Bipartisan group, unveil bill to ban Congress/lawmakers from owning stocks
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
Actually, it's worse than that. It erodes trust in the entire system. Not only can they trade on privileged information, they can use their power to influece industry, markets, etc.
Random example: for-profit prisons. Have a handful of representatives benefitted from stock trades and the privatization of prisons? Probably. But that's nothing compared to the cost of the sociopolitical damage caused by The Prison Industrial Complex that those representatives enabled.
Look how many politicians leave office for jobs that pay 10x more. We're told it is for their future influence. But how often is it for served-special-interests job well done? Let's not be naive.
And while we're on the general subject, how is it the SC doesn't have a formal code of ethics?
There are so many ways potential bribery is legal.
It seems so few good people want to be politicians. I wouldn't want to do it at all for instance (and not claiming the following necessarily applies to me either), but we need objective, rational, honest, intelligent, visionary, compassionate people to make decisions.
Instead (it seems to me) we get foolish influence peddlers for the most part. Maybe they don't start off like that but it seems to be where the road often leads. Perhaps this is just part of the human condition, but I sure hope for better.
Private prisons are insignificant. The total government spending on private prisons at all levels is less than 1% of the government run prisons' payroll. Almost nobody is imprisoned in a privately run prison in the USA. (Private immigration detention is more significant)
Private prisons are a distraction from the real privatization issue in the prison system: public prisons outsourcing services to private companies. Nearly every prisoner in the US has to pay a private company a large amount of money to talk to their family. This is despite the fact we know that improving communication between prisoners and their family significantly decreases the risk they'll commit crimes once released. Rather than have the prison pay a fee to the company the company pays the prison a kickback from their profits, corrupting the incentives.
The cost to society is significantly more than that budget figure.
"U.S. incarcerates more than any other nation: report"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-prison-idUSN286...
> does how much sociopolitical damage? It leeds to how many damaged individuals? How much does it contribute to the need social support programs...
Compared to publicly run prisons it leads to much much less damage
> The cost to society is significantly more than that budget figure.
Absolutely. But it works to compare them: the social cost of private and public prisons is probably roughly proportional to their budget.
> "U.S. incarcerates more than any other nation: report"
A huge problem I agree. But not one that would be fixed by getting rid of private prisons.
Fixed 100%? No. But you might be underestimating the power and influence of the Prison Industrial Complex. They can dump money into anyone and anything that promotes fear of higher crime. Their lobbying can discourage restorative justice, etc.
These _______ Industrial Complexes don't sit still. They're like any other company / industry...they do whatever they can to create more demand for their product.
Total private prison profits are less than 5% of military industrial complex donations to Congress. They aren't comparable.
https://www.citizen.org/article/military-industrial-complex-...
Recently there was a judge who was being paid off to send more juveniles to a local facility. Let's not be naive. Similar is happening elsewhere. We simply don't know about it.
The MIC wrote the blue print and other industries said, "We can do that as well." Whether that's prisons or pharma or...take your picks. Just because The MIC is massive and is the OG doesn't mean these other forces aren't exerting their will. They have more than enough resources (money) to kick greed into high gear. The MIC is proud of its children.
Politicians are the most influential people in any given country. If the salary alone becomes a good incentive for people to go into politics, you'll get less ideologues, more people who would otherwise go into the private sector, less of a disconnect between their status and their wealth and less of an incentive to take corrupt deals, since they're already independently wealthy.
And you'll notice the reps who say things like "if we can't work we should voluntarily suspend our salary" are the ones with significant other revenue sources.