[Florin_Andrei]

> Senators get about $200,000 and the president gets about $400,000.

That's a heck of a lot of money for the vast majority of people.

If that's the real issue, then we're attracting the wrong kind of people to those jobs. Let them stay at the hedge fund instead, do hopefully more limited damage there.

> You get what you pay for.

No, not always. And it's precisely this narrow vision, this absolutization of money that's one of the major causes of the woeful state of the world nowadays.

People in government ought to be focused on doing what's good for the nation, first and foremost. If they go "well, $200k isn't enough for me to do this job", kick them out. That's precisely the wrong kind of person for the job.

I think actually the oodles of money being pumped into politics these days are responsible for drawing some awful characters to it. Remove that motivation, and perhaps you'll have people with very different goals running the show.

You get what you, collectively, value and believe in. America believes in money above all. Well, yeah, then the piles of cash end up ruling supreme. Good luck fixing that mess.

[souprock]

You can pretend that money doesn't matter. You'll get corrupt career politicians and the occasional retired billionaire. Lots of people are more than willing to pretend they don't care about money, if that's your qualification, so that their children and siblings can collect foreign "investment" and "work" as board members for companies wanting influence.

The USA is literally at the bottom in terms of salary divided by GDP. At first I thought we beat a few countries, but they have a head of state that is a distinct job from head of government. I'm also leaving out Pope Francis and a few countries for which GDP data isn't available. Singapore pays $3,052,000 yearly, about half to the president and half to the prime minister.

In dollars for one individual, unadjusted for GDP difference, the USA pays less than: Switzerland, Singapore, Austria, and Ireland. Would you say that those countries are attracting the wrong kind of people as leaders? Counting the sum of head of state and head of government, these also pay more: Iceland, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Germany, and numerous kingdoms.

Anyway, do you like what you're getting for politicians? Without change, you'll get more of it. You can wish for the most fantastic altruistic leader with no family to support, and just hope that people will recognize that despite the underfunded campaign, or you can recognize that there is no escape from the money issue.