Do you realize that the President of the United States only makes 400,000 dollars a year?  Now sure, to those of us mere mortals making $40-50,000, (or in my case not even that, God I hate the arts) 400 grand a year sounds like a ton of money.  But this isn’t a good job.  Half the country hates you, 10 percent want to kill you, and you have to go around pretending you care about the hopes and fears of the idiots in Ohio.   It’s a huge pain in the ass.   Plus being president requires you to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that breaks down to only 45.66 cents an hour!  That’s it.  To be the leader of the free world?!?  I make that much tutoring kids.  $400,000 a year.  About how much A-Rod makes per homerun.  If you are lucky enough to get elected two terms that is 3.2 million.  Robert Downey, Jr., gets 12.5 million per movie.  If that ex-drug addict can make that much, surely we can give a raise to the one we have sitting in the White House.  The problem with only paying the President 400,000 dollars a year is that you attract people like George W. Bush to the position.  Bill Gates isn’t going to be president, or the CEO of JP Morgan, people who have actually done something with their lives…  really smart, really bright people would rather go into business or law then politics because doing so would amount to a pay cut.  

I propose paying the President of the United States 10,000,000 a year.  And 1,000,000 a year every year out of office.  That way you would attract people to the position who are actually qualified to do it.  Not just Senators looking to fill the holes in their egos.  So the next time you complain about the quality of our presidential candidates, remember- you get what you pay for.Â