Politics With Paul #30: How Should We Compensate Our Elected Officials?
How we pay our elected officials can be a touchy subject , especially when those officials themselves propose pay raises , but it's more important to discuss than most citizens realize. It's a difficult job and there are a lot of factors at play. How we compensate officials plays a big role in their efficiency, representativeness of voters, capability of performing their role, ability to hire staff, capability of devoting themselves to their role, and more. Yet there is no easy way to determine what we should be paying elected officials or what benefits should be available to them. And being government officials, that means their pay comes from our taxpayer dollars. The level of compensation can also vary dramatically based on which elected position it is, what state and locality it is in, and more. Today's episode of Politics with Paul covers the factors that go into deciding elected officials' pay, examples of compensation that we already see, and the methods we use to decide how to compensate officials.
Key Points
- Compensating elected officials involves multiple factors, including the level of government, the specialization of the job, the number of people affected by their decisions, and the prestige of the position.
- The debate over whether government officials should receive outside income hinges largely on balancing the prevention of corruption with protecting their constitutional freedoms.
- Methods for determining government officials' salaries vary, including using special commissions, voter approval, tying salaries to other state employees, or allowing officials to set their own pay, each with its own set of pros and cons.
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Transcript
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