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Retiring House Republican says $174,000 isn't enough money for members of Congress: 'Most of us don't have wealth'
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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politics
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If you want your politicians to be loyal to a country, you pay them. If you want them to be loyal to corporate interests, you let the corporations pay them. It is obvious the path the US has chosen. Contrast that with Singapore for an example of paying your elite government officials an actual salary and how corruption drops to zero.
You're not wrong but it's easy to mix up actual loyalty and being the highest bidder.
For many people it's the exact same thing. And you absolutely cannot trust the public to vet candidates as has been proven over and over so only way to improve is to attract better candidates, and for that you need better pay.
We keep raising their salary. They keep getting worse.
It’s because the Supreme Court decided “money is speech”, which is so fucking stupid and logically flawed that it makes my head want to cave in.
“Speaking” is not subject to the rules of scarcity - given a supply of breathable air, water, and food, literally anyone could technically continue speaking indefinitely, both in a literal sense, as well as a written sense across various forms of transmission.
Using money under the auspices of “speech” IS subject to the rules of scarcity, and is a direct reflection of socioeconomic gaps in our society - that is, Musk or Zuck or Bezos or insert billionaire here have multiple orders of magnitude more “monetary speech” than pretty much anyone in the country - or, for that matter, anyone in the history of the human race.
Whereas in America, we could pay them millions and there'd still be constant grift. This country has lost any sense of accountability. Too goddamn individualist.
That's the same logic as prople saying we should keep the churches tax free, so they don't interfere in politics, even thoigh they're tax free now and already interfering with politics.
Not even close. Very poor strawman attempt. Tax the churches. They want to be non profits, take 100% of the profits.
Not really a strawman attempt, I just likened it to a very similar situation.
But if that's what it takes to convince yourself that you're right, sure.
We already overpay them and they already take bribes.
The problem is you don't pay them very much comparatively and so they take bribes and "gifts" to make up for the salary. Just look at Clarance Thomas. He said he needed a raise or he'd go full on corrupt. He did not get a raise. He went full corrupt.
Or we could, yknow, actually prosecute the corrupt ones. Likely a pipedream, but there is another option besides overpay them or allow blatant corruption.
Yeah. We can do what we do now. Overpay them and allow blatant corruption.
They do this no matter how much money we waste on them.
I hear your point, and it might be true, but it's only a hypothesis because, in the grand scheme of things, they aren't paid well relative to other work with significantly lower amounts of responsibility.
A young software developer working at Netflix or Amazon would be making more than them. A Congress person in a whole foods in silicon valley could very easily be the poorest customer in the store.
Scarface said "First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women". I believe that this is the American dream, at least in the eyes of people who end up in high government.
Their path is different though, power comes first, THEN the money, THEN the women. If we paid them at least enough to enable sexy affairs, I think they could round out the three without as much incentive to go full on corrupt
We could enlist a corp of hot young women from all over the world , and bring them to a private island ….
"We should pay these corrupt pieces of shit even more money, and maybe they'll stop taking bribes" is a hypothesis we've tested PLENTY of times. The results are conclusive: the people we put into office are overpaid at any price, and are corrupt no matter how much money we waste on them.
When has this hypothesis been tested in the USA?
Where are these conclusive results you speak of?
Every single time we gave them a raise.
They're still corrupt.
Yes we have. We keep increasing congress' pay like you want, and they keep taking bribes like you want.
If someone did a study on whether raising the minimum wage impacts people's quality of life, raised it a penny, found that people were still in poverty, and said "we should give up on minimum wages," would that convince you? Your statement, that we've raised congressional wages and corruption is still present, is an equivalent argument. No one is arguing that giving politicians any raise will completely eliminate corruption. I would argue that we should give members of congress wages comparable to the amount of money they would get from taking bribes, and the result will be reduced, not eliminated, corruption.
Comparing someone who makes 6 figures to someone who makes minimum wage is insulting to the latter.
Particularly since the former is responsible for keeping the latter's wages stagnant while whining about how he's not compensated enough for doing so.
You're right. The point I was making was that congressional members are like people with minimum wage. Your response is definitely not dodging my argument.
The point you were making is that congressturds aren't rich enough and that we should just spam money at them and that will magically make them less corrupt. Bringing up minimum wage workers who haven't seen a raise in decades in that context is utterly disgusting.
That's not the point I was making, and bringing that up isn't disgusting.
Removed for abelist language. Take that out and you're golden.
They make deer $100k a year and have so many subsidies like for housing and travel. We could pay them millions and they would still take bribes. The problem is our economic model that puts money over people and our social values that puts power over people. And Singapore still has corruption!
$100k/yr plus benefits is nothing. That's a junior engineer salary. You want the people guiding the way your entire country runs to be paid less than the UPS driver that hands you cat food in a box. Doesn't make sense.
Pay politicians a salary that would make taking bribes useless and you'll find they won't. It will also attract better candidates. If you keep trying to elect bottom feeders for the lowest possible salary, you get what you have now.
Minimum wage is 2.13 an hour plus tips. Don't insult people who work for a living like that.
Not for anyone in the country since there's a federal minimum. Don't be stupid you lose all validity. And absolutely the barista at Starbucks doesn't deserve the same pay as someone running the whole country. You have to be very stupid to not understand that everyone's value of work output is not equal. Nobody with the skills to make more is making $5/hr. Not everybody has the skills. No matter how you want to pretend, humans are not all equal in their abilities. Try a fight with The Rock. Go head to head with Ken Jennings in Jeapordy. Go carve a marble statue. If you can do it the same way, cool. Chances are you can't. And so you won't be compensated the same way as someone who can. If you can't find where you shine, you'll never make much as your skills are mediocre at best.
Everyone deserves a living wage. Except the pieces of shit who make sure that doesn't happen. Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz may be your betters, deserving of greater wages for the work they don't do. If you think you're worth less than that ambulatory garbage, I absolutely agree.
A society designed by and for the sole benefit of the rich? Yeah, adding more money at the top surely is the answer, it must trickle down eventually, right? Right..?
Politicians aren't "the top" economically, or even anywhere near the top. If they're relying in their salary to pay their expenses, they're working-class. Conflating politicians with actual elites leads to absurd conclusions.
100k/yr with the best health insurance in the country is a ton for how much time they spend working. The house works about 2 days a week and the senate works a little more than that.
You have zero idea how "work" works not in a service position then. You're always working. Those dinners, events, and even interactions like getting food at a restaurant is working. That's literally the point of a representative in a representative Republic going back to when the Romans did it.
100k/yr is a shitty salary for anyone in 2024 with a modicum of responsibility.
They're the ones who determine their own salary, so if they think that $100k/yr is enough, it's almost certainly way more than enough.
I guarantee you they don't think it's enough. But their whole schtick is to appeal to their base class, 75% of which make less than them and don't understand their jobs. Giving themselves a raise when people feel the economy is poor (statistically it is not, but feelings are what makes politics, not facts) would cost them their job. It's all a big calculus.
So you don't take the raise, but you take the pork spending kickback. Don't take the raise, but use your closed door information to trade stocks that doesn't count as insider trading. They're getting paid one way or the other.
You can really tell a lot about Lemmy's demographics by looking at the upvoye/downvote ratio on these 2 comments. Of course 100k a year isn't "nothing", it probably puts you into the 10th percentile in earnings for this country.
In 2022, $100k/yr puts you in the 77th percentile. Having your ruling class be in the top 23% of earners is very low.