This is about the Fed banning it's own policymakers from owning them, not about congress.
thank you for this extremely important correction. I was reading the comments instead of the article and wondering in the back of my mind how the Fed even had jurisdiction over Congress. sure hope it remains visible in the comment hierarchy.
I went to the article; the UI is horribly broken, and prevented me reading past the first para (by continuously reloading); but I got that it was about their own staff.
The relatively low salaries compared to the huge amounts of power is almost begging for insider trading, influence peddling, etc. > The salary of a Congress member varies based on the job title of the congressman or senator. Most senators, representatives, delegates and the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico make a salary of $174,000 per year. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/congressman-... Then a…
I'd rather see Congressional salaries indexed to household incomes. While sure, $174K might be nominal in the private professional world, it's still 3x average US household income. They have health insurance and pensions. Better gig than the vast majority of their voting constituents. It might give them some humility and understanding of the plight of those constituents if they were remunerated similarly.
Remember that $174K is typically spread between two households, and cost of living in DC is definitely not low.
The relatively low salaries compared to the huge amounts of power is almost begging for insider trading, influence peddling, etc. > The salary of a Congress member varies based on the job title of the congressman or senator. Most senators, representatives, delegates and the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico make a salary of $174,000 per year. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/congressman-... Then a…
I'd rather see Congressional salaries indexed to household incomes. While sure, $174K might be nominal in the private professional world, it's still 3x average US household income. They have health insurance and pensions. Better gig than the vast majority of their voting constituents. It might give them some humility and understanding of the plight of those constituents if they were remunerated similarly.
If one believes that legislators should be drawn from a pool of competent individuals who have options in private industry, you'd look at executive salaries in industry instead of the average US household.
Singapore indexes its government pay to that of the private industry for this reason, but they're also ruthlessly meritocratic and some might say, elitist. Yet also very effective. The two seem related to me, but it might not mesh well with American values.
No problem. The policymakers will let their trust fund or family members do all the trading with *information that they might have. Are they going to also stop anyone related to the policymakers from not trading? That will be a violation of their constitutional right to own property. There is always a way out for the rich. This is what happens when we have too many regulations.
Your last sentence is really the key thesis. This isn't an argument to pay representatives (whether that be Congressional or at monetary policy orgs) more, but to have robust controls to better detect and action corruption. Greed knows no bounds (see: corrupt billionaires and Dark Triad personality traits [1]) and humans will be humans, so strong systems must be designed and implemented to defend against improper beh…
Alternatively - maybe it's not so great that government is so big and central and has so much power. Politicians are gonna find ways to corrupt that power no matter what. The same could be said for megacorps. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. China and Chinese SOEs are going to be big and powerful and centralized for the foreseeable future no matter what - and if we don't have anything to oppose them -…
I'd rather see Congressional salaries indexed to household incomes. While sure, $174K might be nominal in the private professional world, it's still 3x average US household income. They have health insurance and pensions. Better gig than the vast majority of their voting constituents. It might give them some humility and understanding of the plight of those constituents if they were remunerated similarly.
Remember that $174K is typically spread between two households, and cost of living in DC is definitely not low.
Well, there's a solution for the housing thing too: dormitories or a flat housing allowance. These folks are intended to maintain a life in their constituencies, therefore their homes in WA DC should be treated as transient. Thus, a housing allowance similar to what other Federal employees encounter, and/or a Congressional dormitory, to me sounds like a perfectly acceptable solution. This is a job intended to be for the good of the American people, not a stepping stone to further wealth as it's been treated.
Your last sentence is really the key thesis. This isn't an argument to pay representatives (whether that be Congressional or at monetary policy orgs) more, but to have robust controls to better detect and action corruption. Greed knows no bounds (see: corrupt billionaires and Dark Triad personality traits [1]) and humans will be humans, so strong systems must be designed and implemented to defend against improper beh…
Living in DC on 174k/yr with a family and a spouse whose job prospects are limited by your profession is a tough order. You are effectively demanding that policy makers be self sufficient, which selects for those policy makers most likely to benefit financially from policy decisions.
Median household income in DC is 92k. Their single income is almost double what the average person in DC makes.
I joked in the past that politicians should only be allowed to buy index funds. In their local currency and from their country of course. Basically, do a good job for the economy overall and then your net worth will increase.
> Basically, do a good job for the economy overall and then your net worth will increase.
The economy's health is not necessarily accurately reflected in asset valuations (which is what index funds track).
When it becomes clear the pie will stop growing for a little while, wealthy politicians have the perverse incentive to enact policies increasing asset prices at the expense of overall productivity (in 2021-2022 this manifested in money supply increase combined with lockdowns to delay inflation until after the transfer of wealth).
This is the case all over the Western world. Federal Government politician salaries need to be 10x higher.
Sometimes I feel like congress and representatives should make the minimum wage of the area they represent. Might encourage them to actually improve things for the people.
170k is already a functional equivalent of the minimum wage, relative to the power they yield.
You're describing what we already have.
The argument being made is that if you're going to pay people a low wage, they'll just increase it by trading some of the power they yield in exchange for money for themselves, which is the problem we're trying to solve for :)