Sorry, I edited my comment to add some context. It seems very likely to me that if we could increase pay of politicians by a factor of 10 (say), we'd get much much better performance at lower effective cost than we already pay for the soft corruption of "speaking fees" and suchlike.
Unfortunately that seems to be politically infeasible (not even competent autocratic regimes can get away with paying themselves above board).
Unfortunately that seems to be politically infeasible (not even competent autocratic regimes can get away with paying themselves above board).