this is one of the biggest delusions of the left. Being successful (like being a CEO) is not a marker of personal failing. It's a marker of hard work, intellect and success. Are there bad CEOs? Of course. But you seems to think that being a CEO is de facto evidence of corruption.

This is a dumb as the rights climate deniers or the belief that Trump is a great businessman because he is rich.

I'm not suggesting they have to take vows of poverty. $200k/year is the current POTUS pension. Then of course writing a book is pretty much a guarantee 7 figure profit.

If you're talking $300k pension, then w/e, that's not really a difference. If you want the pension to compete with something like the $130 million in speaking fees Bill C. has made you're talking about a 7 fig pension check. And I submit a 7 figure pension would do absolutely nothing by itself to stop ex-presidents from getting big fees from the groups that donated to their campaigns and were then hugely impacted by their decisions. If anything it would increase it.

Anecdote is not evidence. We are suppose to be the side of reason and data.

We're also supposed to be the side of justice and restrained greed. Paying Trump 3 million a year when he's out of office doesn't sound like either to me.

This is why the left is often so terrible at economics. We decry the rights science ignorance but the left is just as bad when it comes to economic research.

You can be revolted but centuries of economics research tell us how poeple react to incentives. Wishing it were not so is no different than the right wishing carbon dioxide was not a greenhouse gas.

You're making a faulty assumption that money is the only incentive.

No I'm not. But we are talking about money. Power is another strong incentive. As is altruism.

Somehow, elite professors who are in the Top 100 in the world in their disciplines have under 200k income per year (often well under). BUT HOW COULD THEY?!

Being the CEO of a company with 100000 employees is just being a politician. Some good and some bad, but it's certainly not an indication of good. It's much more an indication of politicking.

I'm a CEO myself. I'm not taking about you either. I know you are a CEO.

Policies, regulations, norms, etc., don't exist to constrain and stop all bad actors or work in all cases. Obviously if we elect billionaires then there's probably no reasonable amount the public can compensate someone to ensure they don't sell access to themselves later. The justice system struggles to deter crimes all the time, but we don't stop rewarding whistleblows and informants because not every crime gets reported.

This is a silly point of course but it's actually wrong too. The best professors often make far more than 200k, some make millions. At the university in my home town the top professors make 700k while the average prof makes less than 200k.

Exactly!

It's so self defeating to say "but it won't work every single time" as a reason to not do something. Sure no incentive will ever stop all graft but that is a stupid goal. We are trying to reduce it.

The pension would be contingent on not taking paid gigs after office. So it wouldn't work "by itself;" the higher compensation would be contingent on not taking lobbying, jobs, speaking gigs, etc. Higher pensions would incentive politicians and other officers, regulators, executives, etc. to be less pliable at the idea that they will reap huge rewards from the mega wealthy interests after their time in service, and at the same time make these kinds of schemes less appealing to firms since the costs would be higher.

We are not absolutists and obviously you cannot create incentives to thwart literally every bad potential act and that's not the premise of the idea.

The average full professor at Harvard makes 198k. That is the highest average of any university, and it is fair to say any full professor at Harvard is elite.

This is a post that is bad and you should feel bad.

You are confusing average with outliers. Being president is hardly and average job. It's crazy to think it should be paid an average salary. It's the most elite job on earth. Any simple market theory would indicate it should be paid an elite salary.

Idk wtf is going on in Canada. Almost no one makes that much in the US. 700k is what the 6th highest paid professor in the entire country makes.

EDIT: Every professors outside of the top 10 highest paid (taken over all disciplines) makes less than half a million per year.

http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2...rofessors-u-s/

Right. I liked microbet bringing up Bill Clinton because he is precisely who we are trying to motivate to behave differently. Not Trump. Trump is the result of a system that has abandoned morals and ethics entirely and where we are bereft of credible critics of insane amounts of greed. So obviously sociopath megalomaniacs like Trump are going to abuse the system and it's going to be hard to constrain the truly terrible. The Clintons operated in such a way that made it easier for Trump to con people into abandoning even the pretense of norms and just embrace their worst impulses.

This whole debate really has nothing to do with Trump, who we can probably just casually assume will lie and cheat and graft and do anything to enrich himself regardless of what moral people try to do to stop him. All we want to do is create an environment of norms and standards that if followed make Trump anathema.

If you accept the premise instead that the Obamas and Clintons of the world are conflicted by these kinds of things then the idea is by incentivizing parties like the Clintons with higher compensation after their time in office, they might be incentivized NOT to take huge speaking fees which adulterate our democratic norms and leave voters and the populace in a place where charlatans like Trump can seize on justifiable collective frustration about the undue influence of monied interests.

Obviously -- and we've seen this -- but if you believe Obama, Clintons et al are already wholly corrupted by the system and as such they have no personal conflicts over this, OR that they are so virtuous it doesn't matter (we've seen this argument in other threads too, basically that Barack Obama is of such pure heart he can do whatever he'd like and take whatever money he wants from basically ~any source and it's fine) -- then my argument won't be compelling.

Increasing pay for politicians is targeted at people who have a conflict between the virtues they would like to live by (e.g., NOT Trump, who has no principles at all) and people who understandably want more things and wealth.

It's of course trying to have your cake and eat it too, but that's what a compromised world looks like that has both greedy people AND people who aspire to overcome that and do the right thing, a world where we acknowledge both impulses can exist in the same people.

It's not a hard calculation to imagine. Create a compensation structure that makes doing the right, desirable thing easier for people who might be willing to do good, and harder for people who might be trying to do bad and abuse the system. ldo it will not work every time.

I can't believe I'm defending Avwal but it's not a bad post gizmo.

All politics is decision making. There is logic chain that must be followed, even when it comes to healthcare.

1) there is limited money in the world,
2) spending a dollar here means you can't spend it there,


Therefore, we are forced to make decisions on where to apply healthcare dollars. Reasonable people can argue on where to draw that line but it seems clear to me that as a culture we are terrible at accepting natural death which leads huge amounts of money spent when quality of life is not an outcome. Often this money is spent not for the patient, but for their family.

It seems cold hearted but if we save money on end of life care we can use it on addiction treatment, woman's health, cancer screening, birth control etc.

You don't want to go down any empirical evaluation here. Much better with "simple market theory. "

How many Nobel laureates do I need to find with under $300k salaries? 61 professors and/or researchers at the University of California are Nobel prize winners and I don't think anyone not in administration or a football coach makes much more than $300k.

its a bad post bc it uses cherrypicked anecdotes. we know from other countries that we can provide great care for everyone. its a bad post bc it insinuates there should be a cutoff for how much care a person gets. get cancer and it costs 20m to save you, too bad get ready to die.

he would have a point if what he was saying was remotely in line with reality. but its just a few anecdotes that try to shape the argument.

As I pointed out to atc that's exactly why this is a stupid point. The market for professors is not the same market for CEOs or politicians.

The very best fast food manager on earth probably makes less than 70k.

Different markets value thier participants differently.

We can argue there are problems with how some markets value people highly while others value them too low but then we are having an income inequality discussion which is not the one we are currently engaged in.

That's not at all what he is saying. He is arguing for not spending dollars when there is NO chance of saving the person.

And it's silly to pretend there are not limits on healthcare. If it costs 100m in tax dollars to save someone would you be ok with it? How about 200m? One billion?

Of course there is a line no matter how odious it seems.

And he is using anecdotes but some quick googling shows that a lot of healthcare is spent on th final few months of a person life. His anecdotes are backed up by the data.

Consider a sports analogy and the integrity of highly notable competitive sports. Take it as a given that people have always gambled on sport and have always wanted an edge by rigging the games, and will always want that edge. Take that as the analogy to "there will always be money in politics trying to unduly influence things."

Now consider the history: take the early 20th century when gamblers bribed professional players who weren't making nearly as much modern contemporary professional athletes, even inflation adjusted. Compare to the contemporary era where gamblers and organized crime bribe either refs or amateurs/college athletes to fix games, and bribing professional athletes is almost unheard of.

Am I saying we pay Barack Obama like Lebron James? No, but the world of incentives exists on a scale like that. I don't know if Lebron James is more moral than Shoeless Joe Jackson but it's very very easy to predict who is going to be harder to corrupt. Am I saying all professional athletes are incorruptible? No; Pete Rose exists. But I think it's clear how the incentives operate and how the system ecology functions, and which behaviors are predictable given the incentives and compensation of the parties involved.

Dvault,

No one has suggested punishing Obama. So, basically you're just adding that part. If the ex-potus takes too much money from such and such sources they lose their pension.

All I'm doing so far is saying it's ok to call them out.