Should all politicians wages be set at the minimum wage

Overheal

SLUSK wrote: »

Politicians should not be rewarded for destroying their countries and economies, therefore almost every politicians doesn't deserve one single cent in salary. Cut back on politics, why do we need politicians anyway?

Go live in Somalia already if you dont want politicians or government.

Or you could just run for office yourself, since you seem to have it all figured out.

edit: and oh yeah,

Politicians should not be rewarded for destroying their countries and economies

Even though Politicians, like Winston Churchill, Ben Franklin, Dr. King, Charles De Gaulle, [Edit: and DeValera where are my manners] are the ones we can say are responsible effectively for creating these Countries and Economies that we all comfortably suckle off of.

oscarBravo

bmaxi wrote: »

How would this differ from the system in use?

The ministers would not be presenting themselves to individual constituencies for re-election, and could concentrate on doing their jobs to the best of their abilities, rather than trying to appeal to a populist base.

Presumably the Taoiseach would be elected by the largest party / coalition in the Dáil, he would then go on to appoint Ministers in the same way that he appoints members of committees, quangoes etc. and the process is ratified by the largest coalition in the Dáil.
More jobs for the boys, just with more power.

It's a fair point, which leads to the next reform I'd recommend: the abolition of the party whip system, which to all intents and purposes centres supreme power in the Taoiseach in a way that must make many dictators green with envy.

Kidchameleon

Stekelly wrote: »

Thats sure to get the cream of Irish politicians clambering to form the next government..........

It will be good to be run by a politcal party formed from people who's choice of job was working on a till in a supermarket or running the country.


Cue lots of Bullsheet along the lines of "better than what we have/mary harney is fat/Fianna Fail" etc etc.:rolleyes:

WTF??? We have the cream now do we??

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

Yeah it's the simplest reason for it. Low paid staff are the easiest to bribe and get away with it because the amounts involved can be so small. It also makes the person far less likely to care about losing their job since it's so poorly paid.

Someone in a well paid job is much harder to bribe for the opposite reasons. It doesn't prevent bribery and corruption but it makes it less likely to happen and less widespread.

Also would presumably lead to independantly wealthy people being the only ones going into politics. Representative democracy right there.
Georgian politics FTW.

WexfordMusings

Lugha - There is already a performance related element - its called a general election.

But, yes there are a couple of points touched on, which could be summed up as:

Pay peanuts = get Monkeys
Low Pay = Corruption

But some would say we have corrupt monkeys in charge at the moment so what to do?

Sean

lugha

WexfordMusings wrote: »

Lugha - There is already a performance related element - its called a general election.

Yes Sean, that was pretty much the point I was making.

I personally don't think many of the current occupants of the Oireachtas are corrupt but if you and the rest of the electorate think they are, or that they are incompetent, then every single last one of them, including the Taoiseach, can be fired in the next GE, which will probably be this year.
Can but won't. I would expect the majority of the incumbents will be returned. It ultimately all comes back to the people.

nesf

WexfordMusings wrote: »

Lugha - There is already a performance related element - its called a general election.

But, yes there are a couple of points touched on, which could be summed up as:

Pay peanuts = get Monkeys
Low Pay = Corruption

But some would say we have corrupt monkeys in charge at the moment so what to do?

Sean

We have two things going for us against corruption: a very free press and an independent judiciary. It's not perfect and both really serve to punish corruption after the event rather than prevent it from happening but corruption really becomes endemic in a country where one of these "pillars" are missing. If the ruling party has tight control of either the judiciary or the press then a country will have very serious problems. In this country you can freely pick up mainstream newspapers that will lay into the Government over perceived failures and faults. This acts as a serious check against abuses of power, it's not perfect but it's crucially important to a well functioning democracy.

cm2000

I think that the situation is unlikely to mean that most of the parliament would be uneducated or any of that which has been mentioned. I think the far more likely scenario is that the only people who would run would be the super rich who don't need a salary. This is not desirable either.

Alcatel

nesf wrote: »

We have two things going for us against corruption: a very free press and an independent judiciary. It's not perfect and both really serve to punish corruption after the event rather than prevent it from happening but corruption really becomes endemic in a country where one of these "pillars" are missing. If the ruling party has tight control of either the judiciary or the press then a country will have very serious problems. In this country you can freely pick up mainstream newspapers that will lay into the Government over perceived failures and faults. This acts as a serious check against abuses of power, it's not perfect but it's crucially important to a well functioning democracy.

Ireland has been likened to a first world country with third world politics. I don't think our press and judiciary, whilst free, do a particularly good job. And I think we have a lot of corruption of different levels, if you consider 'jobs for the boys' as a form of, albeit not illegal but certainly immoral, corruption. Ireland is all about who you know, not what you know, in business, in politics, and especially where the two meet.

egan007

I could be CEO of a company and earn 250K - or 30K as taoiseach

Yes we would really get the cream of the crop with this idea.

Sleepy

Or we could simply offer a salary somewhere in the middle which reflects the fact that most people running for election aren't doing so out of personal financial interest.

I think most people accept that paying politicians well is a good means of avoiding corruption (or at least making corruption so expensive that the sums involved should be easily noticed by investigators).

However, I'm not so sure I buy the argument that high salaries attract people to the role. Nor, am I certain that I want someone running for election purely for the shot at big money.

Liam Byrne

nesf wrote: »

We have two things going for us against corruption: a very free press and an independent judiciary.

In this country you can freely pick up mainstream newspapers that will lay into the Government over perceived failures and faults. This acts as a serious check against abuses of power, it's not perfect but it's crucially important to a well functioning democracy.

There was a third requirement to get this to work properly.....the Freedom of Information Act.

But they're removed that (you can get summarised / edited info if you pay a fortune, and the TD in question gets an input); add in the increased the libel and defamation stuff and you've pretty much tied one hand of the newspapers behind their backs.

I'm not condoning the bull that the tabloids get up to, accusing all and sundry of everything, and reporting gossip as facts, but the contempt for the FoI Act is blatantly obvious......and one has to wonder why.

bmaxi

WexfordMusings wrote: »

Lugha - There is already a performance related element - its called a general election.

/QUOTE]

Let's see, Haughey, Burke, Lawlor, Flynn, Fahy, Lowry etc. etc. etc. all faced the electorate with questions to answer.
You see, the Irish electorate will not tolerate nasty people besmirching the name of "our lads".

WexfordMusings

Paying higher wages does not always mean getting better staff, look at all of those high-paid bankers. They didnt do a very good job and they were paid millions...

jaarius

WexfordMusings wrote: »

So,

IBEC have been pushing for ages to have the minimum wage reduced so I think all politicians should have their wages matched to the minimum wage, I bet none of them would vote to lower the minimum wage then!

Sean

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

j