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Why don't we pay politicians more? Governor of California makes $173k/yr to lead a team of 800k (like Amazon), which generates revenue of $140b/yr (like Google). If we want top talent, shouldn't the CEO of CA get paid something comparable to the CEOs of these businesses?

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Rafael Yakobi

@Deliver8tor

Jun 8, 2020

You could pay them a billion a year and it wouldn't change the fact that there's no profit motive and that they exist to rent-seek off of productive people. Also, they seem to manage to make themselves ultra-wealthy shortly after leaving office.

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If revenue is not the KPI to measure a governor's success by, what is? Who defines these KPIs and who is tracking them? Where can I find them?

4:35 AM · Jun 8, 2020Twitter Web App

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KPIs are subjective and differ for different people. For me, efficiently run services with as low taxes as possible. Others might want more spending depending on whether they are a recipient or bidding for contracts. Who cares about revenue? They can print that shit.

Jesse Powell

@jespow

Jun 8, 2020

States can't really print. Getting a good deal makes sense as a KPI... low price, good service. There'd be a bunch of things that go on it that, different for each person, as you say.

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Revenue cannot be KPI because that means the ultimate success is communism collecting 100% of all revenues in the state. Gross State Product could be but can be falsified. Inverse revenue combined with crime rate and migration flow maybe.

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Measuring performance is hard, even more so in the public sector. KPI can be rooted in ideology and have pernicious effects (e.g: drugs are bad; drug dealers are evil->number of drug dealers arrested=KPI. Number of papers published in academia=KPI, etc.) link.springer.com/chapter/10.100

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Customer satisfaction. Most people want peace and prosperity so GDP makes a good KPI. Prosperity requires property rights, safety and peace.

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In this case Revenue as a kpi implies increasing taxes .. which decreases disponible income .. which decreases consumption .. which put corporates in a position to deleverage .. thus creating a negative feedback loop. What’s the balance? Laffer curve explains that.

Jawsh.

@Jawsh_j

Jun 8, 2020

A big lever (budget item) in US is defense spending, also unique versus other countries as a % of gdp. If that spend can be distributed (shared) with other countries, that freed up money can be used in US for healthcare, infrastructure, education, socia security.