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Okay cool, so that means they can’t trade stocks anymore…. Right? .. right????
It really should be a law that Congress can only get a pay raise if they raise the federal minimum wage by a proportionate amount.
Y'all should be getting a pay decrease, not a pay raise.
A pay decrease would only make things worse. It wouldn't affect the worst offenders and would make it harder for someone like AOC to join from a more modest background. Making the pay higher makes it easier for working class people to rely on the pay (especially since you might need a place in DC and your home state). If you keep the pay low, only the richest people with external sources of income can afford to stay in
Can raise wages for them selves but not the people.
For what?
Oooo time for me to reveal my hottest take. Politicians are generally very underpaid. When a job puts you under a microscope, involves people yelling at you and inherently lacks job security it better be pretty well paid. And yet any electable, competent politician could turn around and make at least 2-3x as much (as they are making legitimately at least) doing something else and keep having weird sex without newspapers writing stories about them. No one who is rational and not evil would ever go into politics just for money of it so all that's left is the corrupt, the truly dumb and the unpractical idealists.
If you want better politicians then pay for it. Give them all multi-million dollars salaries, ban them from stock exchange, and keep paying them even if they lose.
Only issue is we’re supposed to be their boss. Americans elect representatives to do the job of representing us. If they don’t do their job they shouldn’t be paid, and overall public support for representatives is incredibly low because of the behavior you’re advocating to pay them off in order to avoid doing.
Not sure where you work but if I stopped doing my job I’d expect a firing, not a raise.
To solve both problems the public needs to scrutinize the shit out of their elected officials and be more willing to throw them to the side when they stop being useful, like corporations do to us all the time.
Well if your dogshit country actually had a spine and three braincells to knock together, maybe. Ya’ll literally couldn’t even keep the most obvious fascist of all time out of office after he failed so bad the first time. As a country you deserve this and to the people who still did their best I’m sorry they have to deal with this.
Look Canada isn’t much better, we vote for garbage(or don’t show up to vote for better) and we get garbage. These people don’t hide who they are, they absolutely represent the population both directly and indirectly.
Trust me I’m well aware of the failings of my country. That doesn’t mean I can’t recognize one of them or that you have to remind me of their existence when I do.
In other words, I get it but you’re not helping.
You said that they don’t represent the people, I was correcting you. Neither of us enjoy the fact that they represent an unfortunate number of people, but they do.
What this also means is that they can be removed if enough people stop fucking voting for them. They are not kings, not yet anyway.
I never said they didn’t? But I get how you got there.
Agreed, we need to pick our representatives better :(
I’ll take that.
I just hope we figure out how to not suck before picking our representatives becomes…more difficult.
If one employee sucks fire them. If all your employees suck maybe you should do something to attract better talent.
Yeah I see what you’re getting at, but not a fan of rewarding bad behavior which is really all throwing money at establishment politicians will ever do.
GFY.
Undeserved.
Lol, that's is not even the most egregious thing.
The insider stock trading is far worse
This is just the frosting on top, tbh. An extra little “fuck you <3” to the American taxpayers.
Guess the tv appearances, podcasts, book sales, and other meaningless things the hustle isn't enough. Minimum wage is still 7 bucks
Yeah, but is it enough for someone not grifting?
Or is the annual salary kept low so that grifting needs to be done and that normalizes bigger incidents of corruption
I assume this will coincide with a commiserate raise in the minimum wage, right?
Right?
Nope. Probably be an incommensurate rise in drug testing and other harassment of low wage workers, though.
And yet (for many) their net worth has increased significantly while in office.
If they outlaw congressional stock trading, I'm fine with them doubling their salary.
Seriously. In the grand scheme of things, they have super important jobs that should pay fairly well. They should make enough money that on their salary alone, they can afford to keep homes in both DC and wherever they are coming from. $175k isn't really enough.
...and they need to make way stronger laws preventing them from engaging in any unethical revenue streams.
If we outlaw it they’ll just go around it using someone else as a proxy. Must try harder. :(
Best do nothing then!
So with the bullshit down and gloom, that's how they get away with never fixing anything. It's also a lot easier to trace insider trading when they go through a proxy.
Oh I’m not advocating for nothing, just saying that alone this isn’t enough.
We should absolutely outlaw congressional stock trading, and more.
Please don’t mistake my desire for something more comprehensive for apathy.
Fuck that. Worthless cunts.
Eh...
So the real solution is to make the House telework, and require all members to have a primary residence in their district where they spend the majority of their time.
However, without doing that I think a raise is warranted. They need to maintain two homes, one of which in an insanely high cost of living area.
Like, when getting a clearance literally the most important thing they look at is finances, because people without resources are susceptible to bribery.
It's open knowledge that special interest groups and "donors" rent luxury living at bottom dollar prices, or even have frat style lodgings for junior House members.
So sure, knee jerk reaction is fuck them they make enough, but they really don't, and that opens the door for a lot of corruption once in office.
It's little things at once, then slowly ramps up until the big shit. You don't start asking a big thing, you reward for small things they're already doing and then slowly get them out of their moral comfort zone, until anything is acceptable.
This isn't a secret, the US government definitely knows how espionage works. So I doubt it's accidental right after Obama won both parties agreed a pay cut was worth it if it makes the poors less likely to run. And the people who do run more likely to be corrupted.
A raise so they can continue their comfy lifestyles all while doing NOTHING for us? Remember -- these fuckers have socialized healthcare. They don't live in the same reality as those of us who are barely scraping by. They also benefit from insider trading and lavish "gifts."
Nah, fuck all that. Don't lick their boots.
That’s not what they’re saying at all. I’ll repeat it but they do a very good job explaining it, re-read it if you have to.
The most important point is that the lower the salary, the more someone would find themselves needing to take extras from someone. It has the same basic vibe of being afraid of losing your health insurance so you don’t fight back when your company asks you to do questionable shit. This becomes a huge barrier for people that don’t have the money to ignore bribery and the people that do are way more likely to not be great people in the first place.
Without adequate salary the working class has a way harder time breaking into politics.
Ding ding ding