Politics With Paul Podcast #30: How Should We Compensate Our Elected Officials?
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Episode 30 of the Politics with Paul Podcast — How Should We Compensate Our Elected Officials? — is now available.
- YouTube: https://youtu.be/0iOZ5k_lsmY
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Im6Rvo9HzkZ1Dfet6Zwkj
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/politics-with-paul-30-how-should-we-compensate-our/id1755201463?i=1000698751866
Description
How we pay our elected officials can certainly be a touchy subject — especially when those officials themselves propose pay raises — but it’s more important to discuss than most citizens realize. Being an elected official is a difficult job and there are a lot of factors that go into it. How we compensate officials plays a big role in their efficiency, representativeness of the electorate, capability of performing their role, ability to hire helpful staff, capability of devoting themselves to the role of elected official, and more.
Yet there is no easy way to determine what we should be paying elected officials or what benefits (e.g. healthcare plans) should be available to them in office and after leaving office. And being government officials, that means their pay comes from our taxpayer dollars. The level of compensation can also vary dramatically based on which elected position it is, what state and locality it is in, and more. Today’s episode of Politics with Paul covers the factors that go into deciding elected officials’ pay, examples of compensation for elected officials that we already see, and the methods we use to decide how to compensate officials.
Timestamps
- 00:00 Introduction and Today’s Topic
- 01:41 Factors Influencing Compensation
- 10:10 Elected Officials Compensation: Federal Government
- 13:15 Elected Officials Compensation: State Government
- 22:30 Elected Officials Compensation: Local Government
- 26:27 Should Elected Officials Be Able to Receive Outside Income?
- 35:38 General Arguments For and Against Raising Government Official Compensation
- 41:54 What Methods Should Determine Government Officials’ Salaries?
