House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#181

Post by ryandvm » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

philosopher1234 wrote: post #149

ryandvm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting money out of politics would be a great reform (removing lobbyists, campaign finance reform, etc.). It also strikes me as almost impossible to implement. It's like getting the president of a company to switch to system whereby leadership is elected by the workers. It's all risk and low reward for them . However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate. W…

How is that a lesser concern? How can the public have any influence over their politicians this way? You're saying corporations can choose who gets into power becasuse they finance them, and the public cant even tell what they're voting for to punish them. It seems all around worse.

Because the corporations would no longer have a record that a politician actually voted in their favor. They would be donating to campaigns based on rhetoric alone. Therefor the representatives would have no incentive for voting anything but their conscience.

(Obviously disclosing your cryptographic vote receipt to a donor would be forbidden.)

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#182

Post by jtr1 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #175

dugmartin wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This…

Am I reading this right? We're going to pay $100Bn per year to 100 people chosen at random to run the country? Why would they have any incentive to do a good job? Also, why would they have any desire? Also, that seems like a lot of money. >95% of people would be happy with the $1M per year salary.

I think the point was more about reducing the saliency of bribes/lobbying than the particular dollar amount.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#183

Post by evan_ » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

tootallgavin wrote: post #152

evan_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get a budget. They're not schoolteachers .

> They get a budget. What happens when they exceed the budget?

Either checks bounce, or some other office covers the shortage and the account is just overdrawn until paid back. There was a minor scandal about this in 1992.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_banking_scandal

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#184

Post by alexfromapex » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #51

Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work. If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy. So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a round…

I hear what you're saying but $170k a year is not small potatoes. Higher wages may be justified to prevent a temptation for accepting bribes though.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#185

Post by gnaritas99 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #114

dragonwriter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Senators make $174,000/yr and most are already wealthy before running for election I'd have to be pretty independently wealthy before I'd consider applying for a job that practically required me to maintain residences in D.C. and my home state and only paid $174k/year. I'd have to be wealthier to consider it if it cost an average of over $10 million to put together a competitive application, or I had to reapply eve…

If the job pays 3x the median salary to maintain two homes, maybe it will get politicians to consider the needs of the constituents who maintain one home on the median salary.

If you want the people who make the rules we must live by to be constrained by the median salary, then you're begging for them to be utterly incompetent people as anyone competent will not take such a low paying job when they can easily make far more on the market. Like it or not, labor is a market and you must pay competitively for the best, and you want the best in congress, not the median. 174k is low pay for top people, mid level execs in public companies make that; you have to do a lot better.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#186

Post by Uehreka » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #73

nostromo wrote: post #51

Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work. If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy. So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a round…

How does paying a politician MORE than 3x median US pay make them less out of touch with the average American? We don't need politicians 15x out of touch with the median American's lifestyle. In NYC governor's last election, there was a question about how much the median house costs in Brooklyn, and two high level candidates gave absolutely bonkers answers like $90k and $120k, when it's actually $900k. You only want…

Part of the problem is that if the job doesn’t pay well, it attracts people who are independently wealthy and who are more likely to represent the interests of the wealthy. For most wealthy politicians, the bulk of their wealth comes from a business they own that pays out hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions of dollars) per year, not their 100K-ish government salary.

The upshot of this is that when “the people” get pissed and start saying things like “Don’t pay congress until they fix the government shutdown!”, it unilaterally screws anyone who was working or middle class prior to election, as they now have no salary and can’t hold out as long as the multi-millionaire politicians who have a law firm back home or a huge stock portfolio paying their rent.

The idea that, under the current system, people are running for congress for the money isn’t exactly in line with how things currently operate.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#187

Post by noasaservice » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #175

dugmartin wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This…

Am I reading this right? We're going to pay $100Bn per year to 100 people chosen at random to run the country? Why would they have any incentive to do a good job? Also, why would they have any desire? Also, that seems like a lot of money. >95% of people would be happy with the $1M per year salary.

The number needs to be effectively an unbribeable number.

If you're selected for public service, then you're expected to do good for the country, and not just a specific monied interest. And that means not having to worry about money ever again. You win capitalism. Done. Have fun. Live your life.

That could also be done with annuities so that they get a "allowance" each month until dead.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#188

Post by avn2109 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

zeruch wrote: post #93

_8j50 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better Idea: $300k base and a performance bonus up to 100% more based on sponsored laws and an additional 100% for passed laws with an extra 100k for no votes missed or abstained. So a perfectly performing congressperson gets a mil.

I'm not sure about the specifics you outlined, but I do think a comp package that incentivizes grown-ass behavior (read: full attendance, voting, actual participation in the legislative process) is a great idea. I don't think rewarding certain behaviors like sponsoring is good, because its too easily abused. When a KPI becomes a target, its no longer a KPI.

If we're designing a system of incentives and constraints for legislators, let's pay bounties for laws deleted.

There are probably 2 or 3 orders of magnitude too many laws currently in America (have you ever estimated trying to read and comprehend the entire law? Borderline impossible in a single lifetime even under very optimistic reading-speed assumptions etc).

If this metric becomes a target and ceases to be a good metric, that sounds ideal because it'll have the side effect of drastically simplifying the legal code.

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#189

Post by tick_tock_tick » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #156

DIARRHEA_xd wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notable exception to this, of course, is Trump's primary AND general elections.

Trump spent hundreds of millions of dollars officially, outside groups that don't need to report all of their spending (like the NRA) spent further hundreds of millions, and he had hundreds of millions worth of "earned media" due to the circus-like nature of the campaign. Because he spent marginally less than Ted Cruz in the primary and less than Hillary in the general doesn't give lie to the premise at all. His 2020…

Trump is still proof an outsider can win. He needed money but someone outside the political class still came in and won despite his parties best efforts against it (at the beginning when he was just a primary candidate they made their bed with his now).

Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report

#190

Post by throwaway894345 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

dugmartin wrote: post #167

hayst4ck wrote: post #105

Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates…

I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This…

Man, if social media is any indication of how ordinary people would govern, I'm not sure it's a great thing. Granted, maybe ordinary people are quite a lot more moderate or emotionally stable than the likes of Twitter and Reddit.