Public service, especially at the highest levels, is both a realization of civic responsibility, as well as an immense material privilege.

If you've had a career in congress, parliament, whatever, you can live comfortably off of the various media appearances you're likely to have for much of the rest of your life.

Representatives in government should be able to keep it in their pants when it comes to investments at least while they're in government, and have a thick, thick wall between their jobs running a country (or state, or whatever) and the management of their investments. Blind trusts should be the bare minimum.

What I'd prefer to see is that while actively sitting in government, representatives must keep their savings invested in funds so diversified into low-risk instruments that almost no regulation can benefit them significantly more than it would an average passive investor.