This seems like it would make a rampant corrupt system even more corrupt. Imagine how cheap you could buy a rep for if they only made 60k on the books.
Yes this is exactly the reason they should actually make more than they do.
It would also ensure only people who were already wealthy would pursue it.
Do you expect the already wealthy to represent you? To not take bribes and enact laws that benefit them?
I think you misunderstood. A salary of 60k, the original proposal, would cause that.
I get the idea behind it, but this very much would backfire in that only the rich could become representation. Remember they made it a rule that they aren’t allowed to sleep in their office while in D.C., and 60k not only won’t afford a place in D.C, it most definitely won’t allow for someone to have a home near their constituents AND D.C.
So we would end up with just having first or second sons of oligarchs, 1 trained to run the companies, the other trained to represent their families best interests.
Or, and hear me out in this one, if the average is not sustainable they would need to raise the average or lower costs until a balance was reached. By forcing them to play by the very rules that are writing, there is an incentive to make them fair.
While this may not be there exact way too achieve that, the goal is still a good one to work towards.
The problem is, representatives and senators don’t live average lifestyles. They need to pay for two residences, one of which is in one of the most expensive metro areas in the country. Then the constant transit costs between the two. They also pay their staff out of their own pocket if I remember correctly.
Truth is they need to be paid much more. With 100% of salary in retirement. And they need to be barred from any kind of employment after.
Hear me out, maybe we could build some sort of large building/s with a lot of small houses in them for them to live in while in DC. The government could even give them some sort of vouchers that helps them pay the rent or the buildings could just be owned by the government.
it’s the US worms letting themselves be ruled like that who are sad.
Keep crying about what ‘should be’.$1000 deductible?? i wish
$300/month 😂😭😢😐
I think the government should switch to a random lottery. Every term a random person is selected from all available and eligible citizens. It would be our civic duty, put your regular job on hold for a few years and do your part.
Most would hate it, but that’s kinda the point. If we all had to eat our own dogfood, we’d eventually start making it taste better.
Have you met a random person?
I have indeed, I still trust them more than anyone who actually wants to be in politics.
Think the rough analogy is Jury duty. After going through that, I was frankly surprised how generally decent the folks were that were being vetted. Sure a couple were a bit off, but on the whole the folks seemed pretty reasonable. I didn’t agree with some of them, but at least they seemed to be roughly rational and open to thinking about things.
I’ve said this for years. Live in dorms. Cafeteria food. Minimum wage. All assets put into trust and in a vanilla total market fund for 5-10 years after service. It should be like jury duty. I’ve not met a single person who disagrees with this system.
Dorms, cafeteria food, and minimum wage are not things that most Americans would want. It would really only be a benefit to those already making minimum wage (or unemployed) and without families. For the rest those would be motives for corruption, rather than the opposite.
I’ve not met a single person who disagrees with this system.
Well consider me the first.
Then first the plan won’t work, those dorms will be run by the very government politicians they are supposed to make miserable. so they won’t.
And why must that be a goal in the first place? Instead of improving democracy so that politicians aren’t in the pockets of PACs and actually represent the people, you want to just make them both miserable and now unelected.
If you want that random people are in charge instead of politicians a direct democracy system will work far better then this.
Who said anything about making them miserable? That isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the goal. The goal is to remove incentives to be corrupt.
A nice dorm and high quality food provided to them removes some of that.
Locking assets into total market funds removes incentive to inside trade, because you can’t.
Most importantly, 24/7 surveillance. No secrets. No back room deals.
Why are you all so eager to prop up the corpse of a dead system? I genuinely can’t make any sense of it.
Salary will have unintended consequences.
Why would anyone choose that job unless they were already very wealthy?
People who want to enact change. You can find plenty of those they just don’t have any visibility because money.
I think everyone wants to “enact change”.
The problem is, the people with the requisite skills can earn much more than $60k doing something else.
While this sounds good on the surface, the problem is that requiring legislators to live with the same financial difficulties most of us face would lead to sharp increases in direct bribery and overt corruption. As bad as it is anyway that effectively unlimited campaign/PAC contributions can be used to corrupt them, if their personal finances were significantly more trying, it would be much worse, especially given that most legislators have more personal expenses than the average person, including maintaining resdences in both DC and their home state/district. The much better (but also much, much more difficult) solution would be to raise the incomes of most Americans rather than to reduce the income of the legislators.
Lmao they have all ways been taking bribes. Lobbying is legalized bribery…
Pay them 5 million per year for all I care so long as they actually represent the people and not private interest groups, are not currupt, and are some of the best people for the job. And that would be an incredibility good deal.
People can be wealthy and not totally out of touch if they make an effort to listen to people
I agree on spirit, but in practice this will just make them even easier to be bought.
I think this is overstated. You can’t even run for Congress without being a millionaire, a millionaire’s family, a lawyer, a lobbyist, or a military officer looking to cash out.
You can’t get in the door of Congress without being in hoc to a constellation of private interests. Capping their pay won’t change that.
Well then that’s not capitalism.
Tbh idk why people think capitalism is a good thing. It’s just feudalism with corporations.
To be honest, I don’t think most people understand what the definitions of capitalism or communism or socialism are any more.
And it cuts both ways, 99% of Lemmy is like Mirror Universe Fox News, where if they see something bad, it’s capitalism’s fault. Someone crashed their car? Capitalism did it. Someone got sick? Capitalism. Fox viewers blame everything on “socialism” and have no idea what it means, either. For Lemmy it seems to be just any system that exists on Earth that isn’t a utopia.
Case in point: capitalism isn’t actually corporate feudalism. That’s not in any way what defines capitalism as an economic system.
Kids, please - humans are shit to each other under every system ever imagined. And they would be shit to each other under any new system we can imagine in the future. As is evidenced by how people are shit to each other and complain about their lives in every other country on Earth. No where is unique in that no one complains about being there.
To be honest, I don’t think most people understand what the definitions of capitalism or communism or socialism are any more.
It’s all just idpol now. Capitalists are on the “America Good” Team and Socialists/Communists are on the “America Bad” Team. No deeper analysis needed.
People will complain about “capitalism” because they don’t have health care or their in too much debt or their single and lonely or they’re LGBTQ or PoC or obviously poor while getting wailed on by a police officer. And they’ll say “damn this shit sucks, must be the capitalism” when a lot of it just boils down to your neighbors and leaders being bigot pedophile freaks.
Like, you think Communism is so great? Explain Boris Yeltsin. He was a fucking Commie. And look what happened.
humans are shit to each other under every system ever imagined
Humans are a very mixed bag. But Americans are a special breed of narcissistic, consumerist, sociopaths. And not because of some kind of genetics thing, either. The country attracts these freaks like a magnet.
From Ayn Rand to Wernher von Braun to Benjamin Netanyahu to Elon Musk, the world’s worst human beings are drawn to this place. They pilgrimage here and export their awfulness abroad. Or they take root and fester. Either way, America molds them into the worst humans imaginable.
Humans are a very mixed bag. But Americans are a special breed of narcissistic, consumerist, sociopaths. And not because of some kind of genetics thing, either. The country attracts these freaks like a magnet.
Sure, but cultures and nationalities do this all the time. If you’ve never experienced being around some Russian on vacation, I promise, Americans aren’t the only annoying people out there. Or the English in any part of Western Europe that’s a cheap flight away from London. For as self-deprecating as the English seem to be today, there’s centuries of colonialism and exploited wealth behind it that can’t be ignored, mostly due to the cultural exports that remain. For centuries, if an English or Spanish ship showed up somewhere, everyone else was going to have a bad time, and both groups happily only assumed they were the best there ever was. Cold War efforts to spread the Gospel of America around the world through Hollywood were profoundly successful, and a lot of people bought in.
Which isn’t to say that every English or Spanish or Russian or American is bad, more so that under either system, and under every system of government so far, including anarchy, some total shitbags rise to the top. Maybe Spaceballs was right. Maybe Evil will always win, because Good is dumb.
If you’ve never experienced being around some Russian on vacation, I promise, Americans aren’t the only annoying people out there.
The Americanization of Russia in the 90s/00s was a deeply tragic moment in the country’s history.
Or the English in any part of Western Europe that’s a cheap flight away from London.
Ye Olde Amerikkkans
Maybe Spaceballs was right. Maybe Evil will always win, because Good is dumb.
The irony of that line was the bad guy being very dumb and losing a few scenes later.
Critical thinking doesn’t exist on this platform. The mainstream narratives on Lemmy are built on shaky foundations and can’t get past basic scrutiny. It’s why the more ideologically zealous have so much censorship. This isn’t a left, right, whatever issue. It’s an education issue, and it’s impact is reflected by every demographic in the nation.
