400k/yr or even the 174k/yr congressional salary puts you in what percentile of earners in America? Tell me that.

Rich people whining about not being super mega rich. Fuck these asshats.

This is a problem in a countries like Canada, where the old "we need to attract the BEST talent for [government|not-for-profit|etc]" argument makes politics the best way to get an incredibly lucrative job when you don't have the skills to do it any other way. Compared to the US where the formula is typically 1. get rich 2. buy power

How about a public service that DOESN'T attract people who's primary directive is get ridiculously wealthy?

If government is the best way to get a lucrative job then why are only the incompetent people applying?

I suspect government is actually not nearly as lucrative as non-government and that's why people who "don't have the skills" are in government.

What amount of money do you think you'd have to pay them in order for them to say "Yeah, that's enough. I'm not going to use my position to my advantage."?

Well abuse is human nature.

But if they're making say ~2M/yr then there's very little reason to go lenient on a company so that they'll give you a retirement job there afterwards. It also means that if somebody wants to bribe you then the bribe has to be rather large as you're both risking that salary and you also certainly don't need that bribe. (Although I do also think the government should stop footing the bill for a lot of the stuff the congress critters do and if you want to spend 1/2 your presidency golfing that comes at your own expense).

The salaries of government people has filter down affects though as federal employees cannot make more than the vice president (~261,400).

Well, I dunno, but we should expect them to make executive-level pay, IMO. "The average Chief Financial Officer salary in the United States is $429,392 as of June 26, 2023" seems fair.