Arising from the proposed ministerial salary cut, there is this comment by Eugene Tan of SMU, that ‘Often, as in the private sector, you get what you paid for.’ This linkage of monetary value to the intrinsic value that comes with a person’s service, work, or the quality of a product can be misleading.
Not everyone who makes a lot of money is a super talent. Many gamblers make more money than the smartest academics. Making money is a different skill set and depends on many variables. Some don’t need any talent to be making plenty of money or living a life of plenty.
The other linkage that is often misleading is the interchangeability of skills. A top surgeon will naturally be a good national leader. Or a top soldier will automatically be a good ministers. You can stretch this to every profession and the answer is obvious. The different skills and talents required in different profession can be totally irrelevant to the job of a politician. It has been proven that a too clever politician can be a liability instead.
The other disadvantage of attracting talents by virtue of their success in their chosen field to go to politics can be the loss of both professions when the former profession lost an excellent professional who ended up as a mediocre politician. It is true, a fact.
There is no direct correlation between a high income earner and his ability to become a good political leader or a good national leader. Bring in a top notch gambler or thief and he would probably apply his gambling skills to run the country or steal from the country.
You don’t always get what you paid for. This is a fallacy that does not need any proving. Very often than not, a person who is motivated by making more money and can only be attracted by money, is a bad choice to lead the country. And using money to lure people into politics is already a big mistake.
5 comments:
Hi RedBean...
Very relevant and pertinent logic...as opposed to the oft used argument that you get monkeys if you pay peanuts...
I hope your logic is more pervasive than the peanuts logic..for the betterment of our society...but but but I am not hopeful....going by past/present intellectual debate that has surfaced.
Of course you get what you pay for. Sometimes you get more :-)
In this case The People Get The Government They Deserve. The BIGGER the sum of money paid, the HIGHER DEGREE of cuntiness of the recipient.
That's the formula lah!
The more you pay, the better the lick and the longer the banana
Greed means the more dollars the better.
Did we get all the super talents for the super salary?
They have openly admitted they are getting the 2nd and 3rd grade candidates into politics, but they forgot to adjust the super grade salary meant for top grade candidates. That makes the mockery more painful to accept.
It is plain insult to the intelligence of the sinkies to roll out third graders and telling the sinkies these are the top talents.
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