Random Thread - Anything Goes
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@coliver said:
@dafyre said:
@johnhooks said:
@Dashrender said:
@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
Professional politians is definitely part of the problem in my eye.
Though, the flip side of that is - who wants to go into politics for only 6 years, 12 if they could do both house and senate and then basically have to go back to the normal work force.
ug.. problems everywhere.
Their employer could hold their job for them, assuming the business doesn't go under while they are in office.
Interesting - but that's a pretty huge burden on some businesses. Here, let me hold a job for 6-12 years for you, so that when you come back you won't know anything about my business at that point, so potentially you'll just sit in a corner collecting a paycheck.
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
I think we should return to this.
I disagree. I think we should pay these people more. In my opinion, for what it's worth, we are getting the bottom of the barrel because the smart people, who are worth more, would never get into politics. It would also make lobbying less effective.
I could see that to some degree, maybe.
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@johnhooks said:
@Dashrender said:
@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
Professional politians is definitely part of the problem in my eye.
Though, the flip side of that is - who wants to go into politics for only 6 years, 12 if they could do both house and senate and then basically have to go back to the normal work force.
ug.. problems everywhere.
Their employer could hold their job for them, assuming the business doesn't go under while they are in office.
Interesting - but that's a pretty huge burden on some businesses. Here, let me hold a job for 6-12 years for you, so that when you come back you won't know anything about my business at that point, so potentially you'll just sit in a corner collecting a paycheck.
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
Well that - and, as you said, it wasn't a full time job. In fact, the writers were so worried about ensuring that congress got together regularly that they wrote it in that they were required to get together at least 2 times a year. Of course when traveling from several hundred miles away took days or more in the 1700's you can understand that.
It was expected that you continued to work your normal job. Though I can see why that's probably untenable today. So I have less of an issue with them not having a normal job while being in congress.Now we need the opposite in place. Send the politicians home - go to your home state, connect with your constituents. I'm not sure who pays for their residents in both their home state and DC? I'm sure it's you and me tax payer (for those that pay US taxes).
Why even get together to vote? We don't need to do that anymore.
With the advent of technology -- especially as of late, certainly not. They don't even really need to get together to do the debates / committee / sub-committee / pre-meeting meetings / meetings / post-meeting meetings anymore either.
Edit: Thinking about video conferencing, etc.
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@coliver said:
@dafyre said:
@johnhooks said:
@Dashrender said:
@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
Professional politians is definitely part of the problem in my eye.
Though, the flip side of that is - who wants to go into politics for only 6 years, 12 if they could do both house and senate and then basically have to go back to the normal work force.
ug.. problems everywhere.
Their employer could hold their job for them, assuming the business doesn't go under while they are in office.
Interesting - but that's a pretty huge burden on some businesses. Here, let me hold a job for 6-12 years for you, so that when you come back you won't know anything about my business at that point, so potentially you'll just sit in a corner collecting a paycheck.
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
I think we should return to this.
I disagree. I think we should pay these people more. In my opinion, for what it's worth, we are getting the bottom of the barrel because the smart people, who are worth more, would never get into politics. It would also make lobbying less effective.
Pay them more? I guess they aren't always the richest people out there, but they are often those who are not poor. I'm not sure if money would really make any difference, other than money itself brings with it power.
Just look at Trump and his campaign - he's on stage shoting get him out, get him out.. about protesters... this is his power hungryness showing through. He does that to people he's around every day - just flexing his power.
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
@dafyre said:
@johnhooks said:
@Dashrender said:
@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
Professional politians is definitely part of the problem in my eye.
Though, the flip side of that is - who wants to go into politics for only 6 years, 12 if they could do both house and senate and then basically have to go back to the normal work force.
ug.. problems everywhere.
Their employer could hold their job for them, assuming the business doesn't go under while they are in office.
Interesting - but that's a pretty huge burden on some businesses. Here, let me hold a job for 6-12 years for you, so that when you come back you won't know anything about my business at that point, so potentially you'll just sit in a corner collecting a paycheck.
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
I think we should return to this.
I disagree. I think we should pay these people more. In my opinion, for what it's worth, we are getting the bottom of the barrel because the smart people, who are worth more, would never get into politics. It would also make lobbying less effective.
Pay them more? I guess they aren't always the richest people out there, but they are often those who are not poor. I'm not sure if money would really make any difference, other than money itself brings with it power.
Just look at Trump and his campaign - he's on stage shoting get him out, get him out.. about protesters... this is his power hungryness showing through. He does that to people he's around every day - just flexing his power.
The only way politicians generally get wealthy is through lobbying. Trump is a good example, I never thought I would say that, his entire campaign platform was originally that he had his own money and didn't need anyone else's so he wouldn't be beholden to any lobbying groups.
If we pay them more not only would lobbying be less effective, as a means to an end, but it would also be appealing to people who are far more capable, both intellectually and otherwise, then the current crop we have.
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I've seen Scott argue the other side of that. That the people we want aren't driven by money, so paying more might not bring the best and the brightest.
It's hard to know which is right.
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@Dashrender said:
I've seen Scott argue the other side of that. That the people we want aren't driven by money, so paying more might not bring the best and the brightest.
It's hard to know which is right.
No argument there. There are people who aren't motivated by money that is true. I've argued that with that point a few times.
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Although, the current salary of congress is 174k$. So my theory may have gone out the window. That still is not a lot compared to other high paying jobs in the country but is far more the average.
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@Dashrender said:
I've seen Scott argue the other side of that. That the people we want aren't driven by money, so paying more might not bring the best and the brightest.
It's hard to know which is right.
I think that the hardest part is that it is not consistent. Pay nothing and people who aren't rich can't afford to do it and pay a ton and you get people doing it for the money instead of for the good of the people.
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@dafyre said:
@nadnerB said:
Wow, your political arena is more messed u than I thought.
Format, reinstallOnly if that means we can fire all elected officials at the national level and start from scratch with 6 year term limits for House & Senate, and continue on with the 2 terms for president.
Anybody currently holding office is ineligible for re-election after we fire them all.
I feel the opposite. Term limits are crippling. It takes decades to do good work. Short term limits cause presidents to act like Wall St... in it for short term, fake gains to trick the public. There isn't time to be useful, so you just spend the first four years desperately trying to get a second four years and the second four years riding it till you are done because there is no good way to be useful.
It feeds into an inability to disrupt the status quo.
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@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
Professional politians is definitely part of the problem in my eye.
Though, the flip side of that is - who wants to go into politics for only 6 years, 12 if they could do both house and senate and then basically have to go back to the normal work force.
ug.. problems everywhere.
Their employer could hold their job for them, assuming the business doesn't go under while they are in office.
Um... yeah. That's an impossible burden to put on employers and that's assuming that they have employers. If they own their own businesses, which are the people that we want the most because they have the rare view of what it is like to invest in the country, they don't have those options.
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
Professional politians is definitely part of the problem in my eye.
Though, the flip side of that is - who wants to go into politics for only 6 years, 12 if they could do both house and senate and then basically have to go back to the normal work force.
ug.. problems everywhere.
That's assuming being a politician is a full time job, from some of the voting records and absenteeism from congress it seems like it isn't.
Nor was it ever expected to be. I think they skip voting because they assume the outcome and don't want to be on the record voting a particular way that would give an opponent ammunition when election time comes back around.
Yes, not voting is an important part of their jobs.
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@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
Professional politians is definitely part of the problem in my eye.
Though, the flip side of that is - who wants to go into politics for only 6 years, 12 if they could do both house and senate and then basically have to go back to the normal work force.
ug.. problems everywhere.
Their employer could hold their job for them, assuming the business doesn't go under while they are in office.
Interesting - but that's a pretty huge burden on some businesses. Here, let me hold a job for 6-12 years for you, so that when you come back you won't know anything about my business at that point, so potentially you'll just sit in a corner collecting a paycheck.
Good point... but isn't that what the ousted politicians do these days? They go back to their law practice, or back to a mundane job... or write their memoirs.
But those are self employment and to "new" jobs, not the old ones. There is a HUGE difference between interviewing for a new job or demonstrating that you can do your old one and getting a guaranteed ride for having taken a decade off.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@nadnerB said:
Wow, your political arena is more messed u than I thought.
Format, reinstallOnly if that means we can fire all elected officials at the national level and start from scratch with 6 year term limits for House & Senate, and continue on with the 2 terms for president.
Anybody currently holding office is ineligible for re-election after we fire them all.
I feel the opposite. Term limits are crippling. It takes decades to do good work. Short term limits cause presidents to act like Wall St... in it for short term, fake gains to trick the public. There isn't time to be useful, so you just spend the first four years desperately trying to get a second four years and the second four years riding it till you are done because there is no good way to be useful.
It feeds into an inability to disrupt the status quo.
True, but then you wind up with career politicians who become career presidents and the public has little or no say in what the president does... In my mind, it becomes to monarchistic.
I could compromise on the term limits by doing away with the electoral collage, and go straight to popular vote.
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@johnhooks said:
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
Yes, which worked for a whole two presidents before the first corrupt power monger got into power. It meant that only the rich elite had any chance of being in government, which isn't totally bad but isn't very good, either. Washington was one of the richest men in America - but much of his fortune was not from being a good businessman (he was not) but by marrying into money (he was truly American nobility) and then using the wars to grant himself massive estates, the largest in the nation. Not exactly how we want our politicians to be.
John Adams was a working professional, one of the top lawyers in the nation. He took on an insane personal burden to be in politics and only could do it by being wealthy, owning a large farm and running his own legal practice that his fame helped to promote. This is more or less the best case.
Jefferson was also ultra rich land baron that used the political office for personal gain.
requiring people to be super rich as the foremost requirement for office doesn't work well.
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@dafyre said:
True, but then you wind up with career politicians who become career presidents and the public has little or no say in what the president does... In my mind, it becomes to monarchistic.
Well since I'm a monarchist for exactly that reason, it makes sense that I prefer a president with power than a pointless government with no means of improvement.
The number one concern I have with government is the involvement of the public. They lack the education, scope and access to information necessary to make the necessary decisions. We cannot have a good government "of the people". The two concepts must be exclusive, which is why it was so feared by the founding fathers to allow the public to vote (and they did not.) They talked at length about the dangers of democracy (America was specifically not founded as a democracy for these exact reasons) because democracy meant mob rule - exactly what we are seeing today.
The public is just a puppet of the media barons. You can't let the public decide without mayhem ensuing.
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@coliver said:
Although, the current salary of congress is 174k$. So my theory may have gone out the window. That still is not a lot compared to other high paying jobs in the country but is far more the average.
Yes, that congress makes less than doctors, lawyers, small business owners, systems admins and such is a problem. You can be a generic middle manager and make more. Congress people need enough, I think, to be at least on the upper end of normal workers. We don't want "normal successful people" weighing if Congress will cost their kids their college education or not - because people making $174K are in the range where things like that can hit them hard. They give up a lot of family time, freedom, and potentially money to do a thankless job. Paying them millions isn' the answer, but paying them enough that their kids don't suffer from it is probably important. Right now we pay so little it is as if we expect corruption to fill in the gap.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
Yes, which worked for a whole two presidents before the first corrupt power monger got into power. It meant that only the rich elite had any chance of being in government, which isn't totally bad but isn't very good, either. Washington was one of the richest men in America - but much of his fortune was not from being a good businessman (he was not) but by marrying into money (he was truly American nobility) and then using the wars to grant himself massive estates, the largest in the nation. Not exactly how we want our politicians to be.
John Adams was a working professional, one of the top lawyers in the nation. He took on an insane personal burden to be in politics and only could do it by being wealthy, owning a large farm and running his own legal practice that his fame helped to promote. This is more or less the best case.
Jefferson was also ultra rich land baron that used the political office for personal gain.
requiring people to be super rich as the foremost requirement for office doesn't work well.
Is that not the case now? States require several thousand dollars to go on their state presidential ballot. Some states may allow you to submit a pauper's affidavit that will show you do not have the financial ability to pay such a fee. Then you need to advertise via local papers, town hall meetings, road trips, and TV ads, and everything you can do to get your name out in front of people so they can get an idea as to what you are all about.
You will likely have to quit your job to go on the campaign trail as well, so there's all that. Your average Joe, even if they have a brilliant political mind simply cannot afford to run for president.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
Yes, which worked for a whole two presidents before the first corrupt power monger got into power. It meant that only the rich elite had any chance of being in government, which isn't totally bad but isn't very good, either. Washington was one of the richest men in America - but much of his fortune was not from being a good businessman (he was not) but by marrying into money (he was truly American nobility) and then using the wars to grant himself massive estates, the largest in the nation. Not exactly how we want our politicians to be.
John Adams was a working professional, one of the top lawyers in the nation. He took on an insane personal burden to be in politics and only could do it by being wealthy, owning a large farm and running his own legal practice that his fame helped to promote. This is more or less the best case.
Jefferson was also ultra rich land baron that used the political office for personal gain.
requiring people to be super rich as the foremost requirement for office doesn't work well.
Is that not the case now? States require several thousand dollars to go on their state presidential ballot. Some states may allow you to submit a pauper's affidavit that will show you do not have the financial ability to pay such a fee. Then you need to advertise via local papers, town hall meetings, road trips, and TV ads, and everything you can do to get your name out in front of people so they can get an idea as to what you are all about.
You will likely have to quit your job to go on the campaign trail as well, so there's all that. Your average Joe, even if they have a brilliant political mind simply cannot afford to run for president.
Today it is all about corporate sponsorship. You don't need to be rich at all to do it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
Yes, which worked for a whole two presidents before the first corrupt power monger got into power. It meant that only the rich elite had any chance of being in government, which isn't totally bad but isn't very good, either. Washington was one of the richest men in America - but much of his fortune was not from being a good businessman (he was not) but by marrying into money (he was truly American nobility) and then using the wars to grant himself massive estates, the largest in the nation. Not exactly how we want our politicians to be.
John Adams was a working professional, one of the top lawyers in the nation. He took on an insane personal burden to be in politics and only could do it by being wealthy, owning a large farm and running his own legal practice that his fame helped to promote. This is more or less the best case.
Jefferson was also ultra rich land baron that used the political office for personal gain.
requiring people to be super rich as the foremost requirement for office doesn't work well.
Is that not the case now? States require several thousand dollars to go on their state presidential ballot. Some states may allow you to submit a pauper's affidavit that will show you do not have the financial ability to pay such a fee. Then you need to advertise via local papers, town hall meetings, road trips, and TV ads, and everything you can do to get your name out in front of people so they can get an idea as to what you are all about.
You will likely have to quit your job to go on the campaign trail as well, so there's all that. Your average Joe, even if they have a brilliant political mind simply cannot afford to run for president.
Today it is all about corporate sponsorship. You don't need to be rich at all to do it.
H aha ha. Good point. In that case, we should require NASCAR-like jackets, shirts, and ties for the candidates.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Heck they didn't even get paid very early on. You just did it because you felt it was your civic duty.
Yes, which worked for a whole two presidents before the first corrupt power monger got into power. It meant that only the rich elite had any chance of being in government, which isn't totally bad but isn't very good, either. Washington was one of the richest men in America - but much of his fortune was not from being a good businessman (he was not) but by marrying into money (he was truly American nobility) and then using the wars to grant himself massive estates, the largest in the nation. Not exactly how we want our politicians to be.
John Adams was a working professional, one of the top lawyers in the nation. He took on an insane personal burden to be in politics and only could do it by being wealthy, owning a large farm and running his own legal practice that his fame helped to promote. This is more or less the best case.
Jefferson was also ultra rich land baron that used the political office for personal gain.
requiring people to be super rich as the foremost requirement for office doesn't work well.
Is that not the case now? States require several thousand dollars to go on their state presidential ballot. Some states may allow you to submit a pauper's affidavit that will show you do not have the financial ability to pay such a fee. Then you need to advertise via local papers, town hall meetings, road trips, and TV ads, and everything you can do to get your name out in front of people so they can get an idea as to what you are all about.
You will likely have to quit your job to go on the campaign trail as well, so there's all that. Your average Joe, even if they have a brilliant political mind simply cannot afford to run for president.
Today it is all about corporate sponsorship. You don't need to be rich at all to do it.
H aha ha. Good point. In that case, we should require NASCAR-like jackets, shirts, and ties for the candidates.
I think that that would make matters worse in a lot of cases. I know quite few NASCAR fans and they have crazy brand loyalty.
