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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

I think there are two entirely separate concerns. First, is the salary for Speaker of the House sufficient. Second, isn't it a bit of a coincidence that Pelosi and her husband made 100+ million for themselves investing in stocks through his investment company while she was in Congress? Maybe that's just a coincidence.

I don't think we could meaningfully increase salaries. Pelosi is still making money despite having a hundred million. How much more should we pay? What would satiate her or those in her position such that they would be immune from inducements? I think back to Roman politicians, who, despite being monstrously wealthy, were still monstrously corrupt.

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The way to do it is to give a very generous salary and to simultaneously crack down hard on even the appearance of impropriety. Neither is being done right now, and part of the reason is that you can't really do one without the other[1], so you're stuck in a bit of a catch-22.

[1] You can't crack down on on public servants questionably but not clearly criminally making money on the side if everyone that's supposed to be doing the cracking down are also public servants who sympathize (more cynically, are in on the same gig) because they're also making a fraction of what their peers are making. And you can't pay your public servants more when the people are fuming at the individually arguable but clear-in-aggregate corruption that is rampant.

I think you can crack down on even the appearance of corruption without paying huge salaries. I don't see why not. The two concerns seem orthogonal to me.

I think we should crack down on even the appearance of corruption in judges, prosecutors, FBI agents, etc. Does that mean we need to pay each of them so much that they are effectively unbribe-able?

Finally, it seems very strange to answer clear-in-aggregate corruption by paying the corrupt more money. I worry that if we aren't able to stem the corruption now, then giving our wealthy and corrupt rulers more money won't really help.

> I think you can crack down on even the appearance of corruption without paying huge salaries.

Sure, go ahead.

Less flippantly: Of course there's no law of physics forbidding it, but I believe the structural dynamics I described make this infeasible. I would be happy to see examples of societies that prove otherwise though.

> Finally, it seems very strange to answer clear-in-aggregate corruption by paying the corrupt more money.

Yes it is, which is why that's not really feasible either. Hence the catch-22.

>Does that mean we need to pay each of them so much that they are effectively unbribe-able?

Why don’t we use the security clearance model? We don’t pay people that work in intelligence operations huge salaries, but we also don’t want them sell secrets to Russia. Any of them could be bribable. So we do extensive background checks and evaluate their finances, criminal record, foreign contacts, etc. for red flags. Then investigate, suspend, or revoke clearances based on any new red flags that come in. We could do a version of that for legislators. We won’t, but we could.

Unfortunately people are greedy. I don't think there's a generous salary that would cause them to not want more. They could be making $50M a year, and they would still want more.

I don't know what the solution would be, perhaps your suggestion isn't too bad and a good start.

> I don't think there's a generous salary that would cause them to not want more.

The point is that you give them a generous salary and take it away if they misbehave. Every carrot is a stick in waiting.

$225k/yr plus healthcare and pension for a part time job is a generous salary!

They also get speaking fees, book sales, etc.

The only thing you really can do is limit their power.

225k is already an extremely generous salary.

I don't care who you are, or what power you think you have, I don't see why society should tolerate your greed if you think you need or deserve more than that. That buys an extremely comfortable life anywhere you look.

I don't see why we should tolerate people seeking extravagant lives over comfortable ones. It's disgusting.

Seriously you're arguing a multi-millionaire needs a higher salary give your head a shake.

Okay! Then make that apply to everyone, and maybe that could work. Note, that means no 10mil more bonuses for bankers, no 600k salaries for engineers or wall street traders, etc.

Otherwise why would you pay an important public servant shit (comparatively) while you pay the bankers who are a leech on our economy handsomely?

No one said anything about bankers and engineers or whoever else. I'm fine with them making less too.

Post I was replying to was literally advocating for a higher salary for someone with a 9 figure net worth. As though MORE money would make her behave less greedy.

Absurd.

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