CHEECHREBORN
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- Jun 4, 2009
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Within the last year, the approval rating for congress has dipped below 10%, and polls have shown that ~89% of Americans distrust the government. I think most of us can agree that the political system we have in the United States is not ideal. My knowledge of government is limited to what I learned in AP Gov in high school (I got a C so I didn't learn much haha), but surely there are minds here better than mine on the topic that could discuss what they think the biggest issues with the structure/functioning of the government and how that could be fixed. I may be pessimistic in my view, but I don't see widespread massive changes happening within the government. I still think the ideas warrant discussion regardless of their feasibility.
One thought I had was spurred by a comment by The Optomist in the fiscal cliff thread about freezing the accounts of congress members until a plan was agreed upon. What would the drawbacks of an incentive based salary for politicians be? The incentives would be based on polling at the end of each year as well as meeting certain benchmarks (unemployment level, inflation). For the polling, subsets of the population would be created based on a number of factors such as age, occupation, income level, location, etc. Satisfying a subset of people would yield a monetary incentive. The politicians salaries would be entirely incentive based and they would then have to work to satisfy a broad range of people which would, in theory, reduce the amount of time spent bickering between the parties (if parties even continue to exist..) because time wasted = less time to satisfy more subsets.
That's just one theoretical change (very unlikely to ever happen but I still thought it was an interesting thought).. What are some of your thoughts on possible changes?
One thought I had was spurred by a comment by The Optomist in the fiscal cliff thread about freezing the accounts of congress members until a plan was agreed upon. What would the drawbacks of an incentive based salary for politicians be? The incentives would be based on polling at the end of each year as well as meeting certain benchmarks (unemployment level, inflation). For the polling, subsets of the population would be created based on a number of factors such as age, occupation, income level, location, etc. Satisfying a subset of people would yield a monetary incentive. The politicians salaries would be entirely incentive based and they would then have to work to satisfy a broad range of people which would, in theory, reduce the amount of time spent bickering between the parties (if parties even continue to exist..) because time wasted = less time to satisfy more subsets.
That's just one theoretical change (very unlikely to ever happen but I still thought it was an interesting thought).. What are some of your thoughts on possible changes?