comment: >
  
  Also fiscal penalties for any legislation that carry no representation of the equality of liberty and justice, along with lobby compensation be distributed equally upon all members of congress.
context: Honestly, I think there are times when we need reps to make unpopular decisions that are in the long term public interest.  
  It’s a really bad idea in my mind to put more weight on following the whims of public approval. >
  
  Bingo. The most vexing problem with democracy is populism, the phenomenon of "leaders" jumping in front of whatever parade happens to be popular and pretending to lead it. We need free thinkers able to see a new path and brave enough to lead the way. >
  
  My AP government teacher called the representative layers of a republic “idiot filters” to make sure the stupid ideas never were implemented. But here we are lmao >
  
  That's the intention but POSIWID, representative layers just filter out people who don't run successful elections. There are a great many people who are successful at campaigning but are either dumb or bad representatives and vice versa. >
  
  I cannot for the life of me figure out what that acronym is. >
  
  the purpose of a system is what it does >
  
  No. Most politicians have a lot of travel and housing expenses that aren’t accounted for in stipends. Lowering their salary will further ensure that only the independently wealthy can serve in office as the salary is a mere drop in the bucket for them. What we need to do is overturn Citizens United as another commenter mentioned. >
  
  What would overturning Citizens United change? >
  
  Let's start with another question: What do you think Citizens United allows? >
  
  It struck down a specifc section of the BCRA. >
  
  Yes, and in doing so what did the case allow people to do that they couldn't do before? >
  
  Electioneering ads were banned for like 120 days before the election. That was struck down. >
  
  60 days.
  But in practical terms before CU, independent organizations could only run an ad saying, "America needs to build a wall, overturn Obamacare, start winning on trade, and get back to being great again." After CU the ad could say "America needs to build a wall, overturn Obamacare, start winning on trade, and get back to being great again, so vote Trump." >
  
  Yup. So overturning CU wouldn't do much. Not by itself anyways. >
  
  No. Politicians are generally not driven by their compensation. Many are independently wealthy or expect to make money in careers after politics. >
  
  I've long thought it would be interesting to see what happens if we did something like raise pay for Congressmen, Senators, and senior executive officials to something like $3-5M a year in hopes of drawing more Fortune 100 SVP type of executives into legislating. Many of them are the most competent managers and problem solvers in the country, but aren't interested in taking a 90%+ pay cut out of some sense of civic duty. If they were able to be more successful in solving problems and budgeting than the current crop of politicians, the investment would be well worth it. >
  
  That would be rational but no one wants that so it will never happen. Left-wing people hate people getting rich, right-wing people hate government officials getting rich. >
  
  
  Left-wing people hate people getting rich
  
  Left wing people don't hate people getting rich. We hate people getting richer and richer while avoiding paying their fair share of taxes while everyone else is falling farther and farther behind. >
  
  Please do not submit low investment content. This subreddit is for genuine discussion. Low effort content, including memes, links substituting for explanation, sarcasm, and non-substantive contributions will be removed per moderator discretion. >
  
  It won't be more representative, it will be catering to the lowest common denominator. You'd end up with a bunch of tax cuts and "stimulus' packages that would end up hurting the nation much more than this idea would help. >
  
  No, first and foremost it'd lead to more corruption as it would be harder for representatives to plan their finances.  Secondly it would make it even harder to be in congress without being already super wealthy. Third blind populism isn't a good way to do government, it's just mob rule with more steps >
  
  I don’t think this would survive a legal challenge in the United States to begin with.
  Functionally, I’d be interested and hearing how it’d be structured. Would each politician get their base pay and then bonuses based on certain approval rating benchmarks?
  There are a few issues I see with this. Different polling outlets come with different approval ratings. Deciding on which polling company and the method in which they do so would probably be nearly impossible. 
  Also when would you get paid based on your approval. Is it your approval rating at the end of your term what counts and you get a check based on that? Is it a monthly aggregate approval?
  This would also lead to more polarized congressional districts. No one would want to run in competitive districts because your approval is destined to be lower than in deep red or blue districts. If you’re in a competitive district where no party really gets above 50-55% of the vote you’re locked into a lower pay than a district where it’s 80% democrat or republican. >
  
  We do have a way to tie representatives to approval ratings, IT'S CALLED VOTING.
  I don't mean to be crass.  I really don't.  But this post is an astonishingly poor take. >
  
  For real. I think the OP is conflating approval ratings of Congress as a whole, which are low, to people’s opinions of their particular representative, which the incumbent re-election rate shows are quite high. >
  
  Nobody becomes a member of Congress for the salary. 
  Their incentive structure is in the Constitution, it's keeping their job if their constituents like how they're doing. >
  
  Until Citizens United is overturned and campaign finance reform created there is no way this could really work. That’s before getting to the relative value of approval ratings. >
  
  I think you're wholly right that campaign finance reform is really the key towards rebalancing the representation of influence away from money in politics and back towards the will of the people.
  Could you think of any ways to influence the political discussion to make it a key issue for discussion in upcoming elections? Like could petitions with enough signatures gain traction to capture & invigorate a spotlight in national politicial discourse? I know it's not a new issue but how do we make it the IT issue? >
  
  Right now the issue is the Republican court. And I think that’ll be a massive issue in 2024. Sadly, there’s nothing that can be done on the campaign finance front until the court is fixed. Ditto issues like gerrymandering and representation. Our democracy is pretty broken right now. >
  
  Removing all campaign donations would solve the problem. 
  No more big dollars from one person or corporation.  All campaigns are publicly financed and they have a fixed amount to spend. 
  This would also get rid of the 1,000s of stupid commercials airing all day long for months. >
  
  No, then their focus will be to game approval ratings.
  Some real crappy members of congress have high local approval ratings.
  Pin congressional salaries to minimum wage. >
  
  Most politicians are independently wealthy and would not be affected by changing representative compensation. >
  
  Isn't this a problem too though? If only the wealthy run and get elected then only the problems of the wealthy are considered no? Anyone should be able to run for public office regardless of wealth status. >
  
  It's a problem, yes.  Its solution is not making it even harder for the non-wealthy to run for office. >
  
  I agree with that. >
  
  The compensation they receive from their overlords is far more valuable to them. >
  
  Yeah. Stop political donations and congressional stock trading and suddenly you've got a congress with very different priorities. 
  There's no Iraq War if Raython, Boeing etc aren't making political donations and expecting a return on their purchase. >
  
  Honestly I think that still happens. Dubya went into Iraq because his father had unfinished business there. >
  
  lol wait to you realize they could care less about the salary, that’s a little lunch money to them. The meat is in the lobbying and insider trading. >
  
  This is probably not a good idea because you’re still relying on a lot of misinformed or uninformed voters. So will it be more “representative”? Maybe.
  Would it be better? No >
  
  No. A Congressman's constituents often rank their representatives highly and rank Congress very poorly. The voters in the district dislike the dysfunction of Congress yet they keep electing the same obstructionists or whoever else because they think that if we elect someone more extreme it will bring Congress closer to their views. All this creates is gridlock. 
  Furthermore, we need politicians less tied to public opinion or afraid of their constituents. Just look at how many republicans were criticizing Trump and co. behind closed doors but were too cowardly to make their opinions public. >
  
  The idea is that they be paid well enough to be above reproach.
  It's the OTHER money they are taking that is the issue and making it even larger percentage of their income will not help us. >
  
  A better idea might be to tie their retirement incomes to future approval of the effects of the legislation they passed. >
  
  No. Sometimes politicians may need to make unpopular decisions for the greater good of their constituents. This would discourage that. >
  
  It’s would be a solid way to make candidates that weren’t already independently wealthy even more common.
  It also doesn’t factor in that representatives are supposed to be professionally following the details of policy and things going on in the world with informed advisors and thus should pretty regularly be going against the majority opinion of their voters. Sometimes a responsible legislator should buck public opinion. >
  
  Rather than approval rating, set up a system of specific goals and tie bonuses to that. >
  
  Tie their salary to the median salary of their district/state.
  Cap their wealth to the median wealth as well.
  Maybe you will start to see meaningful change. >
  
  This would make everything worse. All this would do is drive inflation through the roof from all the free money they give away to their constituents. 
  Also let me remind you that both AOC and MTG are wildly popular within their home districts, and the deal brokers like Capito and Tester are less popular. >
  
  It would never get passed but sure. But what’s stopping them from just changing it after for their own benefit or bribing the judiciary to make it unconstitutional >
  
  Don't they only have two-year terms in USA? Why not vote them out of office if you don't like them? >
  
  With the disclaimer that I don't think OP's idea is a good one, the answer to your question is gerrymandering.
  Basically:  in a lot of districts, the party primary is from a practical perspective the real election, because the district is intentionally stacked so the other party cannot realistically win.
  I live in a district that has been represented by the same party for 50+ years straight, 40 or so of it by the same person.  And the general elections for that position have never been competitive in that entire time. >
  
  The only way to fix it is to make it a lottery. If it were randomly selected people with no chance of longevity and the need to constant campaigning and money being funneled by special interest, it would drastically help. >
  
  Wouldn't work, will increase corruptness tness ... look at Boebert and MTG both went from went from being skank whores to millionaires in less than 2 years . >
  
  Biggest winners of this unrealistic hypothetical would be, believe it or not, small-state establishment Republicans in the U.S. Senate, such as John Barrasso (R-WY), John Thune (R-SD), and John Hoeven (R-ND).
  Let's just say it'd pay to be a man named John in the GOP.
  Biggest losers, meanwhile, would be Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, Susan Collins, and Kyrsten Sinema, whereby name recognition is a detriment. >
  
  it will lead to more stunts. Also, there are a lot of things that need to pass, that people either don't understand or are seen as unpopular by the average voter.
  We need to close down public oil drilling to prevent extreme climate change, but that will cause prices to go up which will anger the average voter. >
  
  That incentive is already there because getting votes from the populace is how they get reelected. No need to skew that any more. No one wants them to keep running ads for themselves year round to stay popular. >
  
  I really, really don't think it takes more than 10 seconds of thought to realize this is a terrible idea... >
  
  No it will just lead to people who are already millionaires running who don't need a salary.
  In the House and Senate they have to have a home in their district plus a home in DC, which is one of the most expensive cities in the world. >
  
  Tie their pay to approval of the annual budget. Just like the rest of government workers. Then you’ll see shit done without the threat of shutdowns. >
  
  Nah, that just gives the wealthy representatives leverage over the few in Congress that aren't currently wealthy. They could wait it out knowing some might financially need to capitulate to their demands.
  We should get rid of the whole debt ceiling nonsense. It was implemented to ease war spending changes during WW2 without the president needing to go back to Congress every time, as long as he kept the debt reasonable. Now it's been turned on it's head to require the president to beg Congress to re-fund all the stuff it already passed previously. Repeatedly. Not working as intended. >
  
  no, because many reps make far more from other sources. set their salary to zero and they can still make millions by peddling influence >
  
  No.  That will just lead to having more representatives do things to be popular.  Part of leadership is making tough decisions and decisions that are good for the long run.  That often is not popular with what people think today. >
  
  Term limits and a ban on individual asset trading during and 5 years post office would be better. >
  
  Not unless that compensation includes all the dark money. Their salaries aren’t shit. >
  
  I think it would just lead to more falsification of approval ratings, more back room deals with approval rating pollsters, and much, much more pandering. >
  
  No because the public usually is quite dumb and only thinks short-term which is kind of the biggest weakness of democracy. This is why I am against referendums, too and I think that further incentivising politicians to do the short-term bidding of the public will do nothing but harm the country. >
  
  their salaries are negligible. they take bribes. one theory is if they increase salaries they wont have to take bribes but in fact they just like doing crime