alt Hacker NewsYeah, I've looked at the net worth of various congressmen recently, and most of the wealthy members were wealthy from before politics. Americans complain about their politicians only getting into the career to get rich, but that doesn't seem to be true. In fact, it's kind of shocking how little they get paid, considering they run one of the most powerful countries in the world. This is even more true at the state level.
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It's not that shocking when you consider that because these positions pay so little they self select for more wealthy people in general.
And for the less wealthy it creates a huge incentive to leave office after a term or two and go into lobbying.
I wonder why the US compensates the judges comparatively well, but not Congress. Should Congress be similarly well compensated like the judiciary so that Congress attracts more talent.
> In fact, it's kind of shocking how little they get paid
Yes, it’s almost as if they’re doing this job for some other reason.
They should be paid a ton. And in exchange, no stock trading, complete divestiture from any private businesses, and like a 10 year ban on employment in any private sector capacity remotely related to anything they legislated on or worked on while in office, to name a few sensible restrictions.