Make a law for European politicians to lower their salaries and fly economy class, that will reduce each countries deficit. An idea from rociomercadal

I think making a law might be difficult, but making people aware of the politician's excessive salaries is important.....especially since the welfare state is being basically abolished. For example, did you know that the President of the Republic in Greece, Mr. Karolos Papoulias, earns more than Barack Obama?......funny,no? 461.600 dollars a year...and that in a country where minimum wage is 592 euros a month......!!

Politician salaries or their flight expenses are important at a moral level but astonishingly minor for the economy compared to the effects of hedge funds, 'high frequency trading', 'economic hitmen' and the rest of people and devices of economic doom. So, a law towards disabling those would be a gazillion times more effective...

People are talking about the 'real economy' (about selling and buying goods and services) as opposed to the financial markets, which should then ofcourse be called 'fake economy'. And we should disable the complete fake economy.

@fetapapa: I agree, but it's very immoral. When you are making cuts on the disabled, education and healthcare you should definitely have a look at what you yourself cost first. In a time of crisis, having excessive salaries when people are hungry is wrong in every sense of the word. And the ones elected to "serve" the people should start with themselves.......on the other hand, who am I kidding...they only "serve" the "capital" nowadays....

I agree politicians salaries are high and it seems unfair especially at times like this. Though as fetapapa puts it the problems lay elsewhere.

Besides, the idea behind high salaries for politicians is to reduce their vulnerability towards corruption and bribery. I'm not saying that it always works but it probably has some effect.

I think it would be much more important to find ways (laws) to minimize any influence of lobbyism on politicians. Like that politician would be people with independent brains again and (a little less) puppets of the industries.

philipp, i didn't know the argument of reducing corruption, but it makes sense. Well, as long as the salaries are not astronomously. I think a salary of 135.391 euro a year before taxes (that's what the dutch ministers earn) is not a real problem. (it's about 6000 euros a month after taxes).

It would however be good to lower it by 5 or 10%. Not for the actual money saved, but as a symbol. And i don't think its strange that they go business class and have a big car with a driver. Working like 80 or 100 hours a week on a job like that is quite tough. I would like that scarce moments of being able to relax a bit (while they are probably just busy reading and making phonecalls).
I think talking about these salaries is a bit populistic.

But another example: Rijkman Groenink (the former leader of ABN AMRO) earned 26 million euro's when that bank was sold. (4.3 million bonus and the rest was profits of selling shares and options). I think that's a bigger problem. That's enough to pay all the salaries for the complete team of ministers for more than nine years. And it was not his salary, just one of his bonusses. His yearly salary was 933.000 euro's. And his yearly bonus had a maximum of twice that amount.
I don't think the job of being director of an international bank is much more or less tiresome than being a minister...

@ Katerina. You are absolutely right. In the president's defence, I will point out that he has asked to not to be excluded from the cuts of the public sector already 2 years ago. I don't know if it happened though.

@ Philipp. Absolutely, lobbyism is a great cancer but I am afraid that the problem is beyond politicians' reach.
Even with not lobbying whatsoever I cannot imagine that anyone would fathom stopping institutions like the derivatives market or the hedge funds.

Which brings me to the idea that I wanted to suggest to Maarten all along.

"Dear, lost idealist Maarten. Please destroy vital financial market infrastructure. I guarantee and sign in blood that it will make the world a better place."

...instead of flying they should actually be taking the train! They will be doing the environmentally sound thing as well as "allowing" them to be in closer contact with their constituents. :-)

they should for shorter trips, indeed...