David Rubenstein: evaluation

Transcript context

…Here’s a reader question, and I quote, “Another impolite question. Why is it that so many politicians and their aides and their wives, children, cousins become wealthy in the private sector?” The private sector is designed, among other things — if you want to go into that area — to make money. It’s not that difficult to be wealthy by the standards of government compensation. If you are a member of Congress, your compensation’s roughly $180,000 a year — hasn’t changed much for about 20 years. If you go into the private sector, it’s difficult to make less than that if you’re really doing something in the private sector that adds some value. Also, obviously, some people who do lobbying and other things are using their contacts and so forth that they got in government service. If you were to say nobody who’s ever served in government can ever lobby anybody again, you’ll probably get fewer talented people to come into government service. I think a lot of people won’t go into government service now because you have to sell all your assets if you go into government service, and that’s a barrier to some people. You can have constraints on getting people into the government service, and therefore, you won’t get the best people. For example, when we only had 3 million people in this country, who did we have in government service? We had George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, John Jay. Now we have 330 million people, and where are the Thomas Jeffersons? Where are the George Washingtons? They may not be in government service. They may be doing other things. I think we often have more barriers to getting good people into government than we should have. I’m under the anecdotal impression that in the 1960s, the 1970s, the smartest young people were more interested in joining the DC elite than is currently the case. Do you agree?…

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