[lumost]

There are 100 senators controlling a budget over 4 trillion effecting more than 300 million per year. To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state.

Anyone capable of doing the above competently can make 10+ million per year in the private sector. Underpaying for these positions simply invites corruption or plutocracy.

[BLKNSLVR]

> To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state.

Only because that's become the normalised way of 'winning', ironically where society generally loses because being 'friends with every important person in your state' generally means you pander to them in a way that costs everyone else.

Having had that rant, I don't know a better way, and your description is what US politics has (d)evolved to over time; water finding its own level.

[zbentley]

Sounds like we should federally fund campaigns and place strict limits on non-federal campaign funding/PACs/etc.

There's a very thorny line we'd have to draw there re: speech and protection--what's a forbidden PAC and what's a citizen who chooses to use their time and resources to support a candidate they like? I happen to believe that we as a country should trace that line rather than falling back on constitutionally-protected-speech absolutism, but I'm aware that's a minority opinion and unlikely to ever bear fruit.