Here are the salaries of 13 major world leaders

[specuvestor]

Actually we can't really quantify the PM's remuneration in monetary terms, considering the tangible and intangible incentives the PM and his family members received. I am not speaking about power manipulation but more on the priorities that the family members received from the public (eg. respects, gifts, reputation etc) and from the corporates (eg. positions etc).

IMO, managing a country is as relevant as running a company. For the case of a company, CEO is PnL focused and shareholders and creditors are the assessors. Whereas for a country, PM is elections focused and citizens are the assessors. So I am suggesting that a CEO should be paid well if a company produces stellar results, likewise a PM should be well remunerated if he achieves huge victory in public elections.

I don't want to discuss to what extent we should remunerate our PM in monetary term because different capability attracts different price. But someone like Mr Lee Kuan Yew deserved to be paid hundred of millions if not more.

Your notion of being paid huge when winning a seat has been precedented: It's called the decline of the Roman Republic

Our founding fathers' motivation were not monetary. I think a lot of people take the heuristically easy one indicator solution of pegging ministers' salary to a simple number to calculate worth or incentive. Like I posted, if salary is the primary motivation of policy makers, we will be in trouble. Higher salary is to increase disincentive.

Most here are still thinking in terms of incentives because we are so used to corporate analysis. We have to be careful not to be the man with a hammer that everything looks like a nail.

Buffett summarised the tax debate very well in a one liner: Let's discuss tax on the beach of Normandy. It is not just about money. We can't just analyse a stock based on one PE indicator. If it is that simple my son could arrange them in order and buy the one with lowest PE. It's a tree but it's wrong tree. Money is but one part of an equation to help disincentivise policy makers from the most obvious forbidden fruit: Corruption that comes with power.