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Comment by maxcan | Hacker News Reader

100% agree. I'd be fine with 7 or 8 figure salaries for members of congress, the president, and top executives along with very strict rules on investments: treasuries with a small allocation to broad market, long only ETFs: S&P500, MSCI World, etc.

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Executives get that kind of salary because their tenure is short, they are under pressure, and they are (at least in theory) held accountable for performance by multiple stakeholders (employees, shareholders, the board, customers, etc). Members of Congress have a sky high re-election rate, have a much less stressful lifestyle, and are generally not held to such an account for their activity. We want to disincentivize choosing politics as a career, not encourage it.

Perhaps these races would be more competitive if there were a few million more reasons to win.

Why do we want to disincentivize career politics? I feel like raising the incentives will improve the ability of the average politician.

People don't go into politics for the paycheck.

This wouldn't change if the salaries went up 10x, or even 100x.

Influence is worth far more than cash ever could be.

One of the problems that creates is only certain types of people can afford to go into politics. Improving the pay for staffers might go a long way to reduce some of the revolving door cycles that many people find so distasteful

I don't see how it helps.

The expensive part is GETTING elected, not serving. If you don't have the resources to win, the salary doesn't help you.

People don’t go into politics for the paycheck because only the wealthy and the incumbents have the ability to sustain a months-long campaign. That’s the real reason we have people in Washington who represent Wall Street instead of Main Street.

Indeed, campaigns should be in the public interest. Nobody should be able to accept donations from anyone for a run for office. They should receive budgets from the FEC and it should be illegal to use any money for the campaign above and beyond that, even their own. That would solve a lot of problems. Run out? Tough. This eliminates an awful lot of conflicts of interest and allows candidates to run on their own merits.

That's meaningless without doing away with Citizens United. All the real money goes into the slush funds and not the campaigns.

I agree completely. They should not exist either.

My fear is that the FEC rules would be written in a way that discourages third parties, or non-incumbents.

You mean like they are now?

7/8 figures seems a bit much no?

535 members of congress, each making $10M/year adds up to about $15/year per American.

That seems like a lot to me though. You can make many expensive things look not that expensive if you put it in terms of “per American”. It’s just the there are many things and they all add up. E.g can’t you just pay them 1 million and use the 90% savings to buy X nurses?

I don’t have any data to inform my decision on what would be the best number though so I should shut up.

It's not a lot for any individual American.

The reason to oppose it can't be "I can't afford it". It's more "those bastards don't deserve it". And that's not how mature adults should think about things.

Compared to the impact the federal government has on all our lives, it's nothing. If it resulted in 1% better governance, it would be a really well spent $15.

Right, I'm just saying it's not clear to me where the 10 million figure came from? And it seems very high for a government salary. Obviously if it's justified to work then I'm for it.

Someone said "7/8 figures seems a bit much no?".

$10M is 8 figures.

I agree it's high :) $1M might be enough.

if the fact that paying them more results in a better society, it may be worth it. The absolute amount is irrelevant if the return on this investment is greater.

A higher paid politician is also less likely to be corrupt (since the agent causing the corruption will need to beat their high salary, which is risk free). A higher paid politician will not need to worry about blowbacks from policies that are good for society but bad for existing entrenched players.

And a higher paid politician may encourage people, even if they were poor initially, to work to become a career politician (and study it, the same way a neurosurgeon or any other professional trade would). High pay almost always equate to high intelligence, and i would hope that an intelligent person is also someone who can run things better.

The prime minister of Singapore has a salary of more than 2 million US dollars, and being a competent POTUS is a much more demanding job.

Not relative to their responsibilities. The US federal government takes in about $3.5T per year and employs about 2m people. Private sector executives routinely get 8 and 9 figure comp for running organizations 1/10th or even 1/100th that size.

Also, remember that this is "in exchange" for anyone who assumes office to mostly forgo income from individual investments and I'd add things like book deals and honoraria after office. Someone mentioned Singapore and that's my example case here.

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