alt Hacker NewsThe limits on government salaries seems entirely counterproductive.
I am all for evaluating things in an effort to establish more government efficiency.
But that means you need smart people who understand that domain evaluating, and you need to be able to bring smart people on board to do the work…. not artificially low wages/ arbitrary cuts…
Replies
jedberg • 05/03/2025
The limits are there to limit corruption.
If managers could set arbitrary salaries, the employees could just agree to cut their manager in on 10% of their raise.
This probably happens outside of government, but it's just the private org who loses money, so it's up to them to stop it. But in the case of the government, it's the taxpayers who lose.
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Then the question is, “how do we prevent politicians from hiring their family and friends on excessive salaries”?
Then it’s, “how do we quantify success without the profit motive for something society needs, but doesn’t earn a profit”?
Then I would conclude, the solution is a small government with a hyper-competitive process for providing public services, with actual democratic feedback on the success of such provided services with teeth to remove bad private sector contractors.