alt Hacker NewsI think the solution is to pay them more, create very strict laws around insider trading, and enforce those laws vigorously.
I don't know if that's realistic or not as the electorate has already shown they don't care enough to vote their representatives out for doing it and it's unlikely that current members would restrict their earnings. I guess it's good that we know about it, at least.
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I don't understand how paying them more will curtail this. This is a mixture of a crime of convenience and greed. It's not a Les Mis situation where they need these stock picks to survive (or even thrive). The current US Administration is full of rich people who are still not above corruption.
Obama signed the STOCK act into law, but of course, who watches the watchmen? The Restore Trust In Congress Act is sitting there, waiting for Mike Johnson to bring it to a vote.
> as the electorate has already shown they don't care enough to vote their representatives out for doing it
The problem arises from how we run elections. It's very hard to dislodge an incumbent when the small group of people voting in a primary are very biased, and then the people voting in the general election really don't want the candidate from the other party.
I suggest reading "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America" by Lee Drutman.
https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Two-Party-Doom-Loop-Multipar...
From my perspective it would make a lot more sense to only allow index fund purchases as an elected official. If the economy does well you still do well, but there would clearly be no insider trading going on.
Or at least there would be less - you could only trade on the knowledge of full-market swings rather than per-company swings.
Somehow I don’t think paying them more is going to be a very popular idea among the citizenry.
How much do they get paid currently?
Many people agree with Bay Area's idea that people making less than $105k are poor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46036803
Why would we pay them more? The people who are in Congress for the money are the exact type of people I don't want in Congress.
"create very strict laws"
Who's going to draft those laws?
Definitely not the lawmakers who could benefit from this.
See the problem?
You've just been presented evidence that your law makers are doing something immoral, something that should be illegal, and your idea is to pay them more. Do you also advocate putting a little pot of cash at the front of every walmart so the shop lifters can just take the cash and pay for the stuff they were going to steal?
the solution is dont let them pick individual stocks, only indexes. they also should have to publish all trades publicly the day the trade takes place
CA doesnt care about this -- you continue to re-elected Pelosi, she is one of the worst violators of this
I’m also in the camp of paying government officials more. In my town, the mayor and council make about $30k each while the median income in the city is well over $100k and houses cost over $1M. That self-selects out the majority of qualified candidates who must work for a living.
We have several high tech companies as well as a pro sports team that perpetually influence politics to the city’s detriment, and the stooges that get put on our ballot each election are simply under-equipped to combat them.