Badgercakes7 t1_j63ierm wrote
Reply to comment by BoatAccidentSurvivor in CT's legislature salaries are starvation wages, $28k/year. You have to be retired or rich to serve. This is regressive and should be changed. by MormonReformist
So your solution is to make it HARDER for regular people who aren’t corrupt/ overly self interested to become a part of politics? That’s like solving a gunshot wound by shooting yourself again to dislodge the first bullet.
BoatAccidentSurvivor t1_j63kbqu wrote
Oh because incentivizing poor people who need 28k to make divisions about running our lives is such a good idea? You know because broke people are sooooo good at operating successful businesses.
Badgercakes7 t1_j63u19s wrote
Wow. That’s a lot to unpack there. First of all I said “not independently wealthy enough to take off work for several years” and you heard “poor people”. Second of all, the assumption that poor people are inherently less intelligent or capable than more wealthy people is simply not correct. Lastly, we’re not talking about running any business, we’re talking about running a government and those are not the same. Hell, if we’re talking about basic finances I’d rather trust someone that can stretch a small amount of money further (one of the dirty poors) than someone used to just throwing money at a problem to solve it
BoatAccidentSurvivor t1_j63uoq4 wrote
Ok. So the solution is high salaries for those who are used to stretching a dollar? They would never make any decisions to personally enrich themselves at the expense of their constituents.
Anyway, I think you can see that there isn’t a solution. We have pitifully few examples of people in government serving because it’s their civic duty. It just gets overlooked because people are on teams and they want their political team to win.
Badgercakes7 t1_j64hvp7 wrote
Unironically yes, give a living salary to people who are used to having to work for a living to allow them to represent their constituents. They have had to actually live paycheck to paycheck, had to go without, and they would be the most likely to represent faithfully the people who have had to live the same life, because they know how much it sucks. Otherwise you get someone who thinks nothing needs to be done to help the poor because they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and maybe consider having their housekeepers come half as often if they are having trouble paying their bills (in case this needs saying, most working class people don’t have housekeepers so this is an out of touch perspective.)
BoatAccidentSurvivor t1_j64l2k3 wrote
How do you propose that we prevent already rich and powerful people from just collecting an extra 100K just for the hell of it? After all, a huge amount of your probability of winning a local election depends upon your ability to fund your candidacy, which is how we ended up with the oligarchical political class that we have.
Badgercakes7 t1_j658unw wrote
Campaign finance reform. Or even better, make all campaign funding illegal. There are half a dozen state sponsored debates between candidates, televised of course, that’s it. All other forms of campaign advertising are illegal.
BoatAccidentSurvivor t1_j65hqt6 wrote
That’s a start. I could get down with that. And it would weed out some of the more casual and propagandized votes. You got my vote.
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