Have you ever seen anyone retire from politics poor?

And let me be clear. I’m specifically talking about state and federal representatives. Not federal employees or military personnel. I think everyone can get behind that.

And I mean all forms of payment. Not just their salaries. Strip them of pensions, healthcare, and charity donations as well. Any and all forms of profit. They can still have a salary, of course. But it’s got to be no more than minimum wage.

Why doe?

I don't understand your question.

Why do that?

Do what?

Do this

Let me answer your question with a question.

Why should politicians profit from representing people?

no, but Ulysses S. Grant died broke

Pretty sure he made a fair bit in the end due to his Memoirs sales.

Party On - 531349.jpg [image not found] Upvote for you!

He was poor - as in financially insolvent - after his presidency. And he is the last one I can think of.

have you ever seen anybody retire from a megachurch or oil company poor?

They're blatantly geared towards making money though.

why should public servants retire poor?

I never advocated for cutting their funding. I was just pointing out the difference, since you asked.

Personally, I think politicians in D.C should be annually paid just over the cost of living there. That's entirely fair, they deserve to have nice living conditions while they serve the country. Then you could give them a pension afterwards that scales up as they serve more terms (since they're sacrificing earnings from a normal job while serving the public).

My only concern with Congressional pay is that they make a heck of a lot more than a lot of the people they serve, and can continue to live off a taxpayer-funded golden parachute pension afterwards without even factoring in all the lucrative lobbying and speaking deals they can land after their service is up. I've no problem with people making money, I myself want to be loaded one day, but right now the needle seems to be pretty heavily skewed towards the 'overly phat paycheck' side of the needle.

Just my $0.02.

The consulting pay after retirement has to be capped. The pay while in office needs to be competitive with private industry. The untouchable benefits that aren't tied to the performance of everybody else's medical and social security needs to stop.

I want good people in government, not the unemployables. That means gov has to stop being too hard to fire people, but it's going to have to pay more in wages.

Oh, see I'd tell people to go to town with consulting pay (since that's a private affair), but agree that office pay being competitive with private industry could be a great idea (so long as we're not giving them CEO compensation packages or anything...that'd be expensive. lol)

There are a lot of things the government could do to both streamline its costs and attract better people. Unfortunately having nigh-unlimited funding and a 'problems go away if we throw money at them ' mindset doesn't exactly lead to efficient leadership decisions, so we'll see if anything substantive is ever done.

The decision to make it hard to fire people was done to soak up unemployables, returning ww1 soldiers with arms and legs blown off, etc. They thought they were doing a good thing. At the time, they were. But now you get in trouble if you try to improve things and you cannot innovate. So the "good" people go to private industry.

The use-it-or-lose-it budget is the other secret cause of government waste. Spending money on useless things at the end of this year's budget just to keep the dollars high for next year's budget makes agency lease cars they don't need, etc.

Nobody can say "I don't need this money this year, let me roll it over to next year". They can't ask for higher allocations when they really need something. They have to use it or lose it. The waste is high.

If you get rid of all the little budgets and consolidate with smart people, you can save about 50% of the budget. But that can't happen so long as the rules that make it too hard to fire and too hard to innovate don't change because a good worker will be sabotaged by everybody else above and below them.

Another example of UIOLI budget is leasing office space - they don't have enough to buy space, so they waste money leasing it. Furniture too - it's leased - they don't even buy cheap used furniture or reuse it from other agencies, they lease new furniture because it spends down the budget. They will buy supplies they don't need for the same reason, then throw them away to hide the evidence.

All absolutely true. My history teacher in high school was former Army. He'd tell us about days where they'd go fire off the base's entire ammunition reserves because they had to buy fresh ammo next year or the money would be wasted. It's ludicrous. Your office example was good too.

Unfortunately Washington is the undisputed master of efficient inefficiency.

yep. and it was set up that way deliberately so the dumbest people could run it. very sad. i'm a libtard and this needs to change. but neither party wants it to change because they both lose when supplier lobbyists don't donate to uncapped campaign funds.

Don't call yourself a libtard, even if you are very much a leftist. The term is denigrating, self-deprecating, and only contributes to the already-acrimonious political climate in this cursed stream.

More to your point, that's the heart of the matter. Hopefully we'll see some good change, because right now it's just an out of control death spiral.

I know, I'm just playin. I'm a little of both, bi-political, like most people.

megachurches don't serve the public?

Only when they retire to jail.

trump's next destination hopefully.

Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Same standard for everyone else in this country.

7 bankruptcies so far

I'm sure the court will take note.