Fair Is Fair

Writing in In These Times, James Thindwa states,

One of the most popular remedies for our ailing schools is “merit pay,” an idea championed by business, civic and political leaders, including President Barack Obama. It is the notion that teacher compensation should be tied to performance in order to “incentivize” excellence and attract quality people to the teaching profession.

An unshakable faith in market principles makes education reformers certain of both their diagnosis (teachers are the problem) and their remedy (merit pay)...

Thindwa then suggests that, if merit pay is good for teacher performance, it should be applied just the same to members of Congress! Wouldn't most of you agree with that?

First, to prevent bias, a nonpartisan commission of experts—sociologists, social workers, healthcare and labor experts—will be empaneled and charged with establishing criteria for evaluating performance. Every two years, the Commission to Incentivize Congressional Excellence (CICE) will evaluate lawmakers based on the Quality of Life Index (QLI) for their districts (or states, in the case of senators).

Quality-of-life factors that the CICE will measure include: rates of poverty, crime and incarceration; infant mortality, life expectancy, homelessness; school drop-out rates; incidence of gun violence and hate crimes; wealth and income disparities; quality of health, education, housing, air and water.

Members of Congress whose districts perform below average will be subject to instant recall elections back home. If they win, upon return they will forfeit the annual cost-of-living allowance (COLA) and taxpayer funded health insurance. If they lose the recall election, they will be barred from ever running for another federal office.

Congress members who receive an average score in the QLI will see no change in their compensation package, while those who score above average will receive a 10 percent bonus, in addition to the COLA....

While I applaud Thindwa for thinking outside the box, I would take his novel idea a step further. Any business or corporation that receives more than $100,000/year from the government in ANY form would also have to utilize merit pay for their CEO and top-level executives or managers.

Of course, since we do live in a so-called free market society, each business or corporation that would fall under this regulation would be free to adopt their own criteria. So, if one of their goals is to pare their workforce by 10% over the next year, that could certainly be included in their merit pay criteria.

However, there might be one aspect of this that would make them a bit uncomfortable: The criteria that they created would be available to the public!

Another issue in the news has been the conservative push to crush the hard-won right of collective bargaining. Why don't we extend this overall concept to corporations as well. The way corporations bargain for their collective "rights" is through lobbying, so let's make lobbying of elected officials illegal. If they want to make their case for this or that, they could always write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper!

Fair is fair, right?