Elon Musk’s Argument for Paying Members of Congress Much More Money

When you’ve been in politics a long time, have explored almost every issue in a lot of depth, and have well-formed ideological views, you typically don’t change your mind a lot. It happens – just not very often.

Well, Elon Musk has convinced me to change my mind about paying members of Congress more money.

Before listening to Elon, the argument tended to go like so, “Members of Congress want more money? Yeah, tell me something I don’t know! Why don’t they try looking out for the country for a change? Tell you what, if they ever do a good job, I’ll support giving them a raise. Since the last time that happened was when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House, good luck with that!”

In an appearance on the Joe Rogan show, Elon Musk came at it from a very different perspective:

Here’s the transcript of that part of the conversation cleaned up a little bit.

Elon Musk: …Like I think maybe we should pay politicians more frankly because it reduces the forcing function for graft. You know, I think maybe we should either pay politicians nothing or maybe a lot more. It's like somewhat, maybe counterintuitively, if politicians got paid a lot more, then they wouldn't feel like that there's so much of a forcing function for them to accept corrupt money.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, but the problem is if you paid them a lot more, they're still not going to make as much money as they would insider trading.

Elon Musk: But it's less of a forcing function.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Elon Musk: Well, let me put this right. Like if you say like somebody's got some kids in DC, it's like an expensive place to live. The schools are terrible. So, they need to send their kids to like some kind of private schooling situation. They literally cannot afford that.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Elon Musk: Now, so then you get into the situation. From their standpoint. Well, they've got to. They'll say they're doing it for their family, they're doing it for their kids.

Joe Rogan: Well, especially if it's legal and it currently is. You kind of have to be silly to not do that if you're a part of a group of people that's passing a bill and you know this bill's going to get passed, you know the votes are there and you know it's going to affect this industry and this particular manufacturer. And you can buy stock.

So, let’s unpack this a bit.

First of all, members of Congress make $179,000 per year. That amount hasn’t changed since 2009. It is considerably higher than the $68,900 the average American makes, but it’s also lower than what the average doctor, dentist, or airline pilot makes. It’s also worth noting that as Elon points out, Washington, DC, is an extremely expensive place to live. Globally, it’s the 7^th most expensive place on earth to live. Now, consider that many of these people are splitting time between their home district and DC. If, let’s say, you’re representing a district in Nevada, you better frequently BE IN NEVADA, campaigning, talking to your constituents, doing fundraisers, etc., or you’re not going to get reelected. So, think about trying to live on that much money if you’re splitting time between DC and somewhere else, sending a couple of kids to private school and your wife doesn’t work. You’re going to struggle in that situation and start to eye other opportunities.

It's a little bit like being a police officer. The average base salary of a police officer is 68k. Throw in a little overtime and a little side work standing around in clubs or stores where they’re worried about theft and that number can go up considerably. Well, imagine what would happen if the average cop was making 20k per year instead of 68k. Instead of corruption being a few bad apples, it would be nearly every cop on the force. The police would be crooked almost by default. They’d take bribes, they’d get paid off by crooks, they’d steal things from criminals – it would just be common practice because there are lots of opportunities for them to get dirty money, but if they’re doing pretty well, it’s much easier for them to turn that down.

It’s the same principle with lawmakers and that’s what Elon means by a “forcing function.” If people feel an enormous amount of pressure to acquire more money and they’re in a job where there are financial temptations around every corner, they’re much more likely to become ethnically compromised.

Elon offered up two potential solutions for that. The first, which was not the one he endorsed, was to pay lawmakers NOTHING at all. Why would that fix the problem? Because only rich people could afford to serve in that situation and it’s a lot harder to buy someone if they already have a lot of money.

The other solution he offered was paying members of Congress considerably more money. Would that cost more? Yes, but given the size of the government, it wouldn’t be a significant expense AND it would be highly likely to lead to much less insider trading and outright bribery. Of course, if we say tripled the salary of members of Congress, that would necessarily come with some strict, new ethics guidelines designed to put an end to insider trading, stop members of Congress from moving into lobbying after their careers ended, and it would be designed to prevent the sort of corruption via pay-offs to people’s kin that we saw with Joe Biden’s family.

Would significantly raising the salaries of Congress put an end to all of the sort of dubiously legal corruption we’re seeing from Congress? No, but it would dramatically cut into it, and it would hopefully create a sea change in the culture where members of Congress would become much less tolerant of bad behavior on that front instead of silently going, “Yeah, I understand where Nancy Pelosi is coming from with that insider trading. Maybe I should be doing that, too.”

So yes, many of you won’t agree, but we should absolutely raise the salaries of Congress. Tripling it would probably be perfect. It may seem outrageous to suggest that today, but over the long haul, the payoff we’d get from having a more honest government would pay for that raise many times over.

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