Bribe politicians properly.

Today’s headline:   Wealth of members of Congress TRIPLES, average US family has suffered a drop. Shocking? The shocker is how little politicians make when they have so much influence on budgets measured in the hundreds of billions.  I won’t trust politicians until the rules are changed to make them rich when things go right.    People will always look out for number one despite considerable affection for their spouse, friends and native land.  Exploit this instead of suppressing it with layers of ineffective regulation.   For heavens sakes, a guy who owns a well-placed service station or a five-van plumbing business can make more than the leaders of our nation.   

Reserve part of the national budget in Canada and the States to pay off the politicians for doing the right thing (TBA).  If unemployment drops 1%, every elected member gets a couple hundred thousand dollars.  If the budget is balanced, everybody gets a couple hundred thousand more dollars.   CPI is flat, inflation declines, rate of incarceration falls and rate of crimes falls too? It’s bonus time.   Americans work with a bigger budget and a bigger temptation, so their payoff is bigger too.  Harnessing self-interest is a cheap way to get results and bipartisan law that citizens respect.

(Reserving one thousandth of the budget would make available up to about a million bucks per MP and six million per congressman and senator.  The details are very messy but the principle of using enlightened self-interest is sublime.) 

(Behind the "wealth triples" story are these numbers: Median net worth of member of Congress rose from $280,000 to $725,000 between 1984 and 2009.  Over the same 25 years the wealth of the average U.S. family slipped from $20,500 from $20,600"   Quoted in the Daily Mail article linked above.

ADDED:  " Whereas in Singapore ministers remain clean in part to keep their seven-figure salaries, in China one always wonders how those officials making, say, $1500 a month can afford those Rolexes."