Fleur_@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Ugghhhhhh fr why are you becoming a politician in Aus if you just hate democracy and transparency. Politicians should earn median wage. They’re all pricks whose only interests are their own.
fr why are you becoming a politician in Aus if you just hate democracy and transparency
People who care about those things don’t get the support of mass media major shareholders, huge financial backers, and other corporate interests that have the power to more easily sway elections.
The bottom line is our electoral system is dominated by people who don’t benefit from democracy or transparency. Bad politicians aren’t an outlier or corruption, but the system working as it’s been built to.
Yeah it’s total bullshit. One of the good things about social media I feel is people getting more of their information from non corporate sources but then again, social media for the most part is very corporate.
Yeah, astroturf (both political and commercial marketing) is common but at least it’s a lower barrier of entry to get heard, more grassroots can spring up.
Most already own investment properties, so we could drop their wages to 40K/year and they’d still be above median wage.
Sure, what I’d really like to see is the absolute maximum a politician can earn from all sources be capped at median wage. If you have investments and you earn more than median wage anything excess is taxed and you don’t earn a wage for working in parliament
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 days ago
The only problem with this idea is that it could result in people who would be very good politicians choosing not to go into politics because they can earn more money elsewhere. This is especially true of people who are coming from unprivileged backgrounds. If they don’t have a partner who makes a huge amount to support them, and they don’t have family wealth to rely on, but they do have qualifications that would allow them to make more than median wage, if politicians only made median wage, it might not be economically feasible for them to go into it.
Fleur_@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Imo the best politicians are those who aren’t monetarily motivated. Obviously eating enough to live comfortably should be provided, but if the median earner in Australia isn’t living comfortably then that is a failure of our politicians. How can someone who earns over 100 000 dollars a year and is insulated from the hardships of the common Australian be expected to really take those issues seriously in parliament. Fill parliament with people who can’t afford homes and the housing crisis would be solved tomorrow. The reality is politicians take the issues that effect them the most seriously. And the issues that effect them currently are the issues of the wealthy.