Posted on 10/01/2012 11:56:44 AM PDT by jazusamo
Now that the National Football League has apparently learned that it can be costly to hire cheap officials, perhaps the rest of us should learn the same lesson when it comes to government officials, whose bad calls can do a lot more damage.
What do we do when we want a better car, a better home or a better bottle of wine? We pay more for it. We definitely need a lot better crop of public officials. Yet we insist on paying flea market prices for people who will be spending trillions of tax dollars, not to mention making foreign policy that can either safeguard or jeopardize the lives of millions of Americans.
Any successful engineer, surgeon, or financier would have to take a big pay cut to serve in Congress. A top student from a top law school can get a starting salary that is more than we pay a Supreme Court justice.
No doubt many, if not most, government officials are already paid more than they are worth. But the whole point of higher pay is to get better people to replace them.
We may say that we want people in Congress, the courts or the White House who have some serious knowledge and experience in the real world, not just glib tricksters who know how to pander for votes. But we don't put our money where our mouth is.
Let's face it. You're not likely to get a good suit of clothes at a flea market. And you're not likely to get the cream of the crop to go into the government when they would have to accept a big drop in income to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
“Cheap Politicians”
I hate redundancy.
Lots to think about, and discuss with that one. Thanks for the pings this morning jaz.
His opening sentence still has me laughing!
God love this most intelligent man.
We sure do.
Amen to that, Onyx! ;-)
Thanks for the ping, jaz, for another superb column bu the great Dr Sowell
by not bu
You bet, Kas. An interesting piece once again.
Why do you think a california senatorial campaign can cost tens of millions of dollars for a job that pays only $174,000.00? It would take 70 years to get you investment back..
There is too much power concentrated in Washington Until we break that up, the government will be corrupt.
yep, as it is, a good percentage of CONgresscritters enter DC middleclass, and a term or two later, are millionaires...how does that work ???
and nobody questions the amount of cash, or what it *cost* them to acquire it...
I understand the *economics* perspective of the good Dr, but i must disagree with this concept in the real polotical world...
term limits i could agree with, but i believe that the pols would have to vote for that...
kinda like expecting your enemy to cut his gravytrain and voter base to save your own...
kinda like expecting your enemy to cut his gravytrain and voter base to save your own...
I think Sowell is right to point out that we could well afford to pay $1 billion annually to get term limits, and thus to stop shopping in the bargain basement for people who can be trusted to make trillion-dollar decisions.If we ever made this a movement cause, we could challenge every incumbent as to why they are willing to forego a million bucks to keep their hands on the levers of power.
The only problem I see with this is it’s not the politicians creating legislation, it is the over-reaching EPA, DHS, HHS, DEA, DOE, departments and congress does nothing to stop them.
It is the entrenched staffers that run the offices of the politicians that are also a problem. There hopefully would be higher turnover with one term politicians, but wouldn’t they be handed down to subsequent elected officials?
In the first place these departments should be neutered as far as making rules (supposed law) and the Congress required to enact them.
In the second place should this happen (which is extremely unlikely) the staff should go with the term limited elected politician.
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