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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

Its not just the US either. Meta hired a former British deputy Prime Minister and leader (Nick Clegg) and it happens everywhere.

I think what is needed is restrictions on jobs people can do after leaving public office.

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If I have to sign a non-compete agreement in the private sector, it seems very reasonable to have a similar restriction for public employees.

Politicians should have a cap on the amount their net worth can increase for the rest of their life.

Let it be a price of public service. Let them build a society that works for normal people, and then they'll be fine being a normal person.

They already get generous pensions.

But yes, cap their wealth, limit their stock investments to broad market ETF for stocks and bonds. Extend this to spouses and probably children (for a term). Perhaps provide them with housing in Washington DC.

And attempts to bypass the limits should have very harsh punishments.

Politics should be like teaching - no one does it for the money.

That cap better be near a billion.

If you were the VP of some company with a trillion dollars of revenue your compensation wouldn't be under a million/year.

That's not a normal person and shouldn't be a politician.

Just place all their assets into a blind trust, perhaps a "congressional employees' index fund", for the duration of their employment plus n years. There are many obvious loopholes, like all assets in your spouse's name, etc, but maybe there is a lookback period or something. There are much thornier compliance problems that are solved, so all the what-ifs can likely be addressed with precedent.

Palantir itself has done a similar thing in the UK by hiring Tom Watson [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson,_Baron_Watson_of_Wy...

Such rules have to be marketable to people in public office in order to be enacted. One way might be to have a congressional alumni committee with very high salaries and strict rules on donations (this strictness could be sold as a way to prevent alumni officials from competing against the power of active officials).

Even if it cost a few hundred million a year in do nothing salaries, it'd help the integrity of multi trillion dollar budgets.

The British House of Lords sort of used to work this way until the stigma of aristocrats being involved in commercial/social activities faded.

But then the only people who run for office, are independently wealthy and don't need work after they serve. Which is also a class of people who don't represent the people.

That's not true. To stay with the UK example, think of Jeremy Corbyn.

Perhaps we should pay them a pension that will make them comfortable for life and actually ban them from ever working again.

I think it’s fine if they do charitable work, like Jimmy Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity.

They can be paid to make up for it. MPs have a good pension scheme too (especially if they serve several terms).

I also said restrict, not prevent them from working. If their previous jobs do not present a conflict of interests they can go back to that. There are lots of careers that are fine.

> Which is also a class of people who don't represent the people.

Neither do professional politicians, especially as they end up being closely connected to the wealthy who fund them.

This already exists, at least for senior US senate staff. Not sure about actual senators. The restrictions are relatively mild but do exist.

> I think what is needed is restrictions on jobs people can do after leaving public office.

People who have left public office aren't the only concern, either, there are also quite a few disturbing family connections these days.

For example, both of Chuck Schumer's daughters work in "government outreach" and "politics marketing" positions for big tech companies. One works at OpenAI, the other works at Meta. Not illegal, but not a good look and the sort of thing people should be concerned about.

(I'm glad the Democrats trounced the much worse Trump Republicans, but let's not pretend they are beyond reproach).

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