I am curious as to what you guys think. Here is a link to an article that has state legislative pay and per diems as of last year. "Paid $90,526/year, California's legislators earn $6,514 more per year than the next highest-paid lawmakers in Pennsylvania. Legislators in Mississippi earn the lowest yearly salary, at $10,000 per year. New Hampshire legislators are paid $200 per two-year term. Legislators in New Mexico are the only ones to make no salary; though they do earn $159/day in per diem. " Full Chart and source at: http://ballotpedia.org/Comparison_of_state_legislative_salaries It seems to me there is a possibility that the states that keep legislative pay low are rigging the system so that only well-heeled people can afford to serve in their state legislature. Do you guys agree that this keeps ordinary people from running for office in many of these states, guaranteeing that Main Street has little to no say in the affairs of state government?
I personally think that higher payments actually increase the chance of corruption through the simple fact, that high payments attract greedy people. I good example for immunity to corruption are buddistic monks. I also dont think that you cant live with a low payment or none at all in politics. I am researching political systems on my own and dont get paid for it, even though i have a lot work to do. Its also a fact that politicians with high salary have allways been very vulnerable to corruption and often forget the needs of the poor people. Think about Italy and the USA (even though the corruption there is called "lobbyism" which is in fact just a synonym for corruption) and you will see that I am correct. I dont think that low payments keep ordinary people out of politics. That would make myself a paradoxon.
My instinct says that we might actually want to pay elected officials a whole lot of money (like $1MM++ salaries) to attract competence and limit corruption. I actually wrote me a little blog post about it. I think we see the most corruption in societies that are poorer, in part because political power (and straight-up bribes) are the best way to actually get wealthy. Agreed we need to not pay people nothing/close to nothing in order to open the door to everyone. But I think in particular that if we enrich elected officials, we'll get more people who have the competence/experience as CEOs and other positions very valuable in the market, and that if these people are getting rich doing their jobs, they'll be less susceptible to bribing from corporations. I think we'll always have people in politics that, no matter how much money they have, will be hungry for more, but I think making elected officials pretty rich just doing their jobs makes that a whole lot less tempting.
