The usual argument against this is that the less politicians earn, the easier they are to bribe.

Median is a better choice as its less affected by outliers.

The mean average is the amount you compute by putting all the money that is earned in a big pot and dividing it up evenly amongst everyone.

Median is where you find the single most average person and ask them how much they make.

Median gives them an incentive to improve the income of the average American. Mean average gives an incentive to increase national wealth regardless of who's hands its in, and an incentive to decrease the population. That is not a good incentive.

But also keep in mind congress members are local representatives. They need to be in DC while in session, and in their state or district at other times to be available to their constituents. The job requires maintaining two households, so they should earn enough for that. Unless we provide them college dorm level mandatory housing in the capital. Then median alone is enough.

Might be unpopular be politicians should actually be paid a lot. You want to attract actually skilled and capable people after all

But it should also be there only source of income, no speaking gigs, no stock trades, no side business

I have always heard people make this argument, and since it's Great British Bake-off time, I'll use it as the example.

There's no prize, and the pay per episode is fairly minimal. Less than $500/episode for contestants. Plus, they get ~$2000 stipend for ingredients. On the fly converting pounds to dollars, so these are guesstimates.

What that means is that Great British Bake-off does not find the best home baker in Britain, it finds the best baker who can afford to take time off to be on the show. If you can afford to miss school, work, or being a parent for 12 weeks, you can't compete.

Same applies here.

If you can't afford to live on the salary, you'll only get people in office who don't need the salary. We already get that to some extent with campaigning costs. This could make it worse. The barrier of entry is higher.

Instead, we need a performance review with real consequences other than "Guess I don't get re-elected, but I still get a book deal."

No.

The only reform we need is to take money out of politics.

If you get X number of people to sign your petition, you get y dollars to spend on a campaign. The spending is well monitored, so the candidate can't buy themselves a Lambo and call it a legit expense.

Just checking the room here, y'all know that Congress doesn't control things like private pensions, 401Ks, or average wages, right? You're blaming Congress for the blight of capitalism.

They also don't take that large of a salary. The actual issue is that they are allowed to do insider trading and make an undeserved fortune investing...

But pretending that all of these problems are just problems with how the laws are written is just ignoring the actual source of these problems.

Always fascinates me that the knee jerk solution to 'government service sucks' is 'pay the service providers less.'

I like the idea of tying congressional compensation to median or minimum wage, so they're motivated to improve that statistic (although Goodhart's law), but it's got to be enough to compete with other jobs with similar level of responsibility & authority. Median income jobs include K-8 teachers, tax prep, social work, & occupational safety; congress is basically the country's board of directors, and S&P 500 directors average around $300k, or 4.5x median.

The real problem with congress is it's so easy to funnel nearly unlimited money to politicians' control - it may not be salary, and there may be restrictions, but campaign donations provide an awful lot of opportunities for diversion. Massive campaign & campaign finance reforms, in ways that would probably set SCOTUS into a rage, be a real step toward making congress more accountable to the 90%.

Just make inside trading and taking corporate and foreign Pac bribes illegal for them.
Currently these two rules alone are why they rig laws for corportations and big pharma and insurance and oil companies, weapon manufaturers, banks, israel... they work for everyone but the citizens... And that some fucking how is legal and practiced in the open by both Democrats and Conservatives alike

no. we should:

• make them not have a connection at all to any trade in stocks
• serve a maximum of four years, total, across all “terms”
• not allow for legacy ppl to fill in when they leave early
• force them to retire at here
• force them to pay for their own healthcare
• and finally: imprison them for life should they be seen taking bribes, materially supporting genocide (including in israel), and breaking any other laws.

tough shit.

This has been tried before and the result is that only rich people can afford to run for office. Is that really what you want?

This would mean that the job would only appeal to two kinds of people: those earning below the average wage, or the very rich who don’t care what the job pays.

I’m all for low-earning folks getting a raise by running for Congress, but the problem is that anyone above average wage will see this as a pay cut. And the higher end of wage earners are the more highly educated, skilled, and experienced people.

Even if Congressional wages seem high now, most well qualified professionals can still earn way more in the private sector.

My thoughts on that was they got paid the average pay for the state the live in. Down here in the south they would have to get food stamps.

Sounds good on paper, until you notice this means... only the wealthy would ever bother running for office.

And no money from lobbyists, no insider trading and no ability to award contracts to private entities

Would be fine with them earning a multiple of minimum wage so when they raise their salary they raise the minimum.

If members of Congress earn the average or median wage, that will ensure that only the rich can actually hold that position. Very, very few non-rich people would take that risk.

Better yet, bring back the ancient Greek lottery for state office.

MEDIAN wage. No rich to skew things.

Add more term limits. You serve two terms and you're out, no exceptions. I'll even lend you a Mexican saying: “Sufragio efectivo no reelección”

Average? Hell no. At least have the kindness to stipulate median. And really, it should be the minimum.

Early retirement, absolutely.

With regards to politicians wages, I think they should be commensurate with the responsibilities of the job. But they should have no other means of income during their term, and potentially for a period afterwards. There would need to be much more stringent auditing and enforcement to ensure this.

Politicians engaging I'm outside employment seems crazy to me, and is clearly a route to corruption.

And a wealth cap. If you have 20 million networth but want to give it all up save under 200k (current median networth) to be a public servant then by all means. They made Jimmy Carter give up his peanut farm, which was the right thing, we should do the same for politicians today.

This is a politician's idea. Their wages and benefits are trivial compared to the insider trading and other corruption.

Instead of making them live on a low salary, why not try making them live on their high salary first?

401K's were never meant for retirement. They were initially meant to provide tax perks for executive level employees for their profit sharing bonuses.

They were never meant to replace pensions or be used as a retirement vehicle.

Financial advisors and banks pushed them on regular employees because they fell out of favor with executives in favor of better options.

401Ks are not a good option for regular people. General investment in ETFs or a diversified dividend portfolio and t bonds is much better.

They should also have to use the VA for health insurance

You could even let the existing Congress grandfather themselves in so they can pull the ladder up one last time.

Ah yes, the one job where you have to spend months of your own free time campaining, puting up your own money for ads, be hated by part of your community no matter what you do and smeared in the media with usually poor chances of even getting the job should pay the average wage and benefits. Because that is how you attract honest people who are fine just with the salary, as opposed to the ones who want to steal everything not bolted down.

Stupid ass takes like this is why so many people outside these community echochambers see "socialists" as moronic clowns.

96% upvote ratio... 🤦‍♀️

Where can I find said "average job" that pays this much? I've never passed a $40K salary in my life.

You'd need to enforce no income from other sources also. Before, during, and after. Significant monitoring of extended family and personal connections. Should those things be monitored for corruption under their current salary?

If proper funding for journalism and watchdog organisations, or judicial bodies designed to serve the people's interests, hadn't already been dismantled or drowned out in the din of other voices it might be possible. Those systems/funding could be restored and the competing intrests spewing lies culled or limited. It is not impossible, but it will be hard. Attend in-person forums if you can tolerate it. Speak and lead if you can. Make connections.

tell that to the silent generation and boomers in congress, mitch, chuck greasley, chuck schumer,,,etc.

nooooo. dump them to minimum wage

I would be okay with their salary being 5 times the federal minimum wage. They want a raise? They must raise the minimum wage.

It should be treated like jury duty. Every year a new politician in every single seat of government. It will be absolutely perfect! Nothing could go wrong.

I think it should be tied to the average wage of the state that they serve.

Also when I'm King, if a company wants to make layoffs, anyone who has served as CEO within the past year also must be laid off, with the same severance package as all the workers that they failed.

My absurd political theory is that there should basically be a big resort hotel. for all of these elected representatives. And it's pretty nice. Like it's not 5 star, but it's pretty nice. No one could complain about being forced to live there. but it is a very strictly regimented life. You only eat what the kitchen makes. You only live in the suites there and you're not allowed to live anywhere else. In some sense, it's like a very nice prison, or perhaps a sanatorium. And anyone who goes into these kind of high ranking government positions has to live there, not only for their entire term, but also for the rest of their life.

Sure, you would still get people who were only running for the comfort of living in the resort, but the kind of people who are truly maniacal assholes who want to get rich as fuck and live a life of extreme luxury, off of politics, will be forced to look elsewhere to get their money. If we make the resort mid enough, then only the people who are really aiming for the good of the many will even bother going for these positions.

Give them the median wage.

Have some carrot and stick.

Change the voting cycle from 4 to 5 years.
Start with a minimum wage for all politicians.
Every voting cycle, their constituents get to choose whether it is doubled or flipped into a fine they have to pay, equal to double what they have earned so far, including any kind of bribes or compensation, past and future.
Every 5-year cycle, their salary may double. But the possible fine will also double.

High stakes.

But then we wouldn't get "the best people". /s

Any organisation that is permitted to regulate, investigate, or govern itself is intrinsically corrupt and unfit for purpose.

I agree with an earlier retirement, but I'm conflicted about the regular wage part.

If gov members work for a "regular" wage, then what would be their incentive in public service vs other jobs. Or what's stopping them from working a regular wage and then side hustle as the billionaires' lap dog (not that different now tbh). Good will?

Won't even slow them down, they're generationally wealthy and make more from bribes then most of us well earn in a decade.

I put together a concept where everyone has to adhere to a banded range of job incomes with absolute limits on wealth and assets. Part of the idea is that leadership positions have the workers voting for their existence and who occupies them, every 3 months setting the pay rung that the bosses sit at. By default, leadership offers only the lowest income, so leaders have to convince the workers to vote for something better.

Same principle applied to public leadership, with voters instead of workers.

Imagine that. We put them in office to do our wishes and the first thing they do is not our wishes.

They should also have to work the minimum amount per week to get benefits.

Nah. They rich because they're ultra smart. How else do they consistently beat the S&P500? /s

Fuck that. Federal minimum.

But then no one would want to be a politician /s

My solution is that any restrictions (voting, holding office) placed on those under 18 also be placed on those older than 100 minus 18.

Boomers want to increase the voting age to 21? Sure, but that also takes three years off the other end.

You also can’t be independently wealthy

Which Congresscritter is running on this platform and which one of you is voting for them?

What did it mean by "no pension after 5 years"

No perks - they pay for their own insurance and take what's offered just like the rest of us.

No two-three months vacation. Or more. NO insider trading - trump has jacked up the price of petroleum and made a literal killing from it. No vested retirement just for showing up for a couple of years. No more travel allowances. No more fucking perks. No more lobbyists. They want lobbyists then go to their fucking home town and listen to the people who hired them. No more rich corporate daddies. And speaking of which - all those fuckers need a 90% tax on ASSETS, real or imagined.

And their whole superstructure of interns and slaves and ne'erdowell hangers on - these fuckers need to start reading writing their OWN goddam bills based on their OWN goddam constituent's needs.

You guys get 401ks?

God I wish I was joking.

What is Hiprocacy¿

“If you pay them less, they will take bribes”. They already take bribes, it’s just usually more subtle than Susan Collin’s. Better restrictions, real punishments, and being up their asses is the solution. “You want better people”. We are paying people who are often already millionaires. I would say pay them above average as we do want educated people, but making them use the same medical system and retirement would be the best. “It’s expensive to be a politician”. Set up an couple apartment complexes for the people in DC. It would help with security and other costs without giving them expense accounts to abuse.

Locking down insider trading and other money making perks is a must.

A pension isn't uncommon. But I agree with the sentiment. Very much. All positions of authority to abuse come with reward. Also, while we're at it, government should not be able to have direct influence on pay matters that effect themselves or peers. Should go to a vote. Just like it does in a union. Our money should get our approval before dispersal.

I like the ideas that people are saying about median and mean wage being the benchmark for congressional pay, but wouldn't it be nicer if they had to meet metrics in order to get paid?

Since they are supposed to serve the American people, making congressional seats commission-based would be nice. That way they'd actually have to put in effort to make their wages.

And any form of bribery or donations should be considered treason, and the people that commit treason should be treated like traitors (Congress people and their donors).

And on stock trading, having to report the trade a day in advance to some kind of congressional ledger would be nice. On the day of the trade, they have to mention wether or not they executed the trade, and that information should be made public. Or better yet, make their brokerage accounts on a platform designed just for Congress people, and they can't make trades outside of that platform. All of the trades they make should be public.

One can dream

They would just steal more.

uh, get rid of congress all together and replace them with a liquid democracy structure. There's not a good reason not to in this day in age. Elected reps just breed corruption.

Not just congress, all public sector.

Ughhhh what? Again I hate to hate on people who did good in life. You gotta step up your game and find a profession that can earn you above that wage as well as pay off the student loan which if you don't choose the minimal w/the longest time to pay it off, with a ridiculous apr, so you won't be trapped in a financial hole.

But I think that 280k$/yr should be the max anyone can potentially earn and I think you should have to pay 2% more overall in taxes per year on everything city, state and federal once you make over 120k$. For example your excise tax, city water bills and even phone bills would be 2% more.

Not groceries and clothes/general retail. so like credit card bills, Spotify, Netflix wouldn't be more in taxes. Phones are needed in today's society, like you can't do a lot without it. So it would be extra in taxes.