We need people ready to serve the country. Not play cozy with friends.
Nominated to work in the govt ? Elected public official ? Great! Every penny beyond your average high income (best 5-10 income avg?) is taxed at 99% for life.
Working in the government should not be a way to enrich yourself and friends... or make a "career".
Its called public service for a reason. Its not private enterprise. Its not arbitrage. Its not patronage. Not to enrich yourself and your buddies.
Government employees already face a pretty substantial pay cut compared to the private sector. For people on an engineering track, you're looking at double-digit percentage paycuts, but for the upper echelons of management track, where the comparatives are being C-suite at a medium-sized company, it's starting to look like a 90% paycut. This means you have issues recruiting people to fill these roles.
Adding on a permanent pecuniary pay element for life is most likely to result in people finding various wheezes to get around that pay cap (I suspect in the form of undeclared gifts, not unlike the recent revelations of a certain Supreme Court justice). And it would tend to increase corruption, since now the incomes of these people are more heavily reliant on under-the-table payments from patrons who now need to be kept happy.
Under the table is good. The IRS will have something to say about it.
The engineer example doesn't follow. Its also not a pay cut.
Take for example 300k comp for your avg. eng 300k avg last 5 years avg comp. Goes to Gov. High cap is set at 300k. Gets a salary of 120k while with govt. He can leave govt, and go back to earn 300k. No problem.
He can even earn the gap between 120 and 300 also during his govt job. So he can maintain his QoL
This is really not a problem at all.
It doesnt punish success before govt.
It punishes sucess after govt. (Speaker fees anyone?)
The problem currently is that govt attracts people that want to make a career (and profit) out of it. I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in govt.
> I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in govt.
You want highly competent people in government. If generally they can make significantly (e.g. even 10x or more, I'm talking about upper management/CEP level position of course) in the private sector more often than not they will do that. The public sector will be left with the leftovers.
The revolving door is a problem, but your proposed solution is…let’s be charitable and say it’s something that would be proposed by an academic, rather than a realist.
They already have a hard enough time finding highly qualified, competent, motivated people to staff government agencies without adding super life-limiting conditions. We really don't need to make that problem worse. Government jobs don't pay well enough to get great employees.
Great way to further disincentivize the most talented people from choosing a career in government.
I'd any day pick somebody whose highly qualified, experienced and generally 'intelligent' but somewhat corrupt over someone who "chose" to serve the country because he couldn't get a job in the private sector or is strongly motivated by his ideological beliefs but has no clue what he's doing.
Nominated to work in the govt ? Elected public official ? Great! Every penny beyond your average high income (best 5-10 income avg?) is taxed at 99% for life.
Working in the government should not be a way to enrich yourself and friends... or make a "career".
Its called public service for a reason. Its not private enterprise. Its not arbitrage. Its not patronage. Not to enrich yourself and your buddies.