UK Mps get 10% payrise after freezing public sector

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, the 2014 ratios seem to be a tad worse

[madd0ct0r]

um, apart from italy and Austrilia, the ratios actually decreased...

Graph:

using the 2014 data. Ignore the line that appears to form, I'm 90% sure that's an artifact of not having norwary, sweden, canada and ireland in the dataset this time.




and just for fun, looking at the % change of those stats over the time period. I should be clear, I don't think this graph is worth anything as an anylsis, and no conclusions should be drawn (you can find almost any story you want in it). But i figured someone would ask, i would.

[ArmorPierce]

Yeah saving more than 30% is very possible, but you have to give up the American consumerism culture to some extent. But why are we arguing throw-away numbers about amount you can save anyway?

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah saving more than 30% is very possible, but you have to give up the American consumerism culture to some extent. But why are we arguing throw-away numbers about amount you can save anyway?

If you look back a page, I posted some graphs of nations' household savings rates. These are averages, so certainly there are those who save more. And arguing that it is harder to save with a higher income is simply not gonna fly...

[Simon_Jester]

Empirically, very few humans who make that kind of money do save that much of it, at least until they're making so much that spending more of it would have no noticeable impact on their happiness.

Otherwise history wouldn't be full of kings and aristocrats who wind up in debt...

[K. A. Pital]

Kings and aristocrats are irresponsible "divine" rulers, "owners" of the land and overlords of the people. They belong to the guillotine.

We are talking about those who receive legitimate power from the people, at least in theory. Their inability to save is no excuse for unbound luxury overconsumption. Society should not literally pay for the irresposibility of its rulers.

[Pinjar]

UK MPs are likely to directly compare themselves to MPs from other Anglosaxon countries and so looking at the posted data they probably do think themselves grossly underpaid. If someone feels that they are underpaid, even if they actually are not, then I would expect their performance to suffer and corruption to increase. Sometimes the reality of a situation really does not matter.

[blowfish]

uh... how did we get from "MP pay rising while everyone else's belts tighten is awkward and may be bad" to "74K is good to live on but doesn't exactly qualify as rich" to "MPs are terrible human beings because they are bad at saving money and living a basic life"?

[Simon_Jester]

We got sidetracked by an ideologue.

Also, as is often the case, the exact subject of the OP is one where there really isn't much to say. Not many people think it is GOOD that Parliament gets a 10% raise while all other civil servants are on freezes.

Kings and aristocrats are irresponsible "divine" rulers, "owners" of the land and overlords of the people. They belong to the guillotine.

We are talking about those who receive legitimate power from the people, at least in theory. Their inability to save is no excuse for unbound luxury overconsumption. Society should not literally pay for the irresposibility of its rulers.

Stas, saying "kings are better off dead" does not answer the question, which is about human psychology.

If literally everyone in a whole society, or nearly everyone, who makes large amounts of money 'fails' to save half their income... and if we have some plan that depends on rich people saving half their income...

That plan will fail.

Why it fails doesn't matter. It just will fail. It's predictable. And if literally everyone who makes such large amounts of money is making the same 'mistake,' or if 90% of such people make it, then the plan needs to incorporate why and how they do that.

You're being wildly impractical here.

[K. A. Pital]

Yes I am being impractical, yes if people of India, many malnourished, and half in the villages and slums, can live with a household savings norm of 40%, I couldn't care less if a bunch of rich First World assholes can't - or think they can't and because of that they become even more corrupt. That's no excuse, that's a travesty.

I'm not supposed to be some sort of always-practical machine, a logical calculator, a benevolent version of Skynet that decides who belongs to which caste, that decides the officials are actually brahmans, and screw dem untouchables. I'm not Chamberlain either, I'm not bringing you realism and peace for our time, logic in the name of logic. Impractical? Yes, in this matter very much so.

I am following my moral compass, and it's telling me that this is fucking wrong, it's so beyond fucking wrong when you say that luxury overconsumption and "peer income" for someone under no threat of privation is a necessity (meaning, officials have to get same money as company bosses and capitalists cause that's their "peers" - or more correctly their masters).

Take it as a concession and I'm out of this fucking thread.

[NoXion]

UK MPs are likely to directly compare themselves to MPs from other Anglosaxon countries and so looking at the posted data they probably do think themselves grossly underpaid. If someone feels that they are underpaid, even if they actually are not, then I would expect their performance to suffer and corruption to increase. Sometimes the reality of a situation really does not matter.

If the kind of people who seek to become MPs are greedy enough to consider taking bribes and kickbacks on a decent salary, then showering them with cash is hardly going to discourage them. The hunger for money isn't like the hunger for food, which even among the biggest eaters has its limits in satiation or in the extreme, stomach capacity. What exactly stops them from accepting the larger pay packet and the generously stuffed brown envelopes?

[madd0ct0r]

That point was made on the first page but largely ignored.

[blowfish]

If I am very well paid, I will only accept very high bribes

[Ralin]

UK MPs are likely to directly compare themselves to MPs from other Anglosaxon countries and so looking at the posted data they probably do think themselves grossly underpaid. If someone feels that they are underpaid, even if they actually are not, then I would expect their performance to suffer and corruption to increase. Sometimes the reality of a situation really does not matter.

If the kind of people who seek to become MPs are greedy enough to consider taking bribes and kickbacks on a decent salary, then showering them with cash is hardly going to discourage them. The hunger for money isn't like the hunger for food, which even among the biggest eaters has its limits in satiation or in the extreme, stomach capacity. What exactly stops them from accepting the larger pay packet and the generously stuffed brown envelopes?

More to lose. You can't factor out greed entirely, but if someone is already making enough at their Important Government Job to be wealthy then the risk to reward ratio changes. Going from $120,000 dollars a year to $200,000 brings less of an improvement to their personal luxury level than going from $60,000 to $150,000.

Obviously some people will grab as much as they can, but there should be fewer of them. In theory anyway. Same as how people making a living wage usually don't risk shoplifting

[madd0ct0r]

only if you believe there is a significant risk of being caught.

[Ralin]

That's the theory. It's definitely not a magic bullet

[Purple]

only if you believe there is a significant risk of being caught.

Isn't Britain the country where even pedophiles get away if they are high profile enough? I can't imagine an MP taking a bribe would be all that risky.

[Simon_Jester]

UK MPs are likely to directly compare themselves to MPs from other Anglosaxon countries and so looking at the posted data they probably do think themselves grossly underpaid. If someone feels that they are underpaid, even if they actually are not, then I would expect their performance to suffer and corruption to increase. Sometimes the reality of a situation really does not matter.

If the kind of people who seek to become MPs are greedy enough to consider taking bribes and kickbacks on a decent salary, then showering them with cash is hardly going to discourage them. The hunger for money isn't like the hunger for food, which even among the biggest eaters has its limits in satiation or in the extreme, stomach capacity. What exactly stops them from accepting the larger pay packet and the generously stuffed brown envelopes?

The problem is that there are two separate arguments which can be conflated here:

1) "We should pay MPs about what we pay the median citizen."

2) "We should pay MPs about what we normally pay elite professionals."

3) "We should pay MPs so much money they're never tempted to take a bribe."

(1) leads to a big pile of problems. So does (3). (2) does not.

ONE of the several problems with (1) is that the MPs will be more temptation for MPs to resort to using their connections to enhance their income, or to get 'perks' that increase their effective income. There are a variety of reasons for this, among them that the MPs often were elite professionals before entering politics, and so may well already possess homes that take an above-average salary to support, or send their children to schools that cost an above-average sum of money to attend.

Meanwhile, (3) is financially impossible.

But that doesn't invalidate (2). And, as I noted to Stas before his meltdown, so far as I know there has never been a functioning society on a large scale where the humans who made legislative decisions had identical wealth to the humans at the median level of socioeconomic status. It works in small tribal villages where the "big man" lives in a hut like everyone else's, hews his own wood and draws his own water. It does not work in anything recognizable as a state. And it has not worked from the days of Ur and Babylon, up to the present. I know of no counterexample and will be surprised to learn of more than a few fluke cases.

That may be unfortunate, that may be ideologically unacceptable, but it is a fact. We may wish to limit inequality, we may wish to compensate for it, we may wish to make sure even the lowliest and poorest have a good life, and all those goals are right and good.

But it is not... I don't know, not sane to claim that we can outright eliminate it, or that we should start trying to eliminate it by first lowering the status of our legislators before anything else.

So what it comes down to is that yes, we pay legislators on the same general scale that we pay other elite professionals, maybe even towards the high end of that scale. There are several reasons for that, of which only one is that it reduces the risk of the MPs using their office for direct personal gain. The other reasons combined are quite strong even if that reason were not in play. And the cumulative effect of all the reasons is strong enough to form a rule that, in real life, has basically no exceptions.

Even in self-identified egalitarian societies such as the USSR, the legislation-making elite still lived quite a bit better than the median citizen.
_______________

Note that by "elite professionals" here I do not mean "millionaires." I mean "doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other people with graduate-level professional credentials that make them part of a small minority of the population which commands relatively high salaries"

[Pinjar]

UK MPs are likely to directly compare themselves to MPs from other Anglosaxon countries and so looking at the posted data they probably do think themselves grossly underpaid. If someone feels that they are underpaid, even if they actually are not, then I would expect their performance to suffer and corruption to increase. Sometimes the reality of a situation really does not matter.

If the kind of people who seek to become MPs are greedy enough to consider taking bribes and kickbacks on a decent salary, then showering them with cash is hardly going to discourage them. The hunger for money isn't like the hunger for food, which even among the biggest eaters has its limits in satiation or in the extreme, stomach capacity. What exactly stops them from accepting the larger pay packet and the generously stuffed brown envelopes?

Simon has given a much more better answer than I would have but it seemed self-evident to me that people would judge themselves by their peers. To stylize the position: By their own standard they are living in penury, Australians are paid twice as much for the same work and all their friends are multi-millionaires.

There are likely light and dark side politicians in equal measure in politics, and perhaps more as a percentage than in the general population, but the bulk are still most certainly grey. You will never convert the dark, only discourage them with fear of discovery and punishment. You will never satisfy the light because they are insufferably self-righteous. It is for the grey that the amounts paid and perceived to be paid will be important. Not just to prevent corruption but to attract, or at least not discourage, as well as retain capable candidates.

But K.A.Pital is right. This whole situation is disgusting, is in danger of becoming melodramatic and it is far too depressing. For me, I think it has run its course.