being 5 times the federal minimum wage. They want a raise? They must raise the minimum wage.
It should be treated like jury duty. Every year a new politician in every single seat of government. It will be absolutely perfect! Nothing could go wrong.
Would be fine with them earning a multiple of minimum wage so when they raise their salary they raise the minimum.
“If you pay them less, they will take bribes”. They already take bribes, it’s just usually more subtle than Susan Collin’s. Better restrictions, real punishments, and being up their asses is the solution. “You want better people”. We are paying people who are often already millionaires. I would say pay them above average as we do want educated people, but making them use the same medical system and retirement would be the best. “It’s expensive to be a politician”. Set up an couple apartment complexes for the people in DC. It would help with security and other costs without giving them expense accounts to abuse.
Locking down insider trading and other money making perks is a must.
Add more term limits. You serve two terms and you’re out, no exceptions. I’ll even lend you a Mexican saying: “Sufragio efectivo no reelección”
Michigan has term limits. It has not worked out well. It makes lobbying way easier, since the lawmakers aren’t very effective earlier in their career. You also wind up with two casts of politians: those who want to be public servants and are forced to run for a different office to keep good on the table and those who are already well heeled. We don’t need the second category in politics.
I looked up Michigan’s term limits which is 12 years, which is honestly very long, so it led me to searching about corruption correlations and here’s what I found:
- The penultimate effect of term limits increases corruption frequency by about 28 %.
- The magnitude effect, stemming from shorter tenures, reduces the average cost of corruption.
- Stricter term limits are associated with lower overall corruption.
- Term limits thus serve as an institutional safeguard against political corruption.
It is well established that lame-duck incumbents tend to be less accountable (Besley and Case, 1995, 2003), hence more prone to corruption, and Tsur (2022) showed that penultimate terms reinforce this effect. […] Corrupt activities typically require close and trusted relationships between the public officials involved in the malfeasance and the private actors offering bribes. This intimacy and trust do not develop overnight, but require time to cultivate. […] Consequently, such corrupt networks are often built gradually through repeated interactions, shared secrets, and a history of successful illicit transactions.
You’d end up with politicians just jumping around tho.
Imagine that. We put them in office to do our wishes and the first thing they do is not our wishes.
You’d need to enforce no income from other sources also. Before, during, and after. Significant monitoring of extended family and personal connections. Should those things be monitored for corruption under their current salary?
If proper funding for journalism and watchdog organisations, or judicial bodies designed to serve the people’s interests, hadn’t already been dismantled or drowned out in the din of other voices it might be possible. Those systems/funding could be restored and the competing intrests spewing lies culled or limited. It is not impossible, but it will be hard. Attend in-person forums if you can tolerate it. Speak and lead if you can. Make connections.
Where can I find said “average job” that pays this much? I’ve never passed a $40K salary in my life.
They should also have to work the minimum amount per week to get benefits.
I think it should be tied to the average wage of the state that they serve.
I have always heard people make this argument, and since it’s Great British Bake-off time, I’ll use it as the example.
There’s no prize, and the pay per episode is fairly minimal. Less than $500/episode for contestants. Plus, they get ~$2000 stipend for ingredients. On the fly converting pounds to dollars, so these are guesstimates.
What that means is that Great British Bake-off does not find the best home baker in Britain, it finds the best baker who can afford to take time off to be on the show. If you can afford to miss school, work, or being a parent for 12 weeks, you can’t compete.
Same applies here.
If you can’t afford to live on the salary, you’ll only get people in office who don’t need the salary. We already get that to some extent with campaigning costs. This could make it worse. The barrier of entry is higher.
Instead, we need a performance review with real consequences other than “Guess I don’t get re-elected, but I still get a book deal.”
I have always thought it should be twice the average median income of the state they represent.
But you bring up much larger issues. There are so many bars to running for office that make it so much easier for capital holders. I say people who hold capital should be barred from public office. I will leave the exact definition of “holding capital” up to the reader.
401K’s were never meant for retirement. They were initially meant to provide tax perks for executive level employees for their profit sharing bonuses.
They were never meant to replace pensions or be used as a retirement vehicle.
Financial advisors and banks pushed them on regular employees because they fell out of favor with executives in favor of better options.
401Ks are not a good option for regular people. General investment in ETFs or a diversified dividend portfolio and t bonds is much better.
Average? Hell no. At least have the kindness to stipulate median. And really, it should be the minimum.
