There are numerous jobs where corruption would make more than the pay. It has to be about oversight and accountability, not paying so much corruption is not appealing.

I'm all for paying politicians well and this has nothing to do with that.

The only way to beat the market over the long terms by trading individual stocks is to either devote essentially all of your time to it or to trade on insider information. We have a strong interest in our politicians doing neither of those things.

What makes far more sense is that our politicians be forced to invest their money in broad base index funds (of stocks, bonds, commodities, or other instruments) and that trading be restricted to 4 or so trading windows a year. That still allows them to get market returns.

If we filter out the people for who market returns are not good enough...I'm okay with that? First of all, if they think that, they are probably delusional. They think can out trade Citadel and Ren Tech to get some part of the minuscule amount of alpha out there in the market? On the off chance they are not delusional, then they should probably go into finance as they'll make a greater contribution there than they will in congress. Or they want to inside trade, and we're obviously ok without that.

For someone who is only in it for the money, how much you think would satisfy their ego?

They will always compare themself to the CEO's or company owners they meet with, it would be expansive to match that. Or more concretely, how much money would be enough for Trump, so he does not do deals, that are mainly beneficial to him and his crowd?

Yes and any large position in anything else by a person on either side of the aisle smells like shit.

I think it’s highlighting that it would just be a false sense that we can define a perfect filter and it could actually backfire and be worse than our current status quo.

I personally don’t like wealthy always being in politics, but I do at least think they are familiar with large budgets and understand some fiscal issues. We have to acknowledge that as you leave the 1%ers, in the US, you’re quickly in a demographic that lives paycheck to paycheck and not just because of their income level. I don’t necessarily want those people controlling our national budgets, or don’t think it would be wise, and I don’t think the temptation to skim/benefit where they can would be eliminated. It might be even more pronounced, as it’s seen as a path to make money more so as the benevolence of public service we all imagine it should be. They might be more likely to give in to overt corruption versus exploiting a loophole or something similar.

It seems odd because we’re spinning further and faster into our end as a nation, or so it feels, so some change may be necessary but I don’t think this really helps. It might just exacerbate the issue.

Uh you think glory hounds with messianic complexes and a need to be loved would quit because of investment restrictions.

Even this is too much discretion. Members of Congress should be limited to index funds and no individual stock ownership.

I feel like we see this in all sorts of disciplines with law – e.g. the massive pile of minimum wage, idle time protection, tipping protection, etc. that NYC now has for delivery drivers.

People don't seem to realize (other than Regulatory Response Fees), the extent to which the city _has_ addressed a lot of the issues with being a delivery driver [1].

A lot of folks therefore still make a bunch of outdated arguments and advocate for things that already exist, or try to _forcibly_ find/portray that things _must_ still be broken, because they argue as if the inputs follow from the conclusion they believe must inevitably always be true (e.g. believing that people 'must' be being screwed over).

Probably also very simply downstream from 'once you've developed an organization to argue for a cause, the cause can't cleanly retire itself'.

[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dca/news/073-26/report-finds-nyc-de... (lede: workers’ average hourly earnings, including tips, increased from $10.48 in Q3 2023 to $27.03 in Q2 2026).

In the US, retroactive criminal legislation is largely banned by the Constitution, so it's unlikely existing traders would have to do anything, much less sell all their stock. I could see the law saying all current and future officials must move their investments (and those of immediate family) to a blind trust, but that shouldn't have any tax implications.

I would be concerned about timing the trades of index funds, so I would propose something like you have to do a one-time rebalancing of your portfolio into index funds and it remains locked up for the entire duration of your term.

But they should definitely be able to invest in index funds at the start because you want them to have some skin in the game of the economy that they are in effect managing.

Yeah it does, because part of insider trading is simply trading on overall market beta.

Depends on the way the laws are written. Also blind trusts.

I think you could have restrictions that make it extremely risky for friends and families to trade as proxies. You could have statutes that codify a judicial presumption for the proposition that a friend or family member of a congressperson making a trade anywhere near close in time or that could be plausibly related to the elected official's access to information is guilty, almost a strict liability standard for this kind of thing.

The degree to which this touches extended circles of friends and families does start to implicate reasonable tradeoffs between who would decide to run for office in the first place.

But I think we're just construing the moral standard for elected officials totally wrong. Nobody is making you run for office. You don't need to be doing this, and you are literally in charge of some of the most awesome power, authority, and responsibility human beings on this planet have ever known.

For God's sake, members of the clergy have to wear a uniform and abstain from sex and having families. I'm not saying we should have our elected officials become a priesthood, but I think we can look to other models of human organization and the way groups keep leaders entrusted with awesome responsibility in check to figure out ways to preserve the public trust that elected officials wield.

"Draconian law" doesn't mean "an overreaching/unnecessary law" or "a law I don't like", it means "a law backed up by extremely harsh penalties". I'm not advocating for them, but draconian laws would absolutely solve this problem, including trading by proxy. Nobody would risk the death penalty to help a friend or relative trade stocks.

That's still insider trading.

I don't see how the same argument I just made doesn't apply to members of provincial legislatures? It's the same foxes, regardless of which level of gov't they're sitting in.

Also fed gov't retains control over immigration as well as foreign ownership laws, federal taxation, and, to some degree, monetary policy.