Congressional salaries should be exactly the median US salary. That way their incentives are aligned with the median citizen and not just the 1%.
Pay 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.<p>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.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...</a> alone and you just need to look at Obama before and after to see what the stress does.
> Pay peanuts, get monkeys<p>As opposed to now with all the highly qualified congresspersons.
The current pay for members of the House of Representatives and Senate is $174,000 per year [1]<p>Rayiner is claiming we would get better members if we raise it to $1 million per year, to which your reply is unresponsive.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_United_States_Congress#Leadership_and_other_positions" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_Uni...</a>
Name 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.<p>~150k sounds like a big salary but when you're very much in charge of trillions of annual revenue it's not.
This is like the CEOs who "only get paid $1"<p>Salary is not where congresspeople make their money and if you don't think that being in congress is a good way to make lots of money right now I don't know what to tell you
The point is reducing that reliance on side channels, including the topical ban on trading.
> This is like the CEOs who "only get paid $1"<p>We're so obviously talking about total compensation. CEOs making $1 while getting billions in stock appreciation or literally hundreds of millions in stock grants are not making $1/year by any reasonable definition.<p>> f you don't think that being in congress is a good way to make lots of money right now I don't know what to tell you<p>So, you want to keep the status quo where the people who are correctly compensated for their role are the ones willing to front-run their own citizens? (And also spending their time front-running instead of their elected job?)
> So, you want to keep the status quo where the people who are correctly compensated for their role are the ones willing to front-run their own citizens? (And also spending their time front-running instead of their elected job?<p>No, those are actually entirely different words than what I have said.
Yeah $150k in DC is comfortable but far from luxurious (if you have a family, which it seems like most congresspeople do). It would not be enough to incentivize me to do the job of a congressperson.
Most are well-educated and "qualified"; integrity and ethics are the bigger problems.
Just look at how great all the CEOs getting tens of millions of dollars are doing.<p>This is nothing but wishful thinking at best, and appeal to wealth at worst.
AOC and MGT would suggest high pay is not a sufficient gate.
I may not agree with her politics, but from what I can tell, AOC is intelligent, articulate, more than willing to inform herself about an issue before voting on or having a hearing about it, and most importantly, she appears to genuinely wish to represent her constituents to the best of her ability.<p>I would happily clear and re-populate both parties with candidates sharing those traits.<p>MTG, on the other hand, is and always has been an internet troll, and not even a high-quality troll - merely a ball of ignorance and bigotry that comes a dime a dozen in any competitive online game lobby or forum.
A few examples of AOC’s reasons for proper comparison to MGT. Personally, to these I would add acts of drama like the emotional breakdown at the border, modeling the expensive ‘Tax the rich’ dress, etc.<p>Google can bring many more examples. AOC is not more intelligent than MGT. They are two sides of the same coin.<p><a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1857375/three-gaffes-in-one-week-aoc-cant-stop-exposing-her-own-ignorance/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1857375/three-gaf...</a><p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/07/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-facts" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/07/politics/alexandria-ocasio-co...</a><p><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/10/30/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-mocked-over-poster-for-arab-voters/" rel="nofollow">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/10/30/alexandri...</a>
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This comment represents a lack of understanding of human nature.<p>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.<p>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.
Pay peas, get monks? Anyway the idea of preventing corruption by <i>bribing them officially</i> 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 <i>and lazy,</i> so it balances out.
<i>Anyway the idea of preventing corruption by bribing them officially is weird.</i><p>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.
A millionaire approaches an attractive young woman in a bar and asks if she would be willing to spend the weekend with him at the country’s most expensive and luxurious hotel, waited on hand and foot and receiving a million pounds to sleep with him. The girl considers that it’s worth it for a million pounds, and agrees. The millionaire then suggests that they immediately sneak into the men’s toilet for quick sex for £5. She is shocked and insulted, and says “That’s disgusting! What kind of girl do you think I am?” He replies “We’ve already decided that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
We don't need to moralize everything when we can simply recognize patterns that work vs. patterns that don't work. And underpaying people definitely is not the way to get the results you want.<p>You may not like the reasons for WHY they work or not, but that is not relevant to WHETHER they work.<p>When I made minimum wage working at Subway, I would sneak extra sandwiches for myself here and there. I didn't strictly NEED them to physically survive, but hey -- I'm busting my ass for $7.25, I'm gonna pay myself a little bonus here and there. No one's watching, so I'm going to decide what's fair for a change.<p>Now I make much more than that. I no longer steal sandwiches from my employer.<p>I think this is the pattern for the great majority of people.
You also can't empathize with poor people if your needs are met too well.
If 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.
Everything you do to make them poorer will just make it cheaper for moneyed interests to buy them.<p>The root problem is abusing their office for financial gain.<p>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.
But 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.<p>(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.)
> 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.<p>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).<p>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 <i>personal</i> 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 <i>every</i> 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.<p>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.
It 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.<p>You want your pay to be higher? Work to raise the median salary in your state.
If you pay the median salary, you’ll end up with Congress consisting of only independently wealthy people <i>whose priorities don’t align with the median citizen.</i>
Singapore 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.<p><a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024" rel="nofollow">https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024</a> 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.
They do not have the same employment security as the median citizen.
How 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.
That seems like a recipe for corruption. Representatives would need to supplement their salary <i>somehow</i> 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.<p>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.
That'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.
Yep. Perversely it probably <i>increases</i> 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.
The 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.
Or the very dedicated.
Even the very dedicated would have trouble maintaining two residences (DC & home district) on the median income.
Dedicated to obtaining power?<p>I'd much rather have a person there who doesn't need the money vs. one who does.
> Congressional salaries should be exactly the median US salary.<p>Congressional salaries should be $1m+. It would only half a billion dollars a year. A pittance of the $6.75 trillion federal budget.<p>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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Singapore" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Singapore</a><p>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.<p>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.
If you pushed through that legislation there would be an armed uprising led by DC landlords.
Modulo benefits like health care, pension, etc.
States should pay their reps.
Or this incentivizes either corruption to make up for the low salary, or else attract those of means as they don't need the money.