Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016.
The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want. Thus the primary corrupting force in America is pro-corruption campaign finance laws.
The test for democracy is whether elected politicians pass legislation that the public at large wishes to be passed. Our very own Princeton did a study to answer this question.
The key finding: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[1]
In a very real, non hyperbolic sense we are in a plutocracy where money rules. We are not a democracy due chiefly to our campaign finance laws.
"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".
I remember seeing a chart of how much money a Senator had to raise every week for their next race and it was stark bonkers (and this was in the 90s, before Citizens United). I just checked and the figure is even worse now.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/state-of-money-in-p...
From that article, victorious senate candidates have to spend an average of about 16 million. So if you are already a Senator looking forward to your next race you have to raise about 80k a week!. And you are not getting that kind of money from the average citizen.
Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system (not all, but a very big part).
As an american, I really enjoy learning things like this about how other countries view us and our craziness. A lot of people here would be genuinely confused at the comparison.
>"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".
To add to this, we (americans) also never refer to our own elite class as oligarchs. That's reserved for other countries, because ours is a totally fair, democratic, and meritocratic society, and we're definitely not ruled by a small group of well connected rich people.
> Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system
I disagree that money is the root. Money is still one level above the true root, which is what the money is needed to buy: "Re-election." Thus, an alternative, though unconventional, solution is single-term limits. Once elected to any national public office, you can never run for that or any other elected office again. One and done.
This idea is not without it's share of potential problems, but I think that's true of any potential solution that has a chance of actually working. After thinking it through, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the "single-term" set of potential downsides over the others.
> "If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".
It's the same here in Europe, we are joking how elites in US legalized corruption and called it lobbying, it's really weird for us (outside of US), that people just go along with this state of things and do nothing about it, like almost whole population would be after some kind of long period of brain washing in US.
Even if the study were true it shows that when economic elites (150k+) disagree with the middle class they get there way more often.
(Btw it showed that the middle class and the rich agreed like 80-90% of the time on policy, and when they disagreed it wasn't by very many percentage points)
But a much more likely scenario than corruption is senators/representatives/presidents are all members of the economic elite, and all their friends are members of the elite and so it's no surprise they share the same opinions as their friends/wives/family members and socio-economic class.
How much are politicians paid —and how does their salary affect corruption?
It might not be a popular opinion, but perhaps we should double the wages of US Representatives (they currently make $175k—not a lot in Washington DC). Is paying US representatives $350k worth the money?
First, a bigger financial cushion for representatives might reduce financial corruption. Second, a bigger salary might attract more talented leaders. Potentially, paying higher salaries would increase the quality of US governance. God, imagine if we could just pay for increased quality in government leaders!
TIL that in 1789, the US president made $25k—- worth $800k in 2022. But today, the US president makes $400k. Why try to save money on presidents and politicians?
Getting money out of politics would be a great reform (removing lobbyists, campaign finance reform, etc.). It also strikes me as almost impossible to implement. It's like getting the president of a company to switch to system whereby leadership is elected by the workers. It's all risk and low reward for them.
However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate.
Who cares if Raytheon or Disney "owns" a given representative if those corporate sponsors can't actually be sure that they're getting the votes they paid for. It would also neutralize a lot of the petty party line votes and manipulation. Every issue would ostensibly be decided based on the representatives' actual value system.
Obviously the downside would be that the public at large would be unable to hold their representative accountable for a particular vote, but that seems like the lesser concern compared to the very obvious corporate vote buying and party-line bullshit that happens today.
How is that a lesser concern? How can the public have any influence over their politicians this way? You're saying corporations can choose who gets into power becasuse they finance them, and the public cant even tell what they're voting for to punish them. It seems all around worse.
That only solves for explicit quid pro quos. It does nothing for the case where corporate sponsors donate to candidates who honestly signal during campaigning that they are the kind of candidate who cares about those sponsors' interests.
I think explicit quid pro quo is far less impactful/prevalent then pro-corporate donors simply looking at the pool of campaigners and putting weight behind candidates that look like they'll vote how the donors want. All that requires is for the donors to be able to at least partially predict future behavior from candidates' current appearance. Secret votes won't change anything on that view.
With regards to secret voting which scenario do you find more probable?
1) Politicians decide to pull a fast on corrupting interests and start voting in the interests of society instead of focusing primarily on what benefits themselves and special interests.
2) Politicians decide to pull a fast one on society and start defacto selling influence more than ever, given they can simply publicly claim they picked the "right" side of any given bill.
Secret voting is one of the characteristics of sortition[1] governance systems.
Just like on a jury for a court case, people are randomly selected from the population to sit on the legislature. They naturally vote their conscience, and when their term is up, they go back to their normal life. Because compliance with a bribers' instructions is unobservable, bribery is not incented.
The beauty of it is that you don't need to hold anyone "accountable" because there is no election, only random selection. Of course, the devil is in the details. Should prisoners be eligible for selection, or the illiterate?
I wonder if the Senate could pass a rule that allows them to choose when to take a secret vote. I don't know of anything in the Constitution that prohibits such.
I like the idea of "blind" or anonymous congressional voting. It feels counterintuitive, but donors might be less willing to "buy" votes if they can't confirm that they're getting what they pay for. And a representative who has accepted lots of corporate money might feel safer "betraying" those donors.
I think representatives would still feel pressure to vote in line with the interests of their constituents and get results, otherwise they get replaced by the next exciting candidate.
I'd prefer the regular public voting and a secret non-binding vote. You'd get a lot of information out of the secret vote telling you what representatives really thought. Especially if it were a landslide in the secret ballot and down party lines in the public one. You can think of plenty of examples of past issues that would have gone that way.
Trotsky explained this nearly a hundred years ago in arguing the dictatorship of the proletariat to Karl kantskys point of contention to the revolution of the working class. the Princeton study could best be summarized as scientific evidence of his conclusion
disclosure: I am a communist and find little value in capitalist reformations.
Wouldn't this be solved rather easily by prohibiting fund raising and using tax dollars to finance campaigns? Everyone gets the same budget? That means money has no sway over politicians and money can't influence the result unfairly.
Unless Citizens United is overturned, this would take a constitutional amendment, "money is speech" per that Supreme Court verdict and so...
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So this puts us as requiring a constitutional amendment since only that can carve out an exception to something earlier in the constitution (see the 21st amendment which repealed prohibition) and unfortunately constitutional amendments have an extremely high bar to clear to make them happen. Not just a "half of the bastards finally agree" like a regular law ...
Per article 5 of the constitution:
> Amendments may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; or by a convention to propose amendments called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures. To become part of the Constitution, an amendment must then be ratified by either—as determined by Congress—the legislatures of three-quarters of the states or by ratifying conventions conducted in three-quarters of the states
75 percent of the state congresses have to agree to it on top of 2/3 of the federal congress.
It will never happen short of some apocalyptic social shift.
Would you enforce that on “friends of the campaign” as well? E.g. Political Action Committees.
John Jackson is running for political office using only public money. However, Big Titanium Inc. creates the privately run and funded “Friends of John Jackson” organization that is entirely unaffiliated with John Jackson but nevertheless runs pro-John Jackson ads in TV.
The issue with this and any proposal is that the people making the decision have no incentive to make it. Politicians limiting their own fundraising, establishing term limits, eliminating gerrymandering, etc. - it goes against their interests.
It's up to us to vote in people who would do this, but as pointed out, it's become difficult to do so in one election for one candidate, let alone the hundreds over the span of several years necessary to get people in place to actually make something positive happen.
Yeah, I'm of the firm opinion that the US is a second world plutocracy that masquerades as a first world democracy by using its military might.
The concept of being the best country in the world (American exceptionalism [0]) is not rooted in fact. In actuality, it's propaganda designed to keep people within US borders instead of seeing them flee to much greener pastures around the globe.
Campaigns need money because voters choose to be governed according to TV ads. This choice certainly frustrates elite nerds like HN readers and Larry Lessig. But it's tough to call it any less legitimate than other exercises of democratic power. To be governed by the people is to be governed by the decision-making heuristics natural to the people. In politics inclusive of everyday people, policy is going to play a minor role. That's how people are.
I'm thinking if "group identity" would be a middle ground: a few representatives belong to a group, e.g. "north texas", they vote anonymously and nobody van see their votes, but the summary vote of the group is visible to everyone.
> The short version is that to win primaries you need money.
And he's wrong.
_That_ problem is caused by the lack of choice. The corruption is the laws passed to entrench the Republican and Democratic party as the only two practical choice on every ballot. The lack of accountability is a direct result of that and nearly all other sources of dysfunction stems from it. The amount of compromise every voter has to make to support their platform of least disgust is the problem.
You can have your candidates in any color you like, so long as that color is blue/red.
As opposed to democracy under one party communist rule? Who cares what Marx said, when we have history of his ideas being tried in Russia, China, North Korea, etc.
> The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want.
That’s arguably a major force that’s destabilizing politics today. Technology makes it super easy to raise hundreds of millions from small donors. But the Act Blue and Win Red donors represent the most ideological segment of their respective parties. That creates a huge incentive to try and play to try Twitter audience by taking extreme positions. Going viral can be worth millions of dollars.
I have heard that same argument elsewhere too, it would also explain why it took a populist outsider like Trump to break through that system while someone like Bernie on the other side couldn't.
IMO, politicians are doing exactly what the people are asking for, which is spending their time virtue signalling rather than writing and negotiating meaningful legislation. Besides that, they do care about handouts, which is why we have so much pork barrel spending and stimulus checks.
It's convenient to blame money in politics, but if that were the case, Congress would at least get something done. For example, Facebook, despite being one of the most heavy lobbying spenders, has spent even more money establishing their content Oversight Board. If they could actually buy politicians, we'd have more regulation that happens to benefit big tech. Both the Republican solution of not allowing social media companies to censor content and the Democratic solution of creating more rules for moderate disinformation are beneficial to Facebook because they can offload some of the responsibility of moderation to the government.
I mostly agree but there isn’t really such a thing as beneficial regulation for tech companies. No rules is always the cheapest and easiest to implement. For example, why would a company even bother with disinformation in the first place if it wasn’t required by the government? You could argue for social reasons or say if you wanted your website to be like Wikipedia, that it serves some purpose, however trying to turn Facebook into Wikipedia seems like a gross misstep.
I don’t think Bernie sanders lost entirely because he didn’t get his funding from rich people or corporations. Democrats don’t like to admit that you also need the approval of the corrupt political bodies that decide everyone ie the DNC.
Yes, the DNC uses superdelegates, which is an undemocratic part of the process. But in both 2016 and 2020, Sanders did poorly enough in the regular primaries that the number of superdelegates was irrelevant to the final outcome.
As much as I hate to say it, and as someone who very much would like to have seen Sanders win either of those primaries, much of America is further to the right than Sanders, and seemingly have no desire to learn the difference between social democracy and socialism.
I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This would get money out of politics the only way I can think of, which is randomly injecting ridiculous amounts to random people.
This general idea is known as "sortition", and actually has quite a long history. In the United States, and many countries, sortition still has a role–people are randomly selected for jury duty.
However, in ancient Athens, one could become a magistrate (~a small-town mayor in modern times) through random selection. There was a term limit of one year, and you were only allowed to serve once in a lifetime. You also had to go through a basic examination called the dokimasia to be deemed competent.
Several other civilizations have used this method over history, typically with the intention of preventing corruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
Agreed. I've always felt such a randomized selection is the only way to have a representative set of people.
The people in legislative positions have a lot of power and there is no way to prevent that since the whole point is for them to have power to run the country.
Thus, it inherently attracts the sort of people who crave power and influence, which is exactly the sort of people who should not be allowed to have it.
So the only solution I can think of is to make it impossible to actively seek those positions of power, by assigning them randomly.
Man, if social media is any indication of how ordinary people would govern, I'm not sure it's a great thing. Granted, maybe ordinary people are quite a lot more moderate or emotionally stable than the likes of Twitter and Reddit.
I actually think it's a wonderful thought puzzle at the least.
The two problems I have with it though, are reflected in Lincoln's 1st inaugural address:
* His criticism of the idea that only the Supreme Court can determine constitutionality: the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal
* His assertion that rule by a minority leads to tyranny or despotism.
If the thought puzzle could be extended by substituting the current closed party primary system with random selection initially - but still have a general election to choose among those candidates, you might find a way of creating a random-democracy hybrid.
I believe this would defeat the purpose of sortition. Giving all representatives such a large amount of money would instantly make them unrepresentative of the population they were selected from. They would all be in the uber-wealthy class, and be incented to make laws that favor that small subset of people.
> Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want.
This gets thrown around a lot, but how often does this actually happen? I feel like we all assume it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if this specific form of corruption were a lot less common than we think.
Trump spent hundreds of millions of dollars officially, outside groups that don't need to report all of their spending (like the NRA) spent further hundreds of millions, and he had hundreds of millions worth of "earned media" due to the circus-like nature of the campaign.
Because he spent marginally less than Ted Cruz in the primary and less than Hillary in the general doesn't give lie to the premise at all. His 2020 reelection campaign spent ~$1 billion when including independent expenditures!
I prefer those with more resources to have more say over the running of our country. On average in a free market those with more resources are better organized and know what’s best for the country. Furthermore the structure of society should be organized to help those that know what they are doing. An unpopular opinion however.
> On average in a free market those with more resources are better organized and know what’s best for the country.
They know what is best for them. It has nothing to do with what is best for the country.
As you are advocating for an oligarchy, I suggest you take a look at all the oligarchies around the world: don't you notice that they are all, without exception, terrible places to live, and not even good places for striving economies? Surely, there must be some fault in your reasoning.
On the contrary, most great countries in the world have something in common: they tend to be democratic, they tend to be quite equal in the distribution of income, and they also tend to be run as social democracies.
It's not just an unpopular opinion, it also shows an utter lack of critical thinking.
Do those with more resources owe them to chance, or did they do actual work?
Of those who worked for more resources, how did they achieve those resources? Are those ways actually in any way beneficial to society at large, or are they not replicable across wide swaths? Or are they possibly deliberately not beneficial to the country, but to those with resources?
Is it possible that growing wealth is easier if you already have access to wealth, merely by having that access?
Why do you think people with more resources actually know what they are doing? There is plentiful evidence to the contrary. (See e.g. Enron)
There is nothing inherent in a free market that means people with more resources are somehow more qualified to lead a country. Maybe they are, maybe they are not, but if you'd like to make that point, you'll need to go well beyond a simple declaration of faith.
Is it reasonable to assume that the wealthiest people are more interested in optimizing society for what is best for the country as a whole or optimizing it so they can acquire more wealth/power? How often are those two possible optimizations in conflict?
I think it is an unpopular opinion for two primary reasons. There are inherent conflicts of interest. Being good at one thing (often being really good at being born with the right parents) does not necessarily correlate with decision making on behalf of society at large.
If anything, people with a track record of amassing wealth should be treated with more suspicion on entering public service.
If all of their other decisions are geared toward increasing their wealth, one has to wonder whether the decision to enter public service is also geared toward increasing their own wealth.
There is a sibling comment explaining why you might not actually want to live in an oligarchy, but regardless of your preference, there are a couple of flaws in your logic.
First. The greatest predictor of individual wealth is their parents’ wealth. This undermines the whole notion of the free market (or at least in its current state) giving rise to a meritocracy.
Second. Statistically, in a completely free and fair economy where all trade is zero-sum and every player will either loose or gain from a trade is up to pure chance, the money in the economy will accumulate to fewer and fewer hands as the number of trades increase. This is a pure statistical phenomena, meaning that as long as some players have more wealth then others, those players have an upper hand in any future trades for that reason only.
The meritocracy of capitalism is a pretty well debunked theory at this point.
Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work.
If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy.
So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a rounding error. Those families then use the power from being in office to enrich their families even more.
One solution could be to double or triple pay for US representatives along with banning stock trading and things like "speaking fees."
I agree with you so much that it's difficult for me to convey. The magnitude of both the upside of good governance as well as the downside of bad governance is so great that it amazes me that we have so few pro-society incentives for competent and well intentioned individuals to serve on the highest governing bodies.
If I could wave a magic wand and change things, here's what I would do:
1. Increase pay for senators by 10x, and for congresspeople by 5x.
2. Institute term limits, maximum of 4 consecutive terms.
3. After leaving office, total ban on direct employment of any kind for a period of time equal to the time spent in office. During this 'freeze' period, give them a pension equal to their pay while in office.
4. Strict limits on the nature of employment allowed for spouses/children/close relatives.
5. Strict limits on volunteer/nonprofit work, board positions, and anything else that isn't direct employment.
6. Lifetime ban on political lobbying.
7. Ban on any investing outside of a blind trust for the duration of their time in office plus the duration of the 'freeze'.
Overall, my thesis is that we should take away as much as possible of the opportunity and the incentive for corruption for the purpose of financial gain. We do that by paying officials gobs of money and preventing them from participating in the system outside of their defined role as a government official.
I'd cut those numbers in half, 5x and 2.5x and the pension at half pay... Over a Million a year for a few years is a great way to bank up a "set for life if I'm smart with my money" stockpile (at least it has been until now, and may continue to be for a little while) and so you want it a little lower to avoid a constant churn of people charging at the gates for a shot at that money.
Otherwise totally agree. I'd even go so far as to say permanent ban on any employment with a step down salary/pension for life, halving with each multiple of the time in office.
You can't reasonably impose employment limits on adult relatives of elected politicians. That would legally be considered a punishment without legal due process. If my sister gets elected to Congress, that's not my problem.
I'd propose the increase be tied to minimum wage, even if the multiplier is huge: salary = 200,000 x 7.25, or whatever the math and numbers work out to be.
How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American? We don't need politicians 15x out of touch with the median American's lifestyle. In NYC governor's last election, there was a question about how much the median house costs in Brooklyn, and two high level candidates gave absolutely bonkers answers like $90k and $120k, when it's actually $900k.
You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
Part of the problem is that if the job doesn’t pay well, it attracts people who are independently wealthy and who are more likely to represent the interests of the wealthy. For most wealthy politicians, the bulk of their wealth comes from a business they own that pays out hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions of dollars) per year, not their 100K-ish government salary.
The upshot of this is that when “the people” get pissed and start saying things like “Don’t pay congress until they fix the government shutdown!”, it unilaterally screws anyone who was working or middle class prior to election, as they now have no salary and can’t hold out as long as the multi-millionaire politicians who have a law firm back home or a huge stock portfolio paying their rent.
The idea that, under the current system, people are running for congress for the money isn’t exactly in line with how things currently operate.
> You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
We also want successful, competent people to enter politics and we should not be giving them reasons to avoid it, such as forcing them to sacrifice their financial freedom and success.
Also, there is a very clear correlation between low legislator pay and corruption in other countries. Let's not make bribes and kickbacks more attractive by taking away other options politicians have for building wealth.
You want to pay people in positions of power so much money that they are afraid of losing their salary by being caught up in a corruption scandal.
This is how America got rid of large swaths of police corruption. Go back 100 years and bribing police was trivial, they made so little money that taking bribes was how they kept afloat financially.
Now days? An officer making $120k a year isn't going to take a $100 bribe to let a drunk driver go free.
> You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
And that's where sortition (vote by lottery) is probably the best system, combined with a way to vote to remove and "Redo lottery".
Whomever is elected by lottery would be provided a "unswayable" amount of money, basically buying corruption away. They would be set for their life.
A lottery of all eligible citizens would also have secondary effects of encouraging high education across the whole populace, so that when Joe or Jane Doe is selected, they do a good job for the citizens.
> You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
Why? I mean you just say that as if it's some universal truth. I don't see how focusing on civic duty is any better as a way to find good candidates than optimizing for high achieving people looking for lucrative fields to work on. I don't know which would yield better results but none is better by default in my view unless you have some romantic view of what politics should be, rather than what it is, a job.
>How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American?
Being dependent on their salary for their lifestyle would make them more in touch than the current "use the power of the office to make money via alternative means" situation.
>You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
That sounds great. I agree in principle.
However, I believe the parent is asserting that in practice, the kinds of people who are competent and able to effectively manage a large organization are the kinds of people that can make a lot of money in the private sector, and thus only go into public office if it is lucrative anyway.
Should it be lucrative because they can get bought by special interests, or should it be more lucrative simply because they get compensated above board more?
Perhaps someone who makes a million dollars a year would be someone less likely to be corrupted by a few more campaign dollars and kickbacks than someone making $170k.
I could not afford my life on a senator's pay. Not even close. Couldn't take the job even if it was offered to me on a silver platter.
President's pay comes with housing so my family could probably make that work, would be belt tightening--especially because I'd be on the hook for the food in state dinners and such.
Not that I think anyone wants me to be a senator or the president but rather I couldn't afford to be. I'm too wealthy for it to be an upgrade and too poor to take the pay cuts in stride.
Stock trading bans are huge detriments to rich people and minor detriments to poor people. 170k is frankly a lot of money. Sure, it could be more. I don’t think it’s all that necessary though.
Something that makes it hard for rich people to represent poor people without losing some wealth seems great to me.
Let's do a trade. Congress people get paid 1mil/year adjusted for inflation plus pension, but in return they don't get to own stocks or real estate while they are in office.
So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? I don't see that going over well. Your primary home is real estate. So is that little family cottage.
Also, congressional reps need to have a home is Washington. So, they have to rent there?
I'd take it further: $1M/year for life, have to divest all investments they own coming in to office (i.e., turn them to cash). Accepting any third party payment during or after being elected (and during campaigns) is treason.
If their kids accept their inheritance, the rules apply to them too. The rules always apply to spouses.
Let them invest in whole-market funds / ETFs, but only allow withdrawls 5 years after leaving office.
Better Idea: $300k base and a performance bonus up to 100% more based on sponsored laws and an additional 100% for passed laws with an extra 100k for no votes missed or abstained. So a perfectly performing congressperson gets a mil.
"few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work."
Is there any data to back that up? Because it seems to me like people are falling all over themselves and saying all kinds of crazy shit just to get into office. It looks to me like we have the opposite problem - certain kinds of people CRAVE this power and attention and will do anything to get it.
I think one issue with this line of thinking is that the USA is completely and fundamentally not a company, and shouldn't be run as such. A company's goal is to maximize profits. A country's goal is to maximize the well-being of their citizens. A company's employees are expendable. A country's citizens need to have their needs looked after 24/7 and are indispensable.
Another commenter here claimed that in Singapore, they pay 3x the national median salary. Singapore is not my cup of tea government-wise, but they are viewed as one of the least corrupt governments in the world.
Certainly that's not solely due to how they are paid, but I'm sure it factors in.
Why would paying more help? You want representatives that represent the public well. Sure you might not want all of congress to be welders, but I also don’t think parliaments around the world should be filled with people who chose between being high rate lawyers or business leaders and holding public office.
The current pay is more than enough. If anything, it could be extended beyond the term to guarantee quarantine periods between office and businesses.
Allowing stock trading is insane. Allowing the amount of campaign money currently circulating is also insane. Provide candidates with campaign funds and limit spending, so they can’t be indebted to corporations once in office.
Basically: just look at some country where politicians aren’t just racing around raising money, and ask “what’s done there and can the same be done in the US?”. This is the that-would-never-work-here thing again.
> I also don’t think parliaments around the world should be filled with people who chose between being high rate lawyers or business leaders and holding public office.
I think that the people I pay to write laws and run a large organization should have...substantial understanding and skill concerning the relation of the structure and content of law to it's pragmatic effects and the practicalities of running large organizations.
Why would I want anything else?
Do I want more diversity of choices? Sure, I want diversity of meaningful policy preference options that would result from having an electoral system that favored proportionality (which is pretty much the best pragmatic definition of representative democracy) rather than duopoly.
The fix for this was in the founding documents. We just jacked it up over the years.
Congress passes laws. They aren't supposed to pass a vague law and then hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies.
The House is the people's house. Each Representative represents some relatively equal number of constituents. The Senate is the States' house. The state legislatures sends senators. The Senators represent the interests of their State.
We jiggered with this, and this is how rich people and corporations can influence so much of what goes on. The original system encourages accountability.
Trying to get clarification, as a layman here I think I'm missing your point. My understanding is that laws are by their nature kind of vague because the world is full of edge cases and they always require interpretation as they encounter new cases.
> hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies.
Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs?
> We jiggered with this
What jiggering are you referring to?
Without understanding your point, I'm all for this legislation as we've seen so many recent US officials enrich themselves with the power they wield.
The thing is though is that the Senators aren't the people that really need to be top talent, it's the bureaucrats that actually implement the legislation and policies that needs to be top talent. Those are the people that should be being paid CEO level salaries because they're the ones that are genuinely running the massive organizations.
That is the wrong solution. There is no evidence that corrupt behavior decreases when wealth is increased. In fact there is evidence to the contrary. A congressperson that can accept bribes with impunity will continue to do so on top of a larger base salary just like they did on top of a lower one.
The real solution is to actually tackle the corruption it self (as proposed by OP).
Official pay was debated by the usa founders. You can imagine a small amount making sense; you can imagine a large amount making sense. You can pretend you're Plato writing The Republic, if you want.
The reality is simple: Official pay is irrelevant. It's the system itself that helps or harms, and most countries are plutocracies.
The length of the campaign season matters more than the pay.
People aren't paid while campaigning, and the US campaign "season" has grown to ridiculous length. It's not realistic to work some other job while doing it anymore (unless that job is being a member of congress), so it has become quite expensive.
I could get behind something like this. If you are re-elected, it would raise your salary.
At the very least, I don't see a problem with blind trusts or only investing in broad index funds and in a specific trading window. Politicians should be able to invest for retirement like everyone else.
Paying them more wont change the types of people that are drawn to politics. Power corrupts regardless of the salary. The only way to fix corruption is to make it illegal and prosecute it ruthlessly.
That sounds unrealistic. How do you make corruption illegal when the people who benefit from corruption are the ones who have the power to make it legal? At the very least, they get to decide which cases to pursue.
Why preclude people who may genuinely want to change things for the better? In your opinion there only seem to be power hungry people (wealthy or not) and career politicians.
Banning trading individual stocks is not the same thing as banning investing. A blind trust isn't a problem for a huge number of fortune 500 company executives.
This seems logical, but you're being naïve if you think politicians aren't going to skirt these regulations. I mean, shit, they're already insider-trading out in the open and nobody events wants to spend 3 seconds looking into it. Keep in mind, that's a swift prison sentence for a mere mortal.
We need people who truly want to make a difference and take pride in the outcomes of their work. I'm thinking of the likes of "founding fathers" who came out of turmoil and persecutions to build something better. They knew they ain't going back to the shit they came from and they carried that forward for several generations. We no longer have that craving to do better. It's been long-lost during decades of enormous prosperity and chill lives. Our problems are miniscule in comparison to what they once were.
So now, we have people who don't give a shit about anything except for their iPhones and daily celeb videos on TikTok. It's this lack of curiosity and any kind of knowledge about the state of things from general population is how you end up with greedy sociopaths running everything in politics. This country needs a decade of actual turmoil to wake everyone up out of their idle stupor. Nothing will change until everyone is fed up and craving for normalcy. In other words - we're kind of doomed.
I've been collecting and sharing (@QuiverCongress on Twitter) data on stock trading by U.S. congressmen for the past couple years.
While there is currently legislation that requires congressmen to disclose their financial dealings, enforcement around it is incredibly weak.
Congressmen are supposed to disclose stock transactions within 45 days of when they are made, but in practice there are dozens of violations of this rule which result in hardly a slap on the wrist. I've seen a couple cases of politicians conveniently waiting till after election cycles to disclose controversial trades.
While I'm generally pessimistic about the odds of congress voting to regulate itself, I'm still hopeful that something comes from this push. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement.
Yeah, I definitely don't want to write it off entirely.
The STOCK act passed 96-3, so while congress might not tend to be keen on regulating themselves, it's not completely allergic.
Interestingly, one of the 3 'no' votes on the STOCK act was later engaged in some of the fishiest trading I've seen around the start of COVID. Here's a visual I made on it:
Binding resolution allows for We the People to force the legislative body to enact legislation that they oppose. This is now cannibals become legal in Colorado. Unfortunately not all states have binding resolution nor are legislative body willing to empower the people. Binding resolution also needs to be bound at a Federal level, which it is not, to bring in true balance of power and laws that have true accountability. Such as all money gained through insider trading is forfeited along with possible jail time and possible loss ability to be a constitute representative.
If binding resolution was an available tool for We the People, legislative body would work move together than separately.
I'm not sure a complete ban is necessasry, but their investments should be moved to a blind trust while they are in office, and perhaps for some time afterwards.
Ahaha I always love the calls for political violence in the US, because we've experienced so little (relative to other parts of the world). Honestly it shows how well off we've been these last decades to have the luxury to call for someone else to kill a politician for us because we're upset.
You have no concept of the injustice that would arise if "the people" begin murdering politicians in the street again.
So many books cover the hideous nature of mob justice, so-called "revolutions", and their gruesome knock-on effects, there's really no excuse to be this undereducated about what you're saying.
So should all politicians receive money exclusively from lobbyists/donors? Or I guess they should go get paycheck jobs somewhere?
Where does a politicians money come from? If they exclusively received their money from stock trading as opposed to lobbyists/donors, how do you think the policy decisions would change?
Eh, I don't think it is. Most members of Congress aren't minting money trading stock. The revolving door is far more insidious. Pointing at this lets pass make minor reforms, chuck a surprise at the eternally cynical and keep the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The partisanship of the accusations also helps galvanize support. Republicans can claim to be sticking it to Pelosi. Democrats can better cover their flank. The base will eat it up. Nobody in finance cares. And like two members of Congress will be slightly diminished millionaires. Broadly, a win-win. (Even if more marginally than presented.)
Lots of great ideas here around how to augment the Congressional voting system to counter influence of dark, corporate money, but as a few have pointed out, not voting at all seems to be preferred on most potential legislation. I think that's because super PACs and corporate lobbyists are fighting for overall influence, not legislative outcomes --that is, how existing law is regulated/interpreted, how Congresspersons posture on various issues that are far away from a vote (esp. when affecting economic outcomes), and most importantly how Congresspersons wield the threat of their powers (e.g. initiating an inquiry or whatever the formality is into their corporate patron's rival).
This is dead on arrival. They aren't even going to get a solid majority of Democrats on board and there's going to be absolutely zero Republican support. I would honestly be amazed if it even made it to the house floor.
Readit News
It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE
The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want. Thus the primary corrupting force in America is pro-corruption campaign finance laws.
The test for democracy is whether elected politicians pass legislation that the public at large wishes to be passed. Our very own Princeton did a study to answer this question.
The key finding: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[1]
In a very real, non hyperbolic sense we are in a plutocracy where money rules. We are not a democracy due chiefly to our campaign finance laws.
Here is a campaign that aims to work on this: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".
I remember seeing a chart of how much money a Senator had to raise every week for their next race and it was stark bonkers (and this was in the 90s, before Citizens United). I just checked and the figure is even worse now. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/state-of-money-in-p...
From that article, victorious senate candidates have to spend an average of about 16 million. So if you are already a Senator looking forward to your next race you have to raise about 80k a week!. And you are not getting that kind of money from the average citizen.
Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system (not all, but a very big part).
>"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".
To add to this, we (americans) also never refer to our own elite class as oligarchs. That's reserved for other countries, because ours is a totally fair, democratic, and meritocratic society, and we're definitely not ruled by a small group of well connected rich people.
I disagree that money is the root. Money is still one level above the true root, which is what the money is needed to buy: "Re-election." Thus, an alternative, though unconventional, solution is single-term limits. Once elected to any national public office, you can never run for that or any other elected office again. One and done.
This idea is not without it's share of potential problems, but I think that's true of any potential solution that has a chance of actually working. After thinking it through, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the "single-term" set of potential downsides over the others.
It's the same here in Europe, we are joking how elites in US legalized corruption and called it lobbying, it's really weird for us (outside of US), that people just go along with this state of things and do nothing about it, like almost whole population would be after some kind of long period of brain washing in US.
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Here's a good summary of subsequent research that debunked it. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
Even if the study were true it shows that when economic elites (150k+) disagree with the middle class they get there way more often. (Btw it showed that the middle class and the rich agreed like 80-90% of the time on policy, and when they disagreed it wasn't by very many percentage points)
But a much more likely scenario than corruption is senators/representatives/presidents are all members of the economic elite, and all their friends are members of the elite and so it's no surprise they share the same opinions as their friends/wives/family members and socio-economic class.
It might not be a popular opinion, but perhaps we should double the wages of US Representatives (they currently make $175k—not a lot in Washington DC). Is paying US representatives $350k worth the money?
First, a bigger financial cushion for representatives might reduce financial corruption. Second, a bigger salary might attract more talented leaders. Potentially, paying higher salaries would increase the quality of US governance. God, imagine if we could just pay for increased quality in government leaders!
TIL that in 1789, the US president made $25k—- worth $800k in 2022. But today, the US president makes $400k. Why try to save money on presidents and politicians?
However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate.
Who cares if Raytheon or Disney "owns" a given representative if those corporate sponsors can't actually be sure that they're getting the votes they paid for. It would also neutralize a lot of the petty party line votes and manipulation. Every issue would ostensibly be decided based on the representatives' actual value system.
Obviously the downside would be that the public at large would be unable to hold their representative accountable for a particular vote, but that seems like the lesser concern compared to the very obvious corporate vote buying and party-line bullshit that happens today.
I think explicit quid pro quo is far less impactful/prevalent then pro-corporate donors simply looking at the pool of campaigners and putting weight behind candidates that look like they'll vote how the donors want. All that requires is for the donors to be able to at least partially predict future behavior from candidates' current appearance. Secret votes won't change anything on that view.
1) Politicians decide to pull a fast on corrupting interests and start voting in the interests of society instead of focusing primarily on what benefits themselves and special interests.
2) Politicians decide to pull a fast one on society and start defacto selling influence more than ever, given they can simply publicly claim they picked the "right" side of any given bill.
Just like on a jury for a court case, people are randomly selected from the population to sit on the legislature. They naturally vote their conscience, and when their term is up, they go back to their normal life. Because compliance with a bribers' instructions is unobservable, bribery is not incented.
The beauty of it is that you don't need to hold anyone "accountable" because there is no election, only random selection. Of course, the devil is in the details. Should prisoners be eligible for selection, or the illiterate?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
I think representatives would still feel pressure to vote in line with the interests of their constituents and get results, otherwise they get replaced by the next exciting candidate.
Both houses essentially have this. It is called a voice vote.
I imagine blind voting would also serve to assuage the worries of legislators. If only we knew what each worried about.
disclosure: I am a communist and find little value in capitalist reformations.
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> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So this puts us as requiring a constitutional amendment since only that can carve out an exception to something earlier in the constitution (see the 21st amendment which repealed prohibition) and unfortunately constitutional amendments have an extremely high bar to clear to make them happen. Not just a "half of the bastards finally agree" like a regular law ...
Per article 5 of the constitution:
> Amendments may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; or by a convention to propose amendments called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures. To become part of the Constitution, an amendment must then be ratified by either—as determined by Congress—the legislatures of three-quarters of the states or by ratifying conventions conducted in three-quarters of the states
75 percent of the state congresses have to agree to it on top of 2/3 of the federal congress.
It will never happen short of some apocalyptic social shift.
It's up to us to vote in people who would do this, but as pointed out, it's become difficult to do so in one election for one candidate, let alone the hundreds over the span of several years necessary to get people in place to actually make something positive happen.
https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-uni...
The concept of being the best country in the world (American exceptionalism [0]) is not rooted in fact. In actuality, it's propaganda designed to keep people within US borders instead of seeing them flee to much greener pastures around the globe.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
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What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws against their best interest?
What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws that are deeply immoral?
Democracy and good judgment are orthogonal concerns.
> What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws that are deeply immoral?
Democracy and morality of policy are orthogonal concerns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6w9CbemhVY
Isn’t that just rule of the majority? Since when has that been a test of a republic?
And he's wrong.
_That_ problem is caused by the lack of choice. The corruption is the laws passed to entrench the Republican and Democratic party as the only two practical choice on every ballot. The lack of accountability is a direct result of that and nearly all other sources of dysfunction stems from it. The amount of compromise every voter has to make to support their platform of least disgust is the problem.
You can have your candidates in any color you like, so long as that color is blue/red.
If this was ever correct, it’s certainly wrong today. Trump, for example, was primarily funded by small donors: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/politics/trump-fundrai...
That’s arguably a major force that’s destabilizing politics today. Technology makes it super easy to raise hundreds of millions from small donors. But the Act Blue and Win Red donors represent the most ideological segment of their respective parties. That creates a huge incentive to try and play to try Twitter audience by taking extreme positions. Going viral can be worth millions of dollars.
It's convenient to blame money in politics, but if that were the case, Congress would at least get something done. For example, Facebook, despite being one of the most heavy lobbying spenders, has spent even more money establishing their content Oversight Board. If they could actually buy politicians, we'd have more regulation that happens to benefit big tech. Both the Republican solution of not allowing social media companies to censor content and the Democratic solution of creating more rules for moderate disinformation are beneficial to Facebook because they can offload some of the responsibility of moderation to the government.
As much as I hate to say it, and as someone who very much would like to have seen Sanders win either of those primaries, much of America is further to the right than Sanders, and seemingly have no desire to learn the difference between social democracy and socialism.
However, in ancient Athens, one could become a magistrate (~a small-town mayor in modern times) through random selection. There was a term limit of one year, and you were only allowed to serve once in a lifetime. You also had to go through a basic examination called the dokimasia to be deemed competent.
Several other civilizations have used this method over history, typically with the intention of preventing corruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
The people in legislative positions have a lot of power and there is no way to prevent that since the whole point is for them to have power to run the country.
Thus, it inherently attracts the sort of people who crave power and influence, which is exactly the sort of people who should not be allowed to have it.
So the only solution I can think of is to make it impossible to actively seek those positions of power, by assigning them randomly.
Why would they have any incentive to do a good job?
Also, why would they have any desire?
Also, that seems like a lot of money. >95% of people would be happy with the $1M per year salary.
I actually think it's a wonderful thought puzzle at the least.
The two problems I have with it though, are reflected in Lincoln's 1st inaugural address:
* His criticism of the idea that only the Supreme Court can determine constitutionality: the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal
* His assertion that rule by a minority leads to tyranny or despotism.
If the thought puzzle could be extended by substituting the current closed party primary system with random selection initially - but still have a general election to choose among those candidates, you might find a way of creating a random-democracy hybrid.
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This gets thrown around a lot, but how often does this actually happen? I feel like we all assume it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if this specific form of corruption were a lot less common than we think.
Because he spent marginally less than Ted Cruz in the primary and less than Hillary in the general doesn't give lie to the premise at all. His 2020 reelection campaign spent ~$1 billion when including independent expenditures!
They know what is best for them. It has nothing to do with what is best for the country.
As you are advocating for an oligarchy, I suggest you take a look at all the oligarchies around the world: don't you notice that they are all, without exception, terrible places to live, and not even good places for striving economies? Surely, there must be some fault in your reasoning.
On the contrary, most great countries in the world have something in common: they tend to be democratic, they tend to be quite equal in the distribution of income, and they also tend to be run as social democracies.
Do those with more resources owe them to chance, or did they do actual work?
Of those who worked for more resources, how did they achieve those resources? Are those ways actually in any way beneficial to society at large, or are they not replicable across wide swaths? Or are they possibly deliberately not beneficial to the country, but to those with resources?
Is it possible that growing wealth is easier if you already have access to wealth, merely by having that access?
Why do you think people with more resources actually know what they are doing? There is plentiful evidence to the contrary. (See e.g. Enron)
There is nothing inherent in a free market that means people with more resources are somehow more qualified to lead a country. Maybe they are, maybe they are not, but if you'd like to make that point, you'll need to go well beyond a simple declaration of faith.
I think it is an unpopular opinion for two primary reasons. There are inherent conflicts of interest. Being good at one thing (often being really good at being born with the right parents) does not necessarily correlate with decision making on behalf of society at large.
If all of their other decisions are geared toward increasing their wealth, one has to wonder whether the decision to enter public service is also geared toward increasing their own wealth.
No, they don't, and there's not a rational or logical reason to infer they do.
First. The greatest predictor of individual wealth is their parents’ wealth. This undermines the whole notion of the free market (or at least in its current state) giving rise to a meritocracy.
Second. Statistically, in a completely free and fair economy where all trade is zero-sum and every player will either loose or gain from a trade is up to pure chance, the money in the economy will accumulate to fewer and fewer hands as the number of trades increase. This is a pure statistical phenomena, meaning that as long as some players have more wealth then others, those players have an upper hand in any future trades for that reason only.
The meritocracy of capitalism is a pretty well debunked theory at this point.
If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy.
So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a rounding error. Those families then use the power from being in office to enrich their families even more.
One solution could be to double or triple pay for US representatives along with banning stock trading and things like "speaking fees."
If I could wave a magic wand and change things, here's what I would do:
1. Increase pay for senators by 10x, and for congresspeople by 5x.
2. Institute term limits, maximum of 4 consecutive terms.
3. After leaving office, total ban on direct employment of any kind for a period of time equal to the time spent in office. During this 'freeze' period, give them a pension equal to their pay while in office.
4. Strict limits on the nature of employment allowed for spouses/children/close relatives.
5. Strict limits on volunteer/nonprofit work, board positions, and anything else that isn't direct employment.
6. Lifetime ban on political lobbying.
7. Ban on any investing outside of a blind trust for the duration of their time in office plus the duration of the 'freeze'.
Overall, my thesis is that we should take away as much as possible of the opportunity and the incentive for corruption for the purpose of financial gain. We do that by paying officials gobs of money and preventing them from participating in the system outside of their defined role as a government official.
Otherwise totally agree. I'd even go so far as to say permanent ban on any employment with a step down salary/pension for life, halving with each multiple of the time in office.
You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
The upshot of this is that when “the people” get pissed and start saying things like “Don’t pay congress until they fix the government shutdown!”, it unilaterally screws anyone who was working or middle class prior to election, as they now have no salary and can’t hold out as long as the multi-millionaire politicians who have a law firm back home or a huge stock portfolio paying their rent.
The idea that, under the current system, people are running for congress for the money isn’t exactly in line with how things currently operate.
We also want successful, competent people to enter politics and we should not be giving them reasons to avoid it, such as forcing them to sacrifice their financial freedom and success.
Also, there is a very clear correlation between low legislator pay and corruption in other countries. Let's not make bribes and kickbacks more attractive by taking away other options politicians have for building wealth.
This is how America got rid of large swaths of police corruption. Go back 100 years and bribing police was trivial, they made so little money that taking bribes was how they kept afloat financially.
Now days? An officer making $120k a year isn't going to take a $100 bribe to let a drunk driver go free.
1. The selfless (or the insane or crazy activists) 2. The rich 3. The corrupt
When you pay people a lot you also get
4. Competent hard working people who aren't necessarily selfless. (this is most people)
This group of people makes up the vast majority of people in the US, so why not have some of those people represent us.
And that's where sortition (vote by lottery) is probably the best system, combined with a way to vote to remove and "Redo lottery".
Whomever is elected by lottery would be provided a "unswayable" amount of money, basically buying corruption away. They would be set for their life.
A lottery of all eligible citizens would also have secondary effects of encouraging high education across the whole populace, so that when Joe or Jane Doe is selected, they do a good job for the citizens.
Why? I mean you just say that as if it's some universal truth. I don't see how focusing on civic duty is any better as a way to find good candidates than optimizing for high achieving people looking for lucrative fields to work on. I don't know which would yield better results but none is better by default in my view unless you have some romantic view of what politics should be, rather than what it is, a job.
Being dependent on their salary for their lifestyle would make them more in touch than the current "use the power of the office to make money via alternative means" situation.
That sounds great. I agree in principle.
However, I believe the parent is asserting that in practice, the kinds of people who are competent and able to effectively manage a large organization are the kinds of people that can make a lot of money in the private sector, and thus only go into public office if it is lucrative anyway.
Should it be lucrative because they can get bought by special interests, or should it be more lucrative simply because they get compensated above board more?
Perhaps someone who makes a million dollars a year would be someone less likely to be corrupted by a few more campaign dollars and kickbacks than someone making $170k.
President's pay comes with housing so my family could probably make that work, would be belt tightening--especially because I'd be on the hook for the food in state dinners and such.
Not that I think anyone wants me to be a senator or the president but rather I couldn't afford to be. I'm too wealthy for it to be an upgrade and too poor to take the pay cuts in stride.
Something that makes it hard for rich people to represent poor people without losing some wealth seems great to me.
So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? I don't see that going over well. Your primary home is real estate. So is that little family cottage.
Also, congressional reps need to have a home is Washington. So, they have to rent there?
If their kids accept their inheritance, the rules apply to them too. The rules always apply to spouses.
Let them invest in whole-market funds / ETFs, but only allow withdrawls 5 years after leaving office.
I'm open to disallowing real estate speculation.
Is there any data to back that up? Because it seems to me like people are falling all over themselves and saying all kinds of crazy shit just to get into office. It looks to me like we have the opposite problem - certain kinds of people CRAVE this power and attention and will do anything to get it.
As you mentioned, people love power. But there is a very, very thin slice of the population that has the ability to run for a federal office.
Clearly we can't pay lawmakers $0 and expert high effort + no corruption.
is there any proof of any way that saying pay from 170k a year to ??? 1 million USD? a year would have any impact on the problems?
Do countries with less corrupt lawmakers pay more than the US? I doubt that...
If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too.
I'd chip into the "Pay Manchin a ransom of $50M to not do $50T of damage to the planet" fund.
Certainly that's not solely due to how they are paid, but I'm sure it factors in.
This assumes ones level of corruption has to do with income. Is that true or are there other factors?
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The current pay is more than enough. If anything, it could be extended beyond the term to guarantee quarantine periods between office and businesses.
Allowing stock trading is insane. Allowing the amount of campaign money currently circulating is also insane. Provide candidates with campaign funds and limit spending, so they can’t be indebted to corporations once in office.
Basically: just look at some country where politicians aren’t just racing around raising money, and ask “what’s done there and can the same be done in the US?”. This is the that-would-never-work-here thing again.
I think that the people I pay to write laws and run a large organization should have...substantial understanding and skill concerning the relation of the structure and content of law to it's pragmatic effects and the practicalities of running large organizations.
Why would I want anything else?
Do I want more diversity of choices? Sure, I want diversity of meaningful policy preference options that would result from having an electoral system that favored proportionality (which is pretty much the best pragmatic definition of representative democracy) rather than duopoly.
Congress passes laws. They aren't supposed to pass a vague law and then hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies.
The House is the people's house. Each Representative represents some relatively equal number of constituents. The Senate is the States' house. The state legislatures sends senators. The Senators represent the interests of their State.
We jiggered with this, and this is how rich people and corporations can influence so much of what goes on. The original system encourages accountability.
> hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies.
Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs?
> We jiggered with this
What jiggering are you referring to?
Without understanding your point, I'm all for this legislation as we've seen so many recent US officials enrich themselves with the power they wield.
The real solution is to actually tackle the corruption it self (as proposed by OP).
The reality is simple: Official pay is irrelevant. It's the system itself that helps or harms, and most countries are plutocracies.
People aren't paid while campaigning, and the US campaign "season" has grown to ridiculous length. It's not realistic to work some other job while doing it anymore (unless that job is being a member of congress), so it has become quite expensive.
At the very least, I don't see a problem with blind trusts or only investing in broad index funds and in a specific trading window. Politicians should be able to invest for retirement like everyone else.
We need people who truly want to make a difference and take pride in the outcomes of their work. I'm thinking of the likes of "founding fathers" who came out of turmoil and persecutions to build something better. They knew they ain't going back to the shit they came from and they carried that forward for several generations. We no longer have that craving to do better. It's been long-lost during decades of enormous prosperity and chill lives. Our problems are miniscule in comparison to what they once were.
So now, we have people who don't give a shit about anything except for their iPhones and daily celeb videos on TikTok. It's this lack of curiosity and any kind of knowledge about the state of things from general population is how you end up with greedy sociopaths running everything in politics. This country needs a decade of actual turmoil to wake everyone up out of their idle stupor. Nothing will change until everyone is fed up and craving for normalcy. In other words - we're kind of doomed.
While there is currently legislation that requires congressmen to disclose their financial dealings, enforcement around it is incredibly weak.
Congressmen are supposed to disclose stock transactions within 45 days of when they are made, but in practice there are dozens of violations of this rule which result in hardly a slap on the wrist. I've seen a couple cases of politicians conveniently waiting till after election cycles to disclose controversial trades.
While I'm generally pessimistic about the odds of congress voting to regulate itself, I'm still hopeful that something comes from this push. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement.
Yes, Congress is reluctant to specifically legislate against itself, so to make it happens a stink must be raised.
The STOCK act passed 96-3, so while congress might not tend to be keen on regulating themselves, it's not completely allergic.
Interestingly, one of the 3 'no' votes on the STOCK act was later engaged in some of the fishiest trading I've seen around the start of COVID. Here's a visual I made on it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/gwocvt/sen...
If binding resolution was an available tool for We the People, legislative body would work move together than separately.
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I hope congress can get its act together and serve its constituents better before it comes to that, but it feels naive.
So many books cover the hideous nature of mob justice, so-called "revolutions", and their gruesome knock-on effects, there's really no excuse to be this undereducated about what you're saying.
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Where does a politicians money come from? If they exclusively received their money from stock trading as opposed to lobbyists/donors, how do you think the policy decisions would change?
Eh, I don't think it is. Most members of Congress aren't minting money trading stock. The revolving door is far more insidious. Pointing at this lets pass make minor reforms, chuck a surprise at the eternally cynical and keep the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The partisanship of the accusations also helps galvanize support. Republicans can claim to be sticking it to Pelosi. Democrats can better cover their flank. The base will eat it up. Nobody in finance cares. And like two members of Congress will be slightly diminished millionaires. Broadly, a win-win. (Even if more marginally than presented.)
The title of this thread is pretty misleading as members of both parties have been taking pot shots at each other over this issue for some time now.
Nancy Pelosi in particular has taken quite a bit of heat for years as her husband has made some amazingly well timed trades.
That would be a tremendous starting line.