Political Incentives Quotes

If we want politics to be the kind of arena where you're attracting and encouraging really competent people who do a job well because that's what they're supposed to do, then you have to pay them a salary that's commensurate with that.

Every Congressman, every Senator knows precisely what causes inflation...but can't, support the drastic reforms to stop it because it could cost him his job

I think that many citizens understand how our system works, or rather, fails to work, for structural reasons. But who has the capacity and the incentives to bring change? The banks and other corporations love the system because it allows them to buy legislation that serves their own interests even at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. Incumbent politicians love the system because it allows them to raise millions of dollars toward defending their seats.

I think our party and particularly our movement, the conservative movement, does have more of a problem with con men and charlatans than the Democratic Party. I mean, the incentives seem to be set up to allow people - as long as you have a band of a few million fanatical followers, you can make money. The Democrats have managed to figure out how not to do that.

People are familiar with 'the stick' of the Tea Party... challenging incumbents, flooding the phone lines. What they're not so much familiar with, and what I want to expand, is 'the carrot.' So when a Mitch McConnell, or when a Republican caucus stands firm... we have to reward them.

Time and again a close election leads to hand-wringing about the need for Electoral College reform; time and again, politicians and parties respond to the college's incentives, and more capacious and unifying majorities are born.

At the structural level, when the primary is all that matters, the incentives change for politicians. And, when you can earn media coverage with bombast and vitriol, that creates another incentive for politicians to light things on fire.

Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis - how incentives influence behavior - to government.

What drives 90 percent of stuff is not the small tactical decisions or the personal relationships but the big, macro political incentives.

The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

I am absolutely convinced there should be financial and political incentives for states to declare. You shouldn't be the pariah of the world if you say you have Ebola, but in reality this is what happens.

A system that rewards politicians skilled at campaigning - which is the art of creating an illusion - and that puts hundreds of billions of coerced taxpayer dollars at the disposal of the winners will tend to attract men and women with a comparative advantage in manipulation.

It's normal for people, especially politicians, to expect rewards in return for favors.

People in the political world have every incentive to say things that lead voters away from a clear economic understanding of issues. What has happened more and more is that organized groups have more and more reasons to say things that don't make any economic sense.

The problem is that every study I'm aware of, which is probably not that many, has indicated that a dollar spent in preparation and avoidance of natural disasters is worth $15 that is spent in relief. But there's no political payoff for preparation. So, who benefits? I mean, the governor or senator or the president? Bill Clinton at Oklahoma City, his performance there helped him enormously. And there really hasn't been any regulation that would, in fact, interfere with environmental disaster.

There is a sense in which, like, it could be the case that the incentives of running for president and the incentives of getting maximum attention for yourself, sometimes align, and at a certain point, they stop aligning, and you just keep going with the incentives for maximum attention for yourself.