POLITICS: States that give, states that get

I think one of the first things we could do was make it harder to become a "career" politician, by further restricting how long people can stay in not just one office, but in all government offices.

When it becomes your career to be a politician, you stop making decisions based on what your community needs and start making decisions you think will keep the money coming in.

I agree with you about the problems with career politicians. But I am not so much in favor of term limits, myself.

This is because I have worked for several years now as a contract IT person. I never spend more than a year in one job. And I can see how inefficient that is. It takes a year to learn a corporate culture, to learn an industry, to get a real feel for the longterm consequences of the little decisions you make. I almost always leave a position wishing I could redo everything.

Also, I've seen the effect on a company of not having long-time employees. The last corporation I worked at is moving to outsourcing most of its IT operation, pressuring employees to take early retirement, bringing in temps and contract employees, etc. Nobody knows what's going on, nobody knows how we solved similar problems in the past, nobody remembers the nuances and little problems that turn around and bite you later....

Now, you might think that it's not right to compare the government to a large corporation, but I think it's a completely valid comparison. Most of the behind-the-scenes functions are exactly the same. Any governing body larger than a dozen people is going to need an IT department (even if it's just one guy). They're going to need HR, and PR, and financial planning, etc.

Worse, government needs longterm planning. If someone knows they're leaving office in a year or two and don't have a chance of being re-elected, they're not so likely to take an interest in what's going to happen five years from now.

So, while I do recognize the problems of career politicians, I think the drawbacks are even greater.

I don't know how much good making political positions would do; government already pays much worse than the private sector, though. My partner and I have similar jobs and skillsets, but one of us works for the state and teaches students, and the other works for a private company. The private sector job pays three times the government one. This is an extreme example, to be sure, but certainly emblematic of a general trend.

We're not politicians, but I don't think the situation is much different for those who are. For most politicians, the alternative is lucrative private law practice.