What if politicians were required to live like their constituents?

Great Debates
1

For a while, I’ve been pondering if a good way to fix politics would be to require those in charge of policy to live like those they create that policy for. Sadly I can’t imagine a way to get there from where we are, but setting aside the feasibility of it, I would be interested in speculating on what effects it would have, as well as what the best ruleset for achieving the desired goal would be.

The desired goal in this case is specifically: Politicians - specifically, any elected official, as well as any top unelected officials who are in charge of setting public policy or having discretional enforcement authority - are required to have, essentially, the median or mode lifestyle of those their policies had control over. If they occupied more than one political job (say, a mayor that became governor, or a governor that became president), then this applies to the largest/highest level constituency they had. For the rest of their lives. That bolded bit means that a politician can’t make favorable laws or regulations for a particular corporation or industry, then be rewarded when they leave politics.

Now, setting up the rules to achieve this is much more complicated and difficult. That’s part of what I’d like to speculate on in this thread. How to make sure that it’s happening? The person should still be able to make their own choices within constraints, but they wouldn’t be allowed to be richer than their median (or perhaps mode) constitutent. If they want to improve their standard of living, they have to improve the standard of living of those they have responsibility over. A senator, or governor, for instance, gets to live in a way corresponding to their state - they get the same income as the median/mode person in their state, and if that median/mode person owns property, then they get to own the same amount of net worth.

Note that I’m not sure whether median or mode is a better way to figure it out, hence why I’ve written both; from here on out I will use M for either median or mode. This would be a very good topic to consider as far as how to make the rules work; would median be a better way to gauge it, or mode? In any case, a hypothetical early bullet-point list of rules to achieve this might be something like:

  • Can own no property beyond the M net worth of their constituents.
  • Is provided with a salary/pension equal to the M yearly income of their constituents.
  • May not save, invest, or otherwise grow their money; any owned property that appreciates in value takes up a correspondingly larger total of the M net worth of their constituents, and if it exceeds this, must be relinquished.
  • Relinquishment of property or surplus money cannot go to chosen beneficiaries; it is automatically returned to the government that pays the salary/pension of the individual.
  • Is not permitted to live or reside at a residence not personally owned, unless a fair market value is being paid for accommodations (such as a hotel room, etc) out of their own salary/pension. Can stay with friends or family for no more than two nights per month as a reasonable ‘visit’ allowance.
  • Cannot receive more than (not sure, maybe $100/month?) worth of gifts in total, from family, friends, strangers, etc.
  • Whatever health coverage the M constituent possesses, whether that is ‘none’ or a public form of coverage such as Medicare is what is available.

Now, there is an obvious complication: how to fit in the spouse. It doesn’t seem entirely reasonable to limit the spouse in the same way, but that creates a gigantic loophole; would we restrict the person from living in property owned by their spouse? From their spouse paying for things, etc? It’s easy to restrict the person from receiving gifts from others, but their own spouse is a complication I haven’t been able to figure out a decent answer to, so maybe someone has some better ideas?

But in addition to discussing the specific rules, I’m also curious as to whether this seems like it would be a good idea if it were possible to implement. What would the results be? Would politicians focus on improving things for most people, since that then becomes the only way for them to improve their own standard of living? Because ultimately, the only incentive politicians currently have to actually improve the lives of their constituents is theoretically because this will get constituents to vote for them, but as has become obvious over the entire history of representative democracy, this doesn’t correlate very well. Constituents can be incentivized to vote for reasons other than ‘this politician improved our lives’, and they can be tricked and deceived as well. The system, I think, should directly reward improving the lives of their constituents and restrict the politicians from selling out their constituents in order to improve their own lives.

2

Cynical answer: they’d love living as well as the constituents that matter the most to them.

3

This seems to be a very good way of making sure the most highly educated professionals (lawyers, doctors, etc) never run for office unless they are power mad - granted our current politicians may be this as well.

4

I don’t think any political system anywhere needs to add more reasons to have government be a fight between regions. I can only imagine such a system being imposed and maintained if it benefited a slim majority who bled the rest of the country to make it work for them.

5

Why would you think lawyers are our most highly educated professionals? You can have pretty much any undergrad degree to get admitted to a law school. Im not sure that education in general correlates with being a successful politician. Skills like being a good listener, being able to negotiate and compromise and caring about people would to me be more important than a degree.

6

I mentioned doctors and lawyers; basically talking about anyone with a graduate degree.

7

I can see this being a problem, but on the flipside…maybe it will get people who actually want to do good? People that genuinely want to make things better do exist, and if this system discourages those who are greedy from getting into politics…that doesn’t seem entirely bad to me. It may indeed turn out that there aren’t enough such people to fill out competent leadership, I suppose; it’s certainly a potential downside.

Although, it seems to me that there are a lot of very well-educated professional occupations that aren’t that amazingly paid (as well as some where there aren’t as many jobs in the field as there are people with interest in it). I often hear about how in some fields there’s less jobs for doctorate-holders and such than there are people who study it, leaving a lot of people winding up with jobs in unrelated fields that aren’t amazingly well-paid.

Well, the system we have is currently region-divided already. If we could change all offices to be national that would also work under this system; it simply works with whatever scope the offices that exist are able to control. And ultimately, some level of local/regional government is always going to be needed, and it wouldn’t be fair to punish or reward the mayor of Chicago for the situation in Lancaster PA.

8

Again, I dont think having a graduate degree correlates with being a good politician. Being a policy analyst maybe. They dont teach social/emotional intelligence in college.

9

Though the solution is different, the proposal seems inspired by the same intentions as political philosopher John Rawls’s “original position.”

“In the original position, you are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society… Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally.”

10

There is, I believe, a difference in greed and getting paid what you think you are worth. If Congressperson is paid so little, it can be a really hard sell to a graduate degree holder, especially if they have loans to pay (which can be substantial for graduate school) and a family to support.

I believe that was the reasoning to increase the President’s pay to $400,000 a year a while back.

11

This opens the way to massive corruption.

If they’re paid comparatively little, it leads to situations where a House member accepts the situation for 2 years and exchanges votes for a secured position and/or lots of money after that one term (why would they serve more than one?). Or for those who are already corrupt but not well off to run for office, knowing they’ll be no worse off for this but can exchange their current votes for a future payday.

The fastest way for them to improve their own situation would not be to improve the lot of their constituents but to become corrupt and take advantage of the situation.

I appreciate this impetus for this idea but it seems like a poor way to achieve its purported goals. It doesn’t restrict them from selling out their constituents. Instead it adds greater motivation to sell them out as the easiest way to improve their own lot in life.

12

Perhaps I didn’t make it clear enough, but every restriction I propose is for life. Once you get a position with these restrictions, you can never have more than M net worth and yearly income (nor less, since the government you were part of then provides a pension).

That means that anyone going into politics forever gives up the ability to become rich, or at least, richer than M. If they manage to make M be rich, then the system has succeeded.

13

Ah, I see. So, as above, people who want to do good but at the sacrifice of their families and/or regions, which may be hard to find.

Also, it leads to the further stratification of society. It makes living/serving in Manhattan much more valuable than serving in Wyoming. And once in one of those rich regions, focusing on further enriching just your region to the detriment of others. And potentially kicking out the undesirables. Some places will advertise as a basically CEO-only enclaves and nobody will want to accept the dross.

You need a mechanism to avoid that. The assumption is people won’t move around much and/or it won’t turn into a haves/have nots situation where you really want to avoid bringing the mean/median income down out of fear of being kicked out.

14

Only about 13% of Americans have a master’s, doctorate, or professional degree. Lawyers are some of the most educated professionals we have in the United States. Though you’re right that this doesn’t necessarily translate into being a good politician.

15

Like it or not, obtaining a law degree puts one into the feeder pool for elected office.

Out of the 535 members who make up Congress, 40% had attended law school. For senators, nearly 54% have obtained a law degree.

Since the actual deliverable for a member of congress is a written law, it does make sense to have people who understand how laws work.

16

The current President and Vice President also has a law degree. The last two Democratic Presidents before the current one also had law degrees. It’s been a while since we had a Republican President who had a law degree - President Ford.

17

Yet another complication: This creates an incentive for rapid turnover of office-holders. Once you’ve served in office, your pay for the rest of your life is set, so you might as well just retire and stop doing anything.

And another: You say that it’s set by the largest polity that you’ve ever led. So let’s say that we have two governors. One institutes great policies, that cause her people to prosper, and her state to become the richest in the nation. The other institutes terrible policies, that destroy his state’s economy, leading them to become the poorest state in the nation. Which one of these two is going to run for President?

18

I think the law degree portion of this conversation is misleading the average person in the US doesn’t have a college degree so we’d be looking at locking in our politicians somewhere below the college graduate level let alone the grad school level. The median income in Colorado is just under $36k/year that is 3,000 less than the average 10 year salary of graduates from the worst college in the state.

This plan would either get us politicians who are average high school students, people without ambition who realize if they work for a year or two they never have to work again, or “religious” wackjobs who treat becoming a politician like becoming a priest.

I’d rather pay our politicians a salary at the 99.9 percentile level so we can outcompete any other job they may want.

19

This is anti-capitalist, for better or worse (worse, IMO). People who are currently doing better than average will be disincentivized from entering politics to begin with. Industries with higher individual wealth than the norm will be severely underrepresented in government, risking a nationwide brain drain.

Not to mention, the salary you envision precludes any monetary incentive to ever work again. As Chronos notes, many will retire after one term. After obtaining the pension, there is a strong penalty for working: the pension provides the maximum wealth allowed, so any wages earned in addition to the pension must be surrendered.

Good heavens, might as well tear up your various insurance policies now. The government will just snatch that cash windfall. If you get into an accident, or your house catches on fire, just remember that’s what you get for ever being an elected official. God forbid you actually die, because life insurance policies are normally paid to beneficiaries of your choosing, and thus your policy will be paid out to the government instead.

And forget about ever asking for cash damages in court. Or doing business with any entity that knows you are or ever were a politician - they know they are effectively immune from civil prosecution and will thoroughly screw you and yours.

The people who are inclined to save, invest, or otherwise grow money are now discouraged from ever entering government. These are the forward-thinking people that you are turning away. Who is left to run the government? What effect do you think that will have on the economy?

That family heirloom your father bequeaths to you? It now belongs to the state, because you had the misfortune of being elected into government.

Your friend buys World Series tickets for your birthday? Hahaha, those are way over $100. The state confiscates your birthday gift.

You want to get married to a politician? The government gets the dowry! Politicians will tend to be the type that doesn’t get married, with whatever effect that has on policy.

Therefore nobody who wants health insurance will ever run for office in an area where the population at large lacks health insurance. If nobody in that region’s government wants health insurance, guess what? There won’t be any government incentives or programs to get more people insured. You will create a vicious cycle.

~Max

20

Forget the impossibility of enforcing any of this. Look at who will be willing to take those jobs under those conditions - the median individual income in NYC is about $50K. and the median US individual income is about $36K. Would you want those jobs for that pay? Sure, there are lots of well-educated people who have jobs where they aren’t amazingly well-paid - but those jobs don’t tend to be the same sort of job as full-time political jobs. It’s one thing to work 40 hours a week for $50K and quite another to have to be available around the clock for days when there is some sort of emergency or not to ever have a real day off.