In short, I propose putting a 50% surtax — or maybe it should be 75%, I’m open to discussion — on the post-government earnings of government officials. So if you work at a cabinet level job and make $196,700 a year, and you leave for a job that pays a million a year, you’ll pay 50% of the difference — just over $400,000 — to the Treasury right off the top. So as not to be greedy, we’ll limit it to your first five years of post-government earnings; after that, you’ll just pay whatever standard income tax applies.

This seems fair. After all, when it comes to your value as an ex-government official, it really is a case of “you didn’t build that.” Your value to a future employer comes from having held a taxpayer-funded position and from having wielded taxpayer-conferred power. Why shouldn’t the taxpayers get a cut?

More significantly, it is a principle of economics that when you tax something, you get less of it. So if we’re worried about revolving-door government, we should tax it, so as to get less of it.