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Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

Name 1 company that makes over $1 Billion in annual revenue where somebody 2 links below the top makes less than a congressional salary. Congress critters are paid peanuts and also rent in an above-median cost of living area as well as their own district.

~150k sounds like a big salary but when you're very much in charge of trillions of annual revenue it's not.

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This is like the CEOs who "only get paid $1"

Salary is not where congresspeople make their money and if you don't think that being in congress is a good way to make lots of money right now I don't know what to tell you

> This is like the CEOs who "only get paid $1"

We're so obviously talking about total compensation. CEOs making $1 while getting billions in stock appreciation or literally hundreds of millions in stock grants are not making $1/year by any reasonable definition.

> f you don't think that being in congress is a good way to make lots of money right now I don't know what to tell you

So, you want to keep the status quo where the people who are correctly compensated for their role are the ones willing to front-run their own citizens? (And also spending their time front-running instead of their elected job?)

> So, you want to keep the status quo where the people who are correctly compensated for their role are the ones willing to front-run their own citizens? (And also spending their time front-running instead of their elected job?

No, those are actually entirely different words than what I have said.

The point is reducing that reliance on side channels, including the topical ban on trading.

Yeah $150k in DC is comfortable but far from luxurious (if you have a family, which it seems like most congresspeople do). It would not be enough to incentivize me to do the job of a congressperson.

Also consider the need to maintain a home back in their home districts.

Mark Zuckerberg's salary is only $1 a year! He must be homeless given bay area housing prices!

Right, I get that they make most of their money from sources other than their salary. But that seems like something we should aim to discourage, as it is pretty ripe for abuse. It is clear that many of them trade on non-public information, and for those that own businesses there's a lot of incentive to push legislation that helps the business. So if we were to ban most of that and have them live just on their salaries, I think the salaries should be higher given the challenges/responsibility of the job and the area they're living in.

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