> top 3% of the American income distribution

Pelosi has a good claim to being the most powerful woman in the US, and she makes less than a twentysomething hotshot engineer/banker/consultant/whatever. Any system that actually cared about her not being tempted by conflicts of interest would pay her two more zeroes.

You can of course ask why 225k isn't enough, and you can moralise all you want about how 225k should be more than enough, but going against a part of human nature as fundamental as the instinct to compare one with one's peers will just not succeed.

I think there are two entirely separate concerns. First, is the salary for Speaker of the House sufficient. Second, isn't it a bit of a coincidence that Pelosi and her husband made 100+ million for themselves investing in stocks through his investment company while she was in Congress? Maybe that's just a coincidence.

I don't think we could meaningfully increase salaries. Pelosi is still making money despite having a hundred million. How much more should we pay? What would satiate her or those in her position such that they would be immune from inducements? I think back to Roman politicians, who, despite being monstrously wealthy, were still monstrously corrupt.

The way to do it is to give a very generous salary and to simultaneously crack down hard on even the appearance of impropriety. Neither is being done right now, and part of the reason is that you can't really do one without the other[1], so you're stuck in a bit of a catch-22.

[1] You can't crack down on on public servants questionably but not clearly criminally making money on the side if everyone that's supposed to be doing the cracking down are also public servants who sympathize (more cynically, are in on the same gig) because they're also making a fraction of what their peers are making. And you can't pay your public servants more when the people are fuming at the individually arguable but clear-in-aggregate corruption that is rampant.

I think you can crack down on even the appearance of corruption without paying huge salaries. I don't see why not. The two concerns seem orthogonal to me.

I think we should crack down on even the appearance of corruption in judges, prosecutors, FBI agents, etc. Does that mean we need to pay each of them so much that they are effectively unbribe-able?

Finally, it seems very strange to answer clear-in-aggregate corruption by paying the corrupt more money. I worry that if we aren't able to stem the corruption now, then giving our wealthy and corrupt rulers more money won't really help.

>Does that mean we need to pay each of them so much that they are effectively unbribe-able?

Why don’t we use the security clearance model? We don’t pay people that work in intelligence operations huge salaries, but we also don’t want them sell secrets to Russia. Any of them could be bribable. So we do extensive background checks and evaluate their finances, criminal record, foreign contacts, etc. for red flags. Then investigate, suspend, or revoke clearances based on any new red flags that come in. We could do a version of that for legislators. We won’t, but we could.

> I think you can crack down on even the appearance of corruption without paying huge salaries.

Sure, go ahead.

Less flippantly: Of course there's no law of physics forbidding it, but I believe the structural dynamics I described make this infeasible. I would be happy to see examples of societies that prove otherwise though.

> Finally, it seems very strange to answer clear-in-aggregate corruption by paying the corrupt more money.

Yes it is, which is why that's not really feasible either. Hence the catch-22.

Unfortunately people are greedy. I don't think there's a generous salary that would cause them to not want more. They could be making $50M a year, and they would still want more.

I don't know what the solution would be, perhaps your suggestion isn't too bad and a good start.

> I don't think there's a generous salary that would cause them to not want more.

The point is that you give them a generous salary and take it away if they misbehave. Every carrot is a stick in waiting.

$225k/yr plus healthcare and pension for a part time job is a generous salary!

They also get speaking fees, book sales, etc.

The only thing you really can do is limit their power.

225k is already an extremely generous salary.

I don't care who you are, or what power you think you have, I don't see why society should tolerate your greed if you think you need or deserve more than that. That buys an extremely comfortable life anywhere you look.

I don't see why we should tolerate people seeking extravagant lives over comfortable ones. It's disgusting.

Seriously you're arguing a multi-millionaire needs a higher salary give your head a shake.

Okay! Then make that apply to everyone, and maybe that could work. Note, that means no 10mil more bonuses for bankers, no 600k salaries for engineers or wall street traders, etc.

Otherwise why would you pay an important public servant shit (comparatively) while you pay the bankers who are a leech on our economy handsomely?

No one said anything about bankers and engineers or whoever else. I'm fine with them making less too.

Post I was replying to was literally advocating for a higher salary for someone with a 9 figure net worth. As though MORE money would make her behave less greedy.

Absurd.

Maybe it's good that hotshot engineer/banker/consultant/whatever be discouraged from running for representative government positions.

Is she in the top 3% of responsibility? She (like her or not) is a significant leadership figure in the USA. 225k$ isn't that much.

I have the unpopular opinion that politicians should be paid more. If they are paid generously perhaps there isn't as much temptation to get rich some other way. Why do we pay top CEOs millions of dollars, or a better analogy, why do we pay top engineers 500k, 600k, 1mil, but not top politicians? Perhaps then they wouldn't legislate around their stock portfolio or corporate lobbyists' preferences.

Pelosi doesn't get paid enough. She's one of the leaders of a country with a $23T economy and a $4.8T federal budget. She maintains houses in two different (very) high COL areas, and has a punishing work and travel schedule.

We'd be shocked at an exec in a round C company, helping lead 100+ people, who didn't make more than that.

Pelosi doesn't get paid enough is a surface of the sun level hot take.

It really isn't. If your goal was to make investing while in congress less appealing, you'd pass laws, yes, but also pay people more. AoC had made the point before that if you make congressional pay too low, it becomes only feasible for the already-wealthy to maintain a political career. Also note that being a congressperson has weird extra expenses, you usually need to have two homes, one in DC and one in your home state, so expenses will naturally be higher than average.

(this is one of the reasons that, e.g. Trump claiming to donate his presidential salary was frowned upon: Sure it sounds nice at first, but it implies that either he'll profit off of the presidency in other ways, or if that becomes a norm, that only those who can afford to donate their salary should become president)

Um, if the goal was to make investing while in Congress unappealing I would just ban that. Index funds only. Don't like it? Don't run for re election.

Being in government isn’t meant to be a lifelong career. People should only serve a few terms and leave.

"Trump claiming to donate his presidential salary was frowned upon"

Literally every recent president has done this. It only implies that he has enough money to live on and doesn't need a salary. If he hadn't donated it the media would have exploded. I'll add that to the list of instances where people would hate him no matter the decisions he made.

> Literally every recent president has done this. It only implies that he has enough money to live on and doesn't need a salary.

Obama and Bush didn't. They donated some, but not all, and they certainly din't make it an aspect of their campaign. As far as I can tell, the last president to donate their entire salary was Kennedy.

Because when people pass a certain wealth threshold they just say, "that's enough money, I am satisfied."

I mean...yes, many people do exactly that.

You're right, her burden is too high. We need to expand the house of representatives to lessen her burden and increase democracy. She also should use her extreme power to help lower the cost of housing for her constituents and residents of the Capitol area.