I like the ideas that people are saying about median and mean wage being the benchmark for congressional pay, but wouldn’t it be nicer if they had to meet metrics in order to get paid?
Since they are supposed to serve the American people, making congressional seats commission-based would be nice. That way they’d actually have to put in effort to make their wages.
And any form of bribery or donations should be considered treason, and the people that commit treason should be treated like traitors (Congress people and their donors).
And on stock trading, having to report the trade a day in advance to some kind of congressional ledger would be nice. On the day of the trade, they have to mention wether or not they executed the trade, and that information should be made public. Or better yet, make their brokerage accounts on a platform designed just for Congress people, and they can’t make trades outside of that platform. All of the trades they make should be public.
One can dream
uh, get rid of congress all together and replace them with a liquid democracy structure. There’s not a good reason not to in this day in age. Elected reps just breed corruption.
Median is a better choice as its less affected by outliers.
The mean average is the amount you compute by putting all the money that is earned in a big pot and dividing it up evenly amongst everyone.
Median is where you find the single most average person and ask them how much they make.
Median gives them an incentive to improve the income of the average American. Mean average gives an incentive to increase national wealth regardless of who’s hands its in, and an incentive to decrease the population. That is not a good incentive.
But also keep in mind congress members are local representatives. They need to be in DC while in session, and in their state or district at other times to be available to their constituents. The job requires maintaining two households, so they should earn enough for that. Unless we provide them college dorm level mandatory housing in the capital. Then median alone is enough.
I get that you’re trying to be accurate, and I respect that.
Let’s use the mean, and eliminate the top and bottom 1% of earners. Which would put Congress’ salary between 57,000 and 61,000
Using the median gives them a salary of 87,500 dollars.
That top 1% is a real motherfucker.
$87,500 is the median household income.
Median personal income (income of all persons 15+ with any amount of income) is $46,960.
The usual argument against this is that the less politicians earn, the easier they are to bribe.
Politicians will be happy to take bribes regardless of what they earn.
I’ll never get over how cheap it is to buy politicians. They make so much money, then they can be made to vote for a genocide for $3000.
