[Bud]

You're not paying attention to the salaries part, though.

Look at the pay for members of the House and Senate, in real dollars, over the last 50 years. Also pay attention to how much stupid noise there is about how members of Congress are supposedly overpaid. The pay for all US Senators combined (under $18M) is less than half of what LeBron James makes (over $41M) in salary alone in a year.

[b3morales]

That's not a very informative comparison. LeBron James is a outlier's outlier in a sector that already has exceptional pay. Senators' salaries would more usefully be compared to the (upper) middle-class white-collar workforce that they would most likely occupy if they weren't in office.

[hiptobecubic]

I don't see how you can compare being a senator to being a middle manager at some bank. The problem is that the banker faces huge consequences if they do something stupid to earn a little money by abusing their position and the upside isn't even that big. By comparison, senators have the opportunity to earn literally millions by doing things that aren't even technically illegal, like being given a wink-and-nod promise of a revolving door-style highly paid position in industry, "insider" trading that for some reason just doesn't count, etc.

[b3morales]

The parent comment was talking about Congressional salaries, not all potential income.

[spc476]

But until relatively recently (2018 perhaps?) Congress was legally allowed to profit with insider trading (probably due to Article I, section 6, paragraph 1 of the Constitution).

[Bud]

Sure. My point is that we should pay Congress more so that they have less incentive for wrongdoing of various kinds.