How about tying a portion of our leaders' compensation to achieving goals?

[badtoworse]

It's common in the business world for a portion of compensation to be in the form of a bonus tied to achieving certain goals. The goals are usually a combination of personal goals, as well as company goals. The more senior you are, the more of your compensation is tied to achieving goals and the more the goals are tied to company performance. As an example, we might pay a 25% bonus for each 1/2 percent reduction in the unemployment rate in a year. Bonus could be tied to GNP, performance against the budget, environmental goals, reduction of the trade deficit, etc.

A substantial part of my compensation is tied to the company and me achieving our goals. Why not do the same for our leaders?

[Blue_Tires]

1. Because for most of them, their official government paycheck

usually doesn't cover their champagne/caviar budget for the year...

90% of the money most of them earn come from outside the office...

[Bragi]

2. The logic here is wanting

The reason you can't tie politicians pay to measurable outcomes is that, as individual decision-makers, politicians are rarely if ever completely responsible for specific outcomes.

While pols, media and voters seldom acknowledge it, things like unemployment rates are not actually within the control of politicians. They might influence rates a bit, but seldom are their decisions decisive in terms of outcomes.

[badtoworse]

3. That is largely true in the business world as well

That is the reason why a substantial portion of bonus compensation is tied to the company's performance. If the current Congress had 50 or 60 percent of their pay at risk because they, as a group, accomplished nothing, things might have been different.

[Bandit]

4. In this new day it takes sixty Senators to accomplish ANYTHING

Change the way the Senate works to Majority rules and then we could hold more people responsible.. It is hard to say one Democratic Senator did not accomplish anything when they are prevented doing so by the MINORITY which can only benefit from stopping the opposition..

[dkf]

5. If you tie it to the deficit you will be giving negative incentives to progressives who probably

need the paycheck more. So they make money by cutting funding.

Unintended consequences.

[badtoworse]

6. Those were just examples

I think GNP and employment would likely be the best parameters. It would take some careful consideration to devise a plan that would benefit the country as a whole.

[MineralMan]

7. This idea has the same flaw most such ideas have.

Any such thing would have to be enacted by the very people it affects. That trick never works.

[badtoworse]

9. That depends

All of the bonus plans in which I have participated were welcomed by the people affected. They afforded us the opportunity to make substantially more money if the company as a whole did well. Why would anyone oppose that?

[RC]

8. Government is not a business and should not be run like one.

Who is to decide which Congress Critter or whoever is to get what as a bonuses. As things stand now, the Republicans would be getting the bonuses because they are saving the tax payers lots of money with their tax cuts and cutting and privatizing of services. Why? Because you and I will not have a say with this any more that we have say in anything the government does now.

[Hosnon]

10. Too many with too many different (and often opposing) goals.

A company as one CEO, we have hundreds of leaders.

It would also create weird incentives. Republicans would want to elect rich members of Congress who are immune to this so they could drive up unemployment and get rid of the President.