We should pay politicians more | Hacker News Reader

We should pay politicians more

normielisation.substack.com

34 pointsapsec11287 comments

Per Wikipedia:

"As of 1 July 2019, Australia's prime minister is paid a total salary of $549,250. This is made up of the 'base salary' received by all Members of Parliament ($211,250) plus a 160 percent 'additional salary' for the role of prime minister."

I can say it doesn't seem to stop people helping out their mates or avoiding the tough issues on the job over here at least.

I do wonder what the long term outlook on that is. Politician is an extremely unstable job, so that $210k base for a job you might only have for four years (and then not exactly drop out into a lucrative field like IT) probably doesn't feel like a lot.

They get pensions too. Those things most people used to get.

The idea is that sets them up because going back to working as a butcher or something would be a bit weird after being a national public figure. The reality is they do speaking engagements and join boards as well, raking it in.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/09/02/australian-mps-pay-afte...

Apparently it was changed so it's not quite as generous now, maybe someone can decode and summarise the current rules.

As the article says, pensions proper only apply to MPs elected before 2004. Now it's a superannuation scheme.

All former UK prime ministers are entitled to an allowance of up to £115,000 a year to cover the costs of their ongoing public engagements. This can continue for decades. In the first 10 years after Tony Blair left office, he collected £1,077,888 which is quite close to the maximum.

In addition, former prime ministers can still remain members of Parliament if they get re-elected for that role, as is the case with Theresa May.

It's not like these people just pop in to be the prime minister of Australia for a brief four years then go back to pulling coffee shots at their low paying hospitallity jobs.

The overwhelming majority of Australian politicians are career bureaucrats of one form or another.

It'll take me five years of 60 hour weeks in a noise dirty dangerous environment to earn what the PM makes in a year.

For most people, $400k in the bank feels like a lot, and that's assuming you aren't also milking travel allowance, food allowance, Comcar, etc.

Also our pollies get a very generous superannuation contribution of 12% of their salary.

They're set for life as long as they understand money.

drop out into a lucrative field

Paid speaking engagements appear to be fairly lucrative for former politicians.

Sure provided you greased the right palms when you were in office and towed the right lines.

That's what the higher salaries supposedly avoid, you are less beholden to moneyed interests. I think the reality is that people often get accustomed to money and seek more of it unless there is a true downside.

Singapore has a very similar mindset on political salaries, and they are much higher even than the Australian PM. But as an outsider with one foot in due to family, it seems that they are culturally very anti-corruption after living near their neighbours which makes it work better.

Politicians should not be allowed to hold private property while in office. Have all their holdings liquidated when they get in power, at reasonable market rates, and have them put in a national fund used for things like pensions, from which they are allowed to withdraw a fraction depending on their projected life expectancy.

They then have a very large incentive to keep the country solvent and working well for the future. It's rather more urgent for someone to keep public hospitals running well when they can't afford to use private ones. The same is true for public transport, housing and all other goods.

And if a fraction of the population won't be willing to ever run for office again: so much the better. Do you want politicians running the country who expect that their tenure would see it become worse?

You think people should have to sell all their personal possessions to become a politician?

I don’t get why people expect this kind of ludicrous flagellation of politicians. Do you want monks or normal people?

I'd prefer monks or normal people over ruthless lobbyists for vested interests.

If we don't insist on completely absolving themselves of vested interest, there's no way we can get close to ensuring our politicians are free of conflicts of interest.

At present in Australia for example we have at least one politician whose brother owns a failing/failed coal mining company, and that politician is pushing a coal-fired green energy future.

If you want to run the country you should be willing to put your money where your mouth is, since you expect the rest of us to die for it.

> If you want to run the country you should be willing to put your money where your mouth is, since you expect the rest of us to die for it.

Do you have this attitude in all fields?

Researchers who want a job in a lab to tackle a disease should only get it if they agree to be infected with the disease so they work harder, maybe?

Police officers have to agree to be robbed once a month so they experience being a victim? That could be another one.

To check they’re putting their money where their mouth is, right?

We give politicians the power of life and death over us, they should be held to a higher standard. If you can't stop being greedy enough to give up your 7 mansions and get paid their equivalent in cash as everyone else who has to work and depend on a pension I don't see why you should be trusted with bombing Syria for the umpteenth time. It would almost look like you're doing it to get your shares in Raytheon a bump (something I thank Joe for since my shares in murder inc have done wonderfully since his election).

Doctors on the other hand don't go around cutting legs off for our own good. Do try and understand that last sentence, it would be dreadfully boring if you said the same thing for a third time.

If you want a higher standard why aren’t you willing to compensate at a higher rate?

What are you offering to get these higher standards? Sounds like you want to punish them rather than reward them for trying to lead?

> Do try and understand that last sentence

Not sure why you’ve decided to be snarky like this?

> If you want a higher standard why aren’t you willing to compensate at a higher rate?

The top comment suggests that higher compensation by itself doesn't help solve the problem.

> If you want a higher standard why aren’t you willing to compensate at a higher rate?

They will be, but they only gain new wealth at the same rate that everyone else in the country can. No more insider trading for congress, or anyone else elected.

>Not sure why you’ve decided to be snarky like this?

You were being very boring, and now it turns out that you didn't even understand the first thing I said. A pointless debate that's been a waste of time all around. Do better next time.

> You were being very boring

You’re just being personally abusive now for some reason. I've flagged you.

That's even more boring.

This gets bogged down discussing Boris a bit too much. But I do that pay for politicians needs to be improved. For me, the biggest issue is that politicians who lose their jobs are left without any pay. They know they can't win elections forever, so have to plan ahead. They could kowtow to every wish of their electorate, no matter how misguided and hope they do get re-elected. But the more likely option is to do a few small favours for corporate interests in exchange for a revolving door once they're out of power. Most members of Parliament/Congress get seats on the board of companies. Neither of these options is in the interest of our democracy.

I don't know what the solution is, but paying them a pittance while not making provisions for future income isn't a good idea I think.

(I am aware that pensions are a thing)

> For me, the biggest issue is that politicians who lose their jobs are left without any pay.

For me, the biggest issue is that being an elected official is considered a career. It shouldn't be; it should be a temporary thing that people do for a limited time to contribute for the good of society, afterwards returning to whatever they did before serving. A policy that required private sector employers to give leave of absence to people who wanted to serve as elected officials would help to support that. It would also help if the power and scope of what an elected official is expected to do were drastically scaled back, by limiting our expectations of what we expect governments in general to do. Then we would not require elected office to be a career just so politicians could have enough time to learn how to play the political game.

The fundamental problem is that politics needs a career track for people to become good at it. Would you consider term limits for programmers, after which they get to go back to their normal jobs in the humanities? When politicians are inexperienced, it just lends power to the lobbyists, the entrenched money, and the civil service.

> The fundamental problem is that politics needs a career track for people to become good at it.

This assumes that there are people who are good at it. That's the assumption I'm questioning. I don't think anyone is good at politics. Many politicians are good at using their positions to enrich themselves and their cronies, but that's not the kind of "good at it" that we citizens need.

Someone will always play politics if playing politics gives them access to power or money. If you weaken politicians in their ability to play politics than lobbyists, corporations, career bureaucrats and so on will gain in power. Politicians you at least have the option of not voting for next election while the others you don't even get that option.

> Someone will always play politics if playing politics gives them access to power or money.

Well, then the obvious solution is to make it so playing politics doesn't give them access to power or money. And not allowing politics to be a career seems like an obvious thing to do to move in that direction.

Absolutely not.

You don’t expect a programmer to work in the software industry part time and then work somewhere totally different. Human beings improve their skills in fields with more practice and experience. Politics is a career: there are people who are good at it and we should most certainly expect them to work on it full time. It’s not like there’s any shortage of problems to solve.

> You don’t expect a programmer to work in the software industry part time and then work somewhere totally different.

For some programmers I think that would be a great option.

Granted there are programmers who are going to do their best work by focusing on code and little else deeply for years on end.

But there are a lot of people who’s decision making would be improved by having other experiences as well as coding.

And.. coding is decision making.

The emergency exit plan for junior Republican congresspeople is to join a think tank. But(!), only if they tow the party line. It is so common that there is a name for it: wingnut welfare.

I don't think junior Democrats have such an avenue available to them, at least not to the same extent. Senior members of either party go on to join boards of big companies or become lobbyists.

You make a convincing argument, how can we conscionably blame these people for wanting to feather their nest, considering the pittance the public pays them?

Now replace politicians with police, and corporate interests with criminal interests (I'd wager they're equally as damaging), perhaps we have people with the wrong ideals in these positions?

Graduated pensions based on length of service might work if and only if they weren't paid while the person is doing any sort of government contract or lobbying work afterward.

Pensions are your money held until later. So I am not sure that should apply as the employer should have no part of it and it should be managed by a third party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_and_flow saying pensions are money "held until later" is fiction. The "real"/material economy is mostly flows (most goods go bad), and most stock are correspondingly mere social constructs.

That's immaterial here and not the point. The pension is not the employer's, it is the employee's and part of their compensation.

What if the solution is Sweden's model of politics not necessarily being a career? That seems to attack the root of the problem.

How is that implemented, using term limits?

If you reward politicians too greatly, the allure of being a politician is no longer affecting political change or helping your fellow constituents. It's getting access to a sweet lifetime of cashflow.

Politicians shouldn't be paid more, they should require industry expertise and have a term limit of 4 years. You work in industry, you become a politician, and then you go back to industry.

From what I see the allure of being a politician is to set yourself up for a corporate job after giving the industry of your choice massive handouts.

The revolving door and regulatory capture are the real issues.

Sounds like you're talking about the Fed specifically, and yeah, that is a big issue.

I'm talking more about congressional representatives.

If you reward doctors too greatly, the allure of being a doctor is no longer saving lives or helping cure disease. It's getting access to a sweet lifetime of cashflow

So what?

It's likely beneficial for doctors to be intrinsically motivated to heal people, but regulatory mechanisms shouldn't be built on the assumption that it is the case.

Or is the idea that motivation is more important than relatively objective measures of effectiveness?

Yeah and it's a lot easier to sue doctors for malpractice than it is politicians for corruption/negligence. You're kinda proving my point.

This isn’t how the real world works. If it’s your kids who have a terminal illness, and require a surgery with a low survival rate, and you have the resources, something tells me you’re not going to populate your short list of doctors with the “economy” options.

As for curing diseases, I can’t imagine why anyone would care why someone developed a cure. As long as Doc saves my life, I do not care if he did it for the money or for the feels or because he had a weird fetish and liked the shape of the mole on my rear.

I tell you what. Let's experiment a little with this. How about we pay teachers better and see how it works out? Let's see if education improves. Then, with those results in hand we can discuss raising the pay of politicians.

Right now the best data I know of is the results of raising the pay of CEOs. That data is not promising for politicians.

I think you need both the carrot and the stick.

The problem with low pay is, if you get out the stick, you're only left with people with nothing left to lose. The bottom of the barrel.

With higher pay, people have something to lose. But unless you have policies and incentives to make them fear that loss, they'll still just coast along and assume they deserve the money just for showing up. Some are, of course, intrinsically motivated to do a good job but that motivation can dry up seeing how coworkers act daily.

When I say fear, I don't mean the kind that makes you dread coming to work. Just the usual fear of failure that makes you want to do something well to avoid the downside. How to set that up? I'm not a teacher, but I bet teachers out there know who the bad ones are so there's probably a way to do it. The same for other jobs.

If you're not already getting that on a regular basis as a teacher (the type of fear you're talking about), then I have a great fear for the direction our civilization is going. Seeing as today's students are tomorrow's inheritors, and need to at least have good enough foundations to maintain and opeerate what we're getting put in place today.

My concern though is teachers are so distracted making fiscal ends meet that they can't bring their all to the classroom...

I've seen numerous teachers on Reddit talking about the staff they work with and how hard it is to get rid of some, the usual teacher union protection complaints, and students complaining about bad teachers (what else is new though). I'm sure it does vary a lot around the world though and I can say I have no real complaints about my public school education here in Australia. Maybe I was lucky. Maybe things are very different now.

> My concern though is teachers are so distracted making fiscal ends meet that they can't bring their all to the classroom...

Yes that's another part I didn't mention, and a living wage will address that. But you also have cases where they spend their own money on classroom supplies due to poor funding so you'd want to address that too. Once everyone is comfortable though, you need to make sure it doesn't turn into indolence which is what I was getting at.

Paying teacher livable wages would be good.

However, contrary to popular belief "more is always better" throwing money at problems isn't always a solution. I was in academia, and often vast amounts of money were thrown about without planning or oversight, and it never worked out.

I was specifically referring to education, not academia. But your point is still valid. Still, I'd prefer to run this experiment on teachers before politicians.

That's what I meant if it were ambiguous. Constantly, more money is thrown at K-12 education but it never seems to reach teachers, students, or buildings. It too often goes to administrator perks and their conference jet-setting-at-work lifestyle.

I agree that we should pay teachers better. For the vast majority of school districts, teachers are not paid their value compared to the responsibility/influence they hold.

Would it not be wonderful to have a pay cap on the ratio between the highest paid employee and the lowest paid? We could extend this to all sectors.

You'd presumably want that limit to also extend to subcontractors and suppliers as well. It would be a wonderful human achievement to substantially raise wages in Bangladesh, for instance. Presumably we'd need garment price assistance for lower-middle class people in Western societies to partially offset the disproportionate impact on their lifestyles.

I like the sentiment, and we shouldn't let fear of unintended consequences prevent all human progress, but there are significant risks with regard to unintended consequences and concentrating government powers on wages and social programs beginning to approach failed utopian experiments of the past.

Thanks for your comment -- what is "garment price assistance?"

As other commenters have skillfully pointed out, this would likely have deleterious effects unless, as you say, it was implemented in a fully-downstream fashion to include the whole pool of workers including contractors and the like.

And of course, when regulations get too stiff in one city or state or nation, companies move. That is also a big obstacle in this idea. But there is at least one company that has the CEO salary capped at a certain number of multiples of the lowest-paid employee, and their culture seems to be great.

This would most probably result in corporations laying off the lowest paid employees and paying contractors to do the same work.

No, this almost certainly would not achieve the outcome you’re hoping for, and would likely create new problems.

Can you share some data that illustrates why you think this is a good idea?

Can I set the parameters of the teacher experiment?

For instance, I'd expect 50% increases to have little to no impact.

> This can only be fixed by making the role attractive to talented newcomers, avoiding the incongruous position where low quality elected representatives are paid a pittance to set the policies that are followed by council officers on 6 figure salaries.

Across the pond our politicians are less frugal when setting their own salaries. Their performance does not seem to be improved in proportion.

Singapore pays its cabinet ministers exceedingly well. But the other side of that coin is that the ruling party, the People's Action Party, which has won re-election every time since independence, has a pretty strict standard of who gets to join the party, and the previous generation of leaders have always been extremely judicious in who gets elevated to the rank of minister with the accompanying high salary.

The parallel is saying "Pay your employees well". Well of course, but you can't hire all and sundry and expect magic to happen in your startup. Incentives certainly matter, and can lead to great outcomes, but you can't have the wrong people in the seat in the first place. It is not just a pay issue that results in incompetent people in government.

I hear the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia also gets paid fairly well, but I'd argue such examples are irrelevant to democracies.

The problem is not limited to politicians, a lot of socially useful and traditionally somewhat prestigious jobs suffer from a pay problem.

Education is a clear case in point, both at the K-12 and University level. I've seen a lot of brilliant people eschew an academic career for industry because of financial reasons. The surplus of PhDs means that you can still hire brilliant people for now, but the quality of academics is going to be plumetting in the long run. It's something you can already noticed in some fields in Europe where salaries are even lower than the US. New recruits are bottom of the barrel candidates that adjuncted for 10 years because they could not do be hired anywhere else. Meanwhile, brilliant young scholars spent 2 years on the academic job market before realizing they could take their skills to industry, a political cabinet or a law firm and make 5 times what they'd make in academia for equally if not more intellectually rewarding work.

In countries with socialized healthcare systems, medical doctors also tend to be grossly underpaid. The talented ones move abroad or work for private clinics and as a result the quality of care of public hospitals decreases.

> The talented ones move abroad or work for private clinics and as a result the quality of care of public hospitals decreases.

I don't doubt this is true, but I definitely would want to see a citation for this.

Most Canadians and Brits I've met abroad have been consistently happy with their healthcare systems, so my anecdata certainly doesn't lead me to believe healthcare quality is low.

I'd also like a citation for this. If anything, doctors emigrate from (third world) countries without socialised medicine to CANZUK nations, Germany etc.

Also anecdata, but I have family that are dual Australian-US citizens living in the US, with top of the line private healthcare over there. When my great aunt required dialysis, they came back to Australia because the free system was better than what was on offer in the States.

Apparently they'd pack patients over there into these rooms with vast arrays of machines, literally over a dozen to a room, and then bill the insurance company for thousands.

It's called the two-tier system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tier_healthcare And it's well-known that private hospitals are better than public ones. They have better cancer survival rates for instance, as well as lesser risk of nosocomial infections [3].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17371210/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824501/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3143900/

There are better cancer survival statistics in the US because the US does more pointless cancer tests, which they charge you for, to perform more invasive cancer therapy, which they charge you for, with the end result that total life expectancy for dying from cancer is around 1 year longer in the US compared to Australia and Europe, while quality of life is hugely lower with many more years under treatment in the US vs Australia and Europe.

The question of 'is this treatment worth it' is never asked in the US because it obviously is since everyone who could tell you no will be paid if you say yes. In Europe and Australia the answer is 'it depends': is 1 extra year of puking your guts out worth 4 years of puking your guts out beforehand?

His studies compared private hospitals in AU/NZ to public hospitals in AU/NZ, and showed that private patients are more likely to survive cancer than public patients.

The studies weren't causal, though.

Proportional representation can also help, where those on top of the party list can be assured of a job, and those father down can have other careers.

> where those on top of the party list can be assured of a job

So how do normal voters remove these individuals if they don’t like them?

That's a non-problem. Politics is a team sport. If there's someone I don't like, the real question why is does the rest of the party get along with them? That usually indicates a bigger problem than some personal beef.

Because of coalitions, there is little penalty to making a smaller party.

We should align their benefits with those they serve. Letting them buy health insurance on the open market would be my move #1.

In the US, they do (with generous employer subsidy):

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/members-congress-health-ca...

Exhibit A pro: Singapore, Inc. Exhibit B contra: everywhere else

Sorry, what? No. No politician is doing a good enough job that they deserve a higher salary just because. It’s a job like any other - doesn’t pay enough? Go find something else.

I think there should be less money in politics, not more. Politics shouldn't be a lifelong career. Get in, do your duty, get out.

That's a fantastic recipe for a rotating door of people with disposable income that benefit from political office. The only way to get less money in politics is to pay politicians more, and ban getting money elsewhere.

My dad worked as an engineer for the Feds for 30 years. Eventually promoted to a GS14. I've listened to people bitch about public servants. But seriously it's job. Above a certain level everything is partly political. Government doesn't do anything without an overriding need/patron.

Effective politicians have to be able to balance competing interests, hire and lead teams with extensive domain knowledge about how various government agencies work. Understand the law. Goes on and on.

It's kinda deranged that a google bro gets paid more for vastly less important work.

I'm of the opinion that MPs with a continuing outside job are incredibly valuable. The obvious example are the many MP doctors (who need to keep their skills current if they are to maintain registration) but wherever they work, having an active link with the "real world" brings another dimension to their policy decisions.

We have a system supposedly designed to do such a thing in Texas - the state legislature only meets for a few weeks every two years. The outcome is that no lower class job allows people to disappear for 8 weeks at a time, so essentially only rich people can participate in the system.

That's definitely worth thinking about, but I just don't know if it outweighs having high quality applicants that really know what they're doing in office. Politics is (or at least should be) a difficult specialist position.

Sounds like publicly funded elections, not paying the individuals more.

My limited understanding of Chinese politics (who we should be comparing to as America's primary competition in the world) is that leaders must spend time getting experience at lower levels of government in order to be in high levels of government. This means that politicians theortically have experience. Certainly at face value and in good faith, this seems like a good idea.

It seems like a very sane position to want your governors to have run a city, and your presidents to have run a state.

It seems like you would want your admiral's to have run a ship. It seems like you would want your CTO's to have run a technical team.

Why do you think politics is the one area where experience is not beneficial to doing the job well?

I understand upper age limits, but I don't understand term limits at all.

> I think there should be less money in politics

Using a thought experiment, I must ask the question: Let's say we paid politicians $0? What kind of person would you expect to be a politician? Let's say we paid politicians $5 million/year. What kind of person would you expect to be a politician?

For a salary of $0, someone who's already uber successful, doesn't need the money and is into it for the challenge.

$5M someone who just wants to make a boat load of money.

Is a parameter missing from your thought experiment? Are you thinking of corruption?

> For a salary of $0, someone who's already uber successful, doesn't need the money and is into it for the challenge.

Yeah, so who is not running? If it paid $0, that creates a definite class of people who cannot run. Furthermore I suspect that any income deficit would be gained by using the position's power for personal gain.

If it paid $0, we probably wouldn't see AOC in office. Many politicians travel between DC and their home. If money is insufficient for that, it could create worse representation. These politicians employ assistants and advisors, lower salary theoretically creates poor incentives (corruption) or getting candidates that are less valuable (industry might be able to out compete).

Just about everyone wants money, and $5M is a lot. It excludes virtually no one, and is enough money that you don't really need any other sources of income. $10mil is enough to live a middle class life without working for the rest of your life. I would expect that type of compensation to breed more fierce competition.

I don't think it's in any way obvious that politicians should not be paid well, nor do I think it's at all obvious what the result of low or high compensations for politicians would be.

No; that incentivizes people to unsustainably grab as much as they can for themselves and their base during the brief time they’re in office, without concern for what happens afterward. ”Après moi, le déluge”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com