So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? I don't see that going over well. Your primary home is real estate. So is that little family cottage.
Also, congressional reps need to have a home is Washington. So, they have to rent there?
After all it is positioning real estate as investments that contribute to its unaffordability.
That said, I don't think real estate is as easily abused as stocks. Much harder to influence the value.
They could always try renting. A lot of people manage to get by doing just that.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/ind...
If their kids accept their inheritance, the rules apply to them too. The rules always apply to spouses.
Let them invest in whole-market funds / ETFs, but only allow withdrawls 5 years after leaving office.
We're a capitalist society. That doesn't mean "let companies do whatever they want, including buying politicians", it means "we use capital as a means of setting incentives to drive good outcomes". Let's use our capital incentives correctly to drive good outcomes from our elected leaders. They work for us.
Call me insane I guess.
Do you really want people greedier than that running the country?
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.
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.
To be blunt, your whole polemic reads like a CATO fever dream, which is the opposite of what I was suggesting; ideological contrivance isn't a solve, and complexity at a nation our size and scope ain't gonna get reduced to a nice pamphlet of rules. It's the same reason you can't run a FAANG company the same way you run a 6 person A-round company.
Bonuses and promotions always go to those who exceed them, and "improvement plans" or "restructuring" is reserved to those who miss.
Any imperfect measure that becomes a target gets pursued at the expense of the original intent.
I'm open to disallowing real estate speculation.