Comments on: Pay hikes for politicians

By: Kim Siever

Kim Siever — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I don't agree with that. The public would never vote for politicians to get raises. They'd be up in arms if they were never to get raises; why should politicians be the same?

As far as flying to NYC to get a bagel, that has nothing to do with raises. It has to do with spending accounts.

By: rick

rick — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kim has a point.

If the Alberta gov't, for instance, took the money they're planning on giving away to students in other provinces and instead paid a forensic auditor to save them some money, I would bet that this auditor would find plenty of inconstancies...probably enough to hire another auditor to help him the next year.

The problem is that the government is a self regulating system. When you're telling the guy that signs your paycheque 'Hey that's not right!' there's a chance that bad things could happen to you - therefore a conflict.

We need a third party - preferably from out of country - to come in and audit our politicians

Now that would get somewhere.

Salaries are the least of our worries.

By: ltbugaf

ltbugaf — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There’s always a tension between the desire to leave power in the hands of the people and the desire to prevent the “tyranny of the majority.” I believe you can’t always trust the public at large to make the best choices; otherwise direct democracy would always be the best form of government. My own opinion is that if you always required a plebiscite on the salaries of public officials, there would never be one, and those who could serve well in government would be less and less interested in serving.

In the US, there has been a sort of compromise on this issue. Congress was given control over its own salaries. But a constitutional amendment (which took about 200 years to ratify–true story!) now requires that any pay hike they vote for won’t take effect until after the following Congressional election. So a disapproving populace has the power to kick them out of office before they ever receive a cent of the raise they’ve voted for.