I didn’t say it was a good thing! Just a different kind of bad thing.
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Easy enough to cover. Most of the people I’m looking at have an effect on all these industries - they really shouldn’t be working at all after retirement, except perhaps in the arts or in real (non-think tank) charities like the Red Cross.
My point is that we citizens need to start getting very bloody-minded about this, because, as it stands, private industry has bought control of government, and if there are any people less suited for the task of running the world, or setting economic and social policy, I can’t think of them.
If we can get a toehold on fixing the political problem, we have a chance as well to fix the problems of corporate governance, which is contributing to the situation. If we don’t get a handle on this, I fear for our species, because the bulk of our policies right now are being driven by very shortsighted interests.
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Amen to that.
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I would note that the reason why a $200,000 pension left the Clintons “dead broke” is that they owed over $10 million in legal fees from the various harassing suits filed against them while Bill was in office. You could argue they should’ve stopped after they paid off all that debt, but even so I 'd say it’s preferable for an ex-president to give speeches to Wall Street over an ex-president to actively join Wall Street like Bush Sr. did when he joined the Carlyle Group
As said by the leftist magazine The Economist:
You need not be a conspiracy theorist, though, to be concerned about what lies behind Carlyle’s success. Can a firm that is so deeply embedded in the iron triangle where industry, government and the military converge be good for democracy? Carlyle arguably takes to a new level the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower feared might “endanger our liberties or democratic process”. What red-blooded capitalist can truly admire a firm built, to a significant degree, on cronyism; surely, this sort of access capitalism is for ghastly places like Russia, China or Africa, not the land of the free market?
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Here Here!
Some jobs are best left to people who already have all the money they’ll ever need.
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The Clintons had a similar net worth to Sanders when Bill ran in 1992, with the couple having a net worth between $590,000 and $1,690,000. Hillary’s estimated law firm salary of $175,000 was about the same as Sander’s senate salary of $174,000. Bill, being just a governor of Arkansas, had a mere $67,000 salary.
The Obama’s were a bit better off in 1997, being worth between $2.25 and $8.4 million. Most of that was from royalties from Barack’s best-selling books, however. Barack of course had a senator’s salary. Michelle’s part-time salary at the University of Chicago Medical Center was $121,000 in 2007; it was $384,000 when she was full-time in 2005.
(note: all amounts have been inflation-adjusted to 2015 dollars)
Not reflected in this table is the cost of providing Secret Service Protection-- which may well dwarf the GSA’s expenses. But hey! No assassinations, kidnappings, assaults and other incidents so far. I imagine that ISIS salivates over the possibility of such mischief.
The big expenses are pension, office space and office staff. Air Travel has an almost absurd cap, but it’s not exploited-- probably because the bulk of it is for things like emergency evacuation
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Most democracies have tried the approach to “pay politicians enough so they don’t need to take bribes any more”.
Maybe a different approach is in order. Make politicians so poor that people who can afford to buy the election won’t be interested any more.
Because it is a bad idea to not pay them, unless increasing the level of inequality and corruption is your goal.
See reform 4 of the Peoples Charter from the UK.
Payment of Members, thus enabling an honest trades-man, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency; when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country.
Do you really think that this will lead to an increase in the minimum wage? I expect that it would lead to ‘gifts’ to politicians in return for keeping a low minimum wage, while they live a comfortable life.
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Very difficult though when the corporatization of politics means that the type of candidates with outside interests in the arts and charities, etc. are not selected in the first place, and when more so than ever political discourse is predicated on being a member of the right clique and not having policies which might benefit the majority.
The problem is eminently practical. People always say they want young politicians, “in tune” with the working population; that means the average age for politicians has declined overall. Barack Obama will leave office at 55, which means he will likely enjoy something between 20 and 40 years of pension, at least 10 of those at a time when most of the population is still supposed to work. Blair and Clinton both left office at 54, in perfect physical health. Because private-sector salaries have skyrocketed since the '80s, their “peers” at that point are raking in several $millions per year – it’s entirely natural for them to try and get the same deal, especially after being forced to live 20 years under continuous public scrutiny. And there are hundreds of senators, congressmen and MPs who are much, much younger and will leave much earlier than that - Nick Clegg is 49 and has already done it all.
Lowering the average age of politicians while increasing inequality in the private sector, coupled with righteous anger at politicians’ salaries, resulted in a system where high office is just a very long audition to join the global elite. Counter-intuitively, the best solution might actually be to reverse the trend: raise age barriers to high office, so that people who get there will have nothing to lose. Trying to “police away” the problem will not work: these people have armies of lawyers and accountants, hell they are lawyers and they write those laws in the first place, so they know all the loopholes.
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Outside interests are relatively irrelevant. People who can resist everyday temptations of simple corruption are very few, regardless of their background. Look at classic dictators for some staggering transformations from “humble man of the people” to “ruthless plutocrat”.
Woah, woah, woah, wait a second. Powerful men are ego tripping…for money?
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In the UK a least it may be the pernicious influence of PPE on the political system. PPE was introduced in the 1920s as ‘Modern Greats’ and was geared towards civil service candidates. As the name suggests it was intended to replace Greats. I think, however, despite what Oxford PPEists claim it has resulted in and responded to a narrowing of intellectual interests on the part of all politicians. Broader intellectual interests might have been a better phrase.
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I had never even heard of “PPE” before your comment (but I’m both American and a biologist). Looking it up it really seems dire – a mismash of Political Science, Philosophy and Economics with presumably not enough coverage of any of them to reach a reasonable mastery.
Politics - how to keep our social class in power
Philosophy - why our social class needs to run the country
Economics - how to keep the money flowing to our social class.
It’s like the French ENA but without the need to actually be any good at anything.
Edit - Socrates is of course highly regarded by philosophers. His message, as represented by Plato, could basically be summed up as “Educated people should be put in charge of things. In fact, the State should be run by people taught to argue the hind leg off a donkey. They should have a special education provided by us philosophers. And you metics and ordinary citizens should know your place, don’t worry, we’ll provide myths explaining why you need to do as you’re told so you will be quite happy.”
The Democratic government was smart enough to realise that he was really arguing for an aristocratic coup, and they gave him the chance of exile. But ever since some philosophers have been peddling the myth that whatever is good for us and our paymasters is good for you lot, whether it’s Hegel or Scruton.
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Part of me feels like we should pay congress and the president several million a year, with a very generous pension package.
Because, you DO get what you pay for- And right now, we’re not the ones paying.
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I’m aware of all this. What do you propose, then? I do not think we can afford to let business as usual continue - that leads to a feudal system with even fewer checks and balances than in the Middle Ages, and a continuation of policy decisions that are dangerous to humanity. Saying there is nothing to be done is not an option.
The alternative is carting 'em all off to Mme Guillotine in tumbrels, and getting there is likelier to be a lot bloodier than the French Revolution, given the police states that are being set up.
That’s why I don’t sweat about beefing up their pay and/or pensions. From a budgetary point of view, it’s a drop in the bucket, and we need a carrot as well as a stick to encourage a less corrupt exercise of their duties.
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