h a l f b a k e r y"Bun is such a sad word, is it not?" -- Watt, "Waiting for Godot"
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One way to get better government is to pay for better people to run it.
Here is a proposed scheme to do just that:
Make a significant portion of an official's pay be a bonus
Award it in a way that is based on both local and national interests
Local interests can be scored by constituency
vote (i.e. 90% of district voted for him he gets more than guy who gor 51% vote)
For national interests, there is an annual vote that scores government as a whole and picks LOWEST number.
In other words, if President is really low in aproval ratings they all get less, ditto for other branches including Courts
As there would be some concern that they would never do anything unpopular, though it may be crucially important, I would add the following factors:
GDP growth
Deficit
Per Capita income
There could be other itemss (i.e. perentage of uninsured) and these themselves can be voted by national referenda
Finally, I would consider a press rating to introduce a moral compas
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While I am all in favor of incentive-based pay, I think it is totally ineffective at the top levels of government, where people run for the power, not for the salary (they would earn much more in private industry). An obvious example is NYC's Mayor Bloomberg, who has waived all but $1 of his salary - clearly he does not want or need the money. |
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Moreover, at these senior levels, we the people already give our feedback in the form of votes. It's lower down, at the unelected positions, where this could be very useful. |
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But that still begs the question: where does the bonus money come from? Government employees are, by and large, not well paid, with the incentive instead coming from a generous pension plan. We can hardly raid the pension plan (or we will still end up paying for it, when the plan fails). |
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One goal here is to give much more concrete feedback than an occasional vote. |
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As to patricians like Bloomberg, they tend to be successful, occasionally, becaues of their theoretical incorruptibility. By giving elected officials a chance to make significantly higher incomes, I'm looking for those who strive to excel, rather than those that may have already excelled elsewhere or inherited it. |
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Career politicians make much more money via corporate back-scratching than their salaries. |
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