On 14-2-2010 3:07, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 2/13/2010 1:39 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Where did I say they would make $10K a year?  I said make sure their
>> needs are provided for.  Don't pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars
>> a year.
>>
>> There are more ways than "cash in pocket" to pay someone for public
>> service that don't compromise the integrity of the system.
>>
>> Jim
> 
> I think you are missing a major issue here. Its not just about what they 
> are payed. If you select for only those who are unbribable via 
> corporations, you *assume* you are going to end up with those that 
> support the people. All you have to do is look at the nutcases fighting 
> over who the *real* Republicans, or even *real* Tea Baggers, are, to see 
> what you could end up with instead. Many of these people truly believe 
> that their side holds the truth, the other side is all liars, and that 
> their tactics of harping on 1-2 key issues, to get elected, is a way to 
> "get around" all the evil roadblocks, media bias, and liberal control, 
> that might otherwise keep them from representing "the people". They 
> could live in a bloody hut in a frozen snow field, and they would 
> **still** imagine that the majority of Americans where anti-gay, 
> anti-liberal, bible thumping, creationists, and that 90% of everything 
> taught in history and civics classes are lies, unlike their 
> **certainty** that the constitution references God, and probably even 
> once had the Ten Commandments in it, before liberals hid this "fact".
> 
[etc]

In the Netherlands the vast majority of members of parliament (150 in 
total) are either politically motivated (started as a member of a 
political party in their neighbourhood and had a career within the 
party) or were intelligent enough to complete a study at a university 
but did not choose a subject that could get them a job in industry and 
had a career either directly in politics or starting as a civil servant.

The number of nutcases as you call them is generally at most one or two 
and they generally don't last long. At the moment we have more because 
Dutch politics is a little unstable ATM, but I expect most of them won't 
be reelected.

Perhaps we do have the most optimal amount to pay politicians. Not 
enough that people who are in it solely for the money enter. Elsewhere a 
sociopath can make more money. Yet high enough to attract intelligent 
people that love to think and debate about how the future of the country 
should look like. Sometimes even people come from industry later in 
their career and take a step back in salary (though still being able to 
live comfortably), just to feel they are contributing to the country and 
its people.

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