It might be reasonable to say they shouldn't own individual stocks (of their own selection), but not owning stocks is unreasonable. They get paid well, but not that well.
That's several times over median but many of us on this site make that much or more. More reasonable restrictions would be things like requiring them to use a blind trust, to restrict investments to index funds or managed portfolios, or something.
I agree; I don't think it's realistic to tell them not to invest at all. The only real way to preserve your money is to invest it somewhere.
I think if the only thing that they could invest in was total-market index funds (or something similar), that would not have too much of a conflict of interest. They'd have the incentive to make the entire market happy, not just individual stocks, which benefits nearly everyone.
If the only stock that politicians owned was VTI or something similar, I think most people would mostly be fine with that. That would still have problem in terms of the uneven weighting, but it would certainly better than what we have right now.
> If they are truly people-oriented as they oath when they join public service, why allow them to own stock at all?
I take this to mean you think that civil servants and members of the military should also be barred from holding stocks?
> But isn't that a significant conflict of interest if they are public service employees?
There is no inherent conflict of interest in owning stocks. The risk is when they own (especially if they are heavily invested in) individual stocks. Use a blind trust like I mentioned or disallow holding individual stocks if they want to manage their own portfolio, then they still have a vested interest in the economy (how well businesses are doing as proxied by the stock market) but their conflicts are limited or removed.
So we were meeting with a group of customers in the morning and we wanted to bring doughnuts to the meeting. Unfortunately, one of the customers was NASA, so we couldn't bring doughnuts to the meeting because that would have been too much of a gift/bribe.
The rules for rank and file employees already exist, it's the ones at the top that can flout the rules that are an issue.
I have no problem with them getting a pension. There are also plenty of other ways to invest your money that aren't putting it right into the stock market. Multiple kinds of bonds, CDs, annuities, etc.
Why not? I've suggested solutions that let them invest without even being aware of what they're invested in or only minimally (index funds, specific portfolios). This resolves the conflict of interest problem while allowing them to still gain the financial benefits of investing some of their money.
https://radiotv.house.gov/house-data/salaries
That's several times over median but many of us on this site make that much or more. More reasonable restrictions would be things like requiring them to use a blind trust, to restrict investments to index funds or managed portfolios, or something.