How much is enough for a country's leader
Everyone knows politicians aren't in it for the money.
But the aspiring, and skint, world leader who is looking for a country to run in these belt-tightening times should head for Asia, particularly Singapore or Hong Kong.
The salaries on offer there far exceed anything even the White House can manage.
Ambitious Australian pollies in straitened circumstances should head not east but west.
Western Australia's leader is the highest paid premier in the nation, and the common, garden variety WA backbencher earns more than his federal counterpart in Canberra.
If that seems nonsensical, Australia also pays its governor-general more than its prime minister.
But in the leadership salary stakes, no one can hold a candle to Singapore, the tiny island nation which believes in rewarding its public servants big time.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong earns the equivalent of $A3.8 million a year.
That's six times more than Barack Obama will earn when he takes office in the US next month, nine times more than Britain's Gordon Brown and almost 12 times Australia's Kevin Rudd.
Singapore's PM will actually take a 19 per cent pay cut next year in response to the global financial crisis, but should still be able to scrape by.
Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang swings a mean pay satchel, too, pulling down $A775,000 a year.
But one of the world's top pay-per-population earners has to be Ireland's Brian Cowen, who draws some $A624,000 for running a country of four million.
Vladimir Putin's official stipend is tiny - one fifth of the Irish PM's - but the Russian leader's personal fortune is said to be considerable.
The United States evidently sees little need to offer massive financial rewards to its president, who usually has to be a multi-millionaire to run for office in the first place.
The president's $A597,000 pay cheque is skimpy considering he is running the world's biggest economy, and it was half that until as recently as 2001.
Some presidents, including John F Kennedy and the very first, George Washington, have been sufficiently wealthy not to require a cent of it.
But self-denial among leaders doesn't come much greater than Bolivia's Evo Morales, who made good on a campaign pledge to halve his salary when he won office in 2006.
He takes just $A32,000 a year, still fairly handy for a coca farmer and former llama herder.
Kevin Rudd will never be short of a dollar, thanks principally to his wife's considerable wealth, but his $A330,000 pay packet also puts him in a respectable position.
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