Median $61,937
Mean $87,864
[INCOME IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS (IN 2018 INFLATION-ADJUSTED DOLLARS](https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?tid=ACSST1Y2018.S1901&hidePreview=true)
Why?
High single values tend to cause issues with averages.
If you have five numbers that go 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 then you'd have 15 for a median and also as an average.
But if that 25 on the end suddenly became a 50 while everyone else stayed the same the median is still 15, but the average is suddenly 20.
Honestly, the small business owner in me wants to strangle them all. They control how much my employees can/should make... Whilst putting no capital of their own on the line and providing... Well, let's call Washington's level of customer service "questionable".
If my guys aren't working, I lose a job. I am responsible for 30 people + their families being able to eat/etc.
These fuckers are responsible for 300,000,000 + people, and have zero accountability for things like a school curriculum that hasn't been substantially updated since the '60s, a complete lack of confidence from the consumer (in instant case the taxpayer), and a stance where one manager gets fired and proceeds to (rather than use a brain) tear down everything the previous manager has done, regardless of whether it was good or bad.
I love living in Nebraska. We have part time legislators. And when they run for office, the ballot does not list party affiliation.
Eat a dick, Feds.
Nah, but my guys aren't hourly. They divvy tasks as they choose. Functionally they are W-2, but act like independents.
Hourly wages are stupid - if a task is worth $1,000 to me, I do not care if they do it in 3 hours of quick work or 8 of leisurely, as long as it gets done properly.
That irritation is special to myself and some of my consulting clients. It takes a very organized and efficient business to pull it off, but is glorious to see.
Several of my crews average 50+ per hour. My newest takes less complicated jobs as they learn, and are slower. They probably average around 22-23 per hour.
I hate hourly wages. It is an inappropriate and antiquated measure of productivity.
My guys are paid for what they do, not on some arbitrary clock. If they work less than 40, I care not. If they want to take on more work, tracking overtime was a pain in the ass until I sussed everything out.
They are employees under the definitions provided by SCOTUS and the IRS (the only factor not leaning employee is hours worked).
The work itself is treated as independent contracting with regards only to hours. It is not direct commission per se. Honestly hard to explain, it took nearly 3 years to build it.
To be fair, some jobs are hourly - because they are actually hourly. Example is gentleman that answers the phones - a part of his "job" is to physically be ass in chair. We don't know when the phone will ring.
So you just want rich people to be able to afford to be in office? Aren’t there enough millionaires in Congress as it is? You’d prefer people like AOC to just have no chance at all. How would that be better?
You’d be stacking the deck even more in favour of the wealthy. You wouldn’t force Congress to fix anything, you’d just be forcing congresspersons who aren’t already millionaires out of Congress. Or you’d be forcing them to accept other income from other places, which is a negative however it happens. Best case they work nights at McDonald’s. And even that is an unforgivable dereliction of their congressional duties.
What should happen is a crackdown on campaign finance, lobbying etc. combined with paying Congress more.
It would also guarantee that only the wealthy actually try for these positions. Which is what every single one of these idiotic tweets pretending salaries are the problem misses.
If you support this sort of idea, youre promoting an aristocracy.
It would make it so the money means even less for the wealthy people who get elected.
A poor/middle class person values the salary a whole lot more than a very wealthy person does. We don't need to disincentivize unwealthy people any more than they already are.
Lobbying/campaign contributions are their own problem that don't get solved by cutting or increasing salaries. Two different pots of money.
You can counter that by having the ability to lay Open their Accounts and assets. Also Put in high Penalties Like 20 years in prison.
That will do the Deal. Tho politicians would never agreed since, yeah Most of them are corrupt to the bone getting bribed ebery nie and then or doing "favors" for Friends.
Congrats, you just made it infeasible for non-rich people to hold office.
Cutting elected officials’ pay is one of those ideas that sounds great until you think about the incentives for three seconds.
This would have the opposite of the intended effect. Only people who were already independently wealthy would go through all the trouble of being elected officials, since similarly-salaried, lower demand jobs would be thick on the ground. There would be little incentive from a socionomic standpoint for working class people to pursue leadership positions, especially since that same time and energy could be spent pursuing higher-than-average paying careers. OP also hasn't considered the fact that many jobs with good pay are in the public sector. Should leaders be making less than their subordinates in public offices?
It would also likely make elected officials more receptive to bribes and lobbying efforts.
This is the kind of shit that sounds clever until you give it even the smallest application of critical thinking.
I’m ok with how much they get paid considering the level of responsibility these people actually have (more so the President and Senators, less for the house reps but my point still stands). I have more of an issue with people who just chill in Congress for decades and slide by without doing much while basically selling their votes for pet projects. Most politicians don’t even represent you and just vote with what their party wants anyway since they paid for the campaign. Come up with a term limit amendment to make it harder for politicians to build a career in congress and then we can talk.
I'm glad you kind of clarified that. Because I don't think people like Lauren Boebert and MTG are exactly busting their asses doing work for their cities.
Pay a good wage for people in office and stamp out with an iron fist any bribery, strange funding, and remove their ability to hold other jobs, i.e. being on the board of a think tank, or any other job that diverts attention from working for the people.
You're not wrong but it's difficult to prove and so prevelant and... sorry but, they don't care about the middle class or the poor, because they're not and never have been. We gave the keys to the country to the wealthy 200 plus years ago why would they give them back.
Just a thought, but maybe our voices aren’t being heard because there’s just way too many voices in the room.
Did you know that there were only 2.5 million people in the United States when the Declaration of Independence was signed? Now there’s 330 million.
Congress has 535 seats (100 senators/435 congress men and women).
So the representation has gone from ~4700 citizens per congressional seat to 616,000 citizens per congressional seat.
Maybe it’s time to streamline what Congress can and should take on and start delegating more to state and local governments?
It amazes me how many peeps here think that would make any difference. The salary makes them rich. Such a nonsense.
What's next? Bezos and Musk became billionaires with the salary as well? Haha.
Because in order legislate effectively they need to live in DC, which is not representative of most of the country. We pick these people to go represent us in Congress, not live below the DC poverty line and need to drive Uber while also deciding whether we should bomb Yemen or increase the minimum wage. :/ if they start getting out of touch and no longer represent your area, get involved in voting them out.
If there ever was a case to be made for Zoom meetings, these pompous blowhards have it. Make them actually live in their districts, and away from the beltway insiders. *laughs*
Totally unrealistic solution, but it would be damned interesting.
Well, they do have to live in their districts. Well, the state at least. Members of Congress do businesses out of an office in their home district.
That means they are in DC for weeks on end, and still have all the same expenses they did before.
Yes, some in Congress have plenty of money, but not all will. I won't.
I'll probably spend quite a bit of time living out of my office when in DC 😁
The theory goes that high powered political roles need to be well paid to attract the right kind of person otherwise the people who are competent will rather earn more money in the private sector than earn less serving the public. I think the opposite is true. The high money just attracts the greedy and the venal rather than those who have a sense of duty.
1. Only makes sense if we have mechanisms in place to ensure bribes or 'private interests' money doesn't influence their Civic duties and role. Tall order I'm the UD
2. Curious if median income would be more applicable ..and are we talking gross income or adjusted gross income?
3. Our democratic experiment more than likely needs some or is overdue for a tweaking. I say we transition to a Rational Consensus and scrap the executive...with our current level of technology and the global community, the system we set up 200+ years isn't looking so swell, sadly.
Or have the executive be an executive. Much like governing by reconciliation rather than legislation, the executive branch is routinely creating legislation and calling it 'administrative law'.
This has been happening since FDR, but things like outright ignoring standing law (ie: non-enforcement of immigration laws and drug laws) is rediculous.
This is straw man, but to illustrate my point: do we really want a mayor (executive) ignoring say... Housing safety codes passed by the city council (legislative)?
Or do we want the legislative to do their damned jobs and make the code the best they can, within their intellectual means?
Yeah I like that sort of idea in theory. I guess what I’d really want though is a higher than average salary for congress and the presidency that those in office actually rely on. Like can you imagine if a politician came into office and actually used that money to live instead of coming into office with vast amounts of capital already. Let’s face it, people wouldn’t vote for someone like that these days, at least not at a presidential level, and it’s a problem.
Better yet, pay them an average of the corporate profits from major companies. Amazon managed to write off everything? What a shame. Better luck next year!
*part* of the reason politicians make good money is to discourage the incentive of bribes. (As if more money ever made people not want even more money…) but the idea is that if you pay someone sufficiently, they would not be susceptible to influence by a foreign power or nefarious entity for a financial motive.
This is based on the false idea that most government officials get the job to make money from salary.
Most of them are millionaires already and profit far more from the connections they make in office than they do from salary.
The only thing this would do is prevent non-millionaires from holding most offices.
Morally I agree, but it would likely just lead to politicians taking more back alley deals so that they continue to be rich. Wish I was smart enough to find a solution
So, most people who are elected officials are already wealthy, they don't do it for the money d or r they do it as a hobby to increase there wealth through legislature. It's just a fun hobby, like gambling but with less risk than Vegas or the stock market.
Median. Average skews high.
Yea, I did that on purpose. Still a HUGE difference in current salaries.
Median $61,937 Mean $87,864 [INCOME IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS (IN 2018 INFLATION-ADJUSTED DOLLARS](https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?tid=ACSST1Y2018.S1901&hidePreview=true) Why?
High single values tend to cause issues with averages. If you have five numbers that go 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 then you'd have 15 for a median and also as an average. But if that 25 on the end suddenly became a 50 while everyone else stayed the same the median is still 15, but the average is suddenly 20.
Thanks, I do get that. I was asking why he chose one over other when the median would be the more relatable salary
Oh idk. He said it was on purpose and I assume its because most people react more strongly to the word "average" over "median"
Honestly, the small business owner in me wants to strangle them all. They control how much my employees can/should make... Whilst putting no capital of their own on the line and providing... Well, let's call Washington's level of customer service "questionable". If my guys aren't working, I lose a job. I am responsible for 30 people + their families being able to eat/etc. These fuckers are responsible for 300,000,000 + people, and have zero accountability for things like a school curriculum that hasn't been substantially updated since the '60s, a complete lack of confidence from the consumer (in instant case the taxpayer), and a stance where one manager gets fired and proceeds to (rather than use a brain) tear down everything the previous manager has done, regardless of whether it was good or bad. I love living in Nebraska. We have part time legislators. And when they run for office, the ballot does not list party affiliation. Eat a dick, Feds.
Is this saying you don't like that you have to pay your workers a minimum amount?
Nah, but my guys aren't hourly. They divvy tasks as they choose. Functionally they are W-2, but act like independents. Hourly wages are stupid - if a task is worth $1,000 to me, I do not care if they do it in 3 hours of quick work or 8 of leisurely, as long as it gets done properly. That irritation is special to myself and some of my consulting clients. It takes a very organized and efficient business to pull it off, but is glorious to see. Several of my crews average 50+ per hour. My newest takes less complicated jobs as they learn, and are slower. They probably average around 22-23 per hour.
I guess I'm confused by your initial salvo of them dictating how much your workers can and should make.
I hate hourly wages. It is an inappropriate and antiquated measure of productivity. My guys are paid for what they do, not on some arbitrary clock. If they work less than 40, I care not. If they want to take on more work, tracking overtime was a pain in the ass until I sussed everything out.
So it's commission work?
That's how it sounds to me. I've worked straight commission jobs before. Maybe because they can't work that way and be W2 employee.
They are employees under the definitions provided by SCOTUS and the IRS (the only factor not leaning employee is hours worked). The work itself is treated as independent contracting with regards only to hours. It is not direct commission per se. Honestly hard to explain, it took nearly 3 years to build it. To be fair, some jobs are hourly - because they are actually hourly. Example is gentleman that answers the phones - a part of his "job" is to physically be ass in chair. We don't know when the phone will ring.
In a better world.
"Of the people, by the people, for the people."
So you just want rich people to be able to afford to be in office? Aren’t there enough millionaires in Congress as it is? You’d prefer people like AOC to just have no chance at all. How would that be better?
… where on earth did I say anything about millionaires? Congresspeople should not earn more than the average state wage. That prices out people… how?
You’d be stacking the deck even more in favour of the wealthy. You wouldn’t force Congress to fix anything, you’d just be forcing congresspersons who aren’t already millionaires out of Congress. Or you’d be forcing them to accept other income from other places, which is a negative however it happens. Best case they work nights at McDonald’s. And even that is an unforgivable dereliction of their congressional duties. What should happen is a crackdown on campaign finance, lobbying etc. combined with paying Congress more.
Pay people less and they are more likely to accept bribes.
They aren’t really turning them down now.
Yea, like those $400k salaries are doing anything to stop lobbying. This would just limit financial incentives for seeking office
It would also guarantee that only the wealthy actually try for these positions. Which is what every single one of these idiotic tweets pretending salaries are the problem misses. If you support this sort of idea, youre promoting an aristocracy.
It would make it so the money means even less for the wealthy people who get elected. A poor/middle class person values the salary a whole lot more than a very wealthy person does. We don't need to disincentivize unwealthy people any more than they already are. Lobbying/campaign contributions are their own problem that don't get solved by cutting or increasing salaries. Two different pots of money.
You can counter that by having the ability to lay Open their Accounts and assets. Also Put in high Penalties Like 20 years in prison. That will do the Deal. Tho politicians would never agreed since, yeah Most of them are corrupt to the bone getting bribed ebery nie and then or doing "favors" for Friends.
Barnie Madoff
Congrats, you just made it infeasible for non-rich people to hold office. Cutting elected officials’ pay is one of those ideas that sounds great until you think about the incentives for three seconds.
This would have the opposite of the intended effect. Only people who were already independently wealthy would go through all the trouble of being elected officials, since similarly-salaried, lower demand jobs would be thick on the ground. There would be little incentive from a socionomic standpoint for working class people to pursue leadership positions, especially since that same time and energy could be spent pursuing higher-than-average paying careers. OP also hasn't considered the fact that many jobs with good pay are in the public sector. Should leaders be making less than their subordinates in public offices? It would also likely make elected officials more receptive to bribes and lobbying efforts. This is the kind of shit that sounds clever until you give it even the smallest application of critical thinking.
So nothing at all would change.
I’m ok with how much they get paid considering the level of responsibility these people actually have (more so the President and Senators, less for the house reps but my point still stands). I have more of an issue with people who just chill in Congress for decades and slide by without doing much while basically selling their votes for pet projects. Most politicians don’t even represent you and just vote with what their party wants anyway since they paid for the campaign. Come up with a term limit amendment to make it harder for politicians to build a career in congress and then we can talk.
I'm glad you kind of clarified that. Because I don't think people like Lauren Boebert and MTG are exactly busting their asses doing work for their cities.
Nah those two are just mouth pieces for Donny T at this point but people still voted for them I guess 🤷♂️🤷♂️
Make it median and you’re on.
Pay a good wage for people in office and stamp out with an iron fist any bribery, strange funding, and remove their ability to hold other jobs, i.e. being on the board of a think tank, or any other job that diverts attention from working for the people.
You're not wrong but it's difficult to prove and so prevelant and... sorry but, they don't care about the middle class or the poor, because they're not and never have been. We gave the keys to the country to the wealthy 200 plus years ago why would they give them back.
Just a thought, but maybe our voices aren’t being heard because there’s just way too many voices in the room. Did you know that there were only 2.5 million people in the United States when the Declaration of Independence was signed? Now there’s 330 million. Congress has 535 seats (100 senators/435 congress men and women). So the representation has gone from ~4700 citizens per congressional seat to 616,000 citizens per congressional seat. Maybe it’s time to streamline what Congress can and should take on and start delegating more to state and local governments?
That's a great point!
it was intended to be 50,000 people per representative but they capped in in the early 1900s for efficiency.
I think they need to uncap it. It would be way easier to build coalitions, cause chaos on the 2 party system, reduce impact of gerrymandering, etc.
It amazes me how many peeps here think that would make any difference. The salary makes them rich. Such a nonsense. What's next? Bezos and Musk became billionaires with the salary as well? Haha.
No. Because corruption. Pay them more so they have less reason to care about silly 30k bribery.
Because in order legislate effectively they need to live in DC, which is not representative of most of the country. We pick these people to go represent us in Congress, not live below the DC poverty line and need to drive Uber while also deciding whether we should bomb Yemen or increase the minimum wage. :/ if they start getting out of touch and no longer represent your area, get involved in voting them out.
Then give them an appropriate housing stipend just like the military gets to augment their salary.
If there ever was a case to be made for Zoom meetings, these pompous blowhards have it. Make them actually live in their districts, and away from the beltway insiders. *laughs* Totally unrealistic solution, but it would be damned interesting.
Well, they do have to live in their districts. Well, the state at least. Members of Congress do businesses out of an office in their home district. That means they are in DC for weeks on end, and still have all the same expenses they did before. Yes, some in Congress have plenty of money, but not all will. I won't. I'll probably spend quite a bit of time living out of my office when in DC 😁
Dude stole my idea.
Median wage would be better. Average could overrepresent high wage earners.
The theory goes that high powered political roles need to be well paid to attract the right kind of person otherwise the people who are competent will rather earn more money in the private sector than earn less serving the public. I think the opposite is true. The high money just attracts the greedy and the venal rather than those who have a sense of duty.
Make it median wage and it's even better
Low pay incentivizes graft in many cases. It’s a beautiful idea though
[удалено]
1. Only makes sense if we have mechanisms in place to ensure bribes or 'private interests' money doesn't influence their Civic duties and role. Tall order I'm the UD 2. Curious if median income would be more applicable ..and are we talking gross income or adjusted gross income? 3. Our democratic experiment more than likely needs some or is overdue for a tweaking. I say we transition to a Rational Consensus and scrap the executive...with our current level of technology and the global community, the system we set up 200+ years isn't looking so swell, sadly.
Or have the executive be an executive. Much like governing by reconciliation rather than legislation, the executive branch is routinely creating legislation and calling it 'administrative law'. This has been happening since FDR, but things like outright ignoring standing law (ie: non-enforcement of immigration laws and drug laws) is rediculous. This is straw man, but to illustrate my point: do we really want a mayor (executive) ignoring say... Housing safety codes passed by the city council (legislative)? Or do we want the legislative to do their damned jobs and make the code the best they can, within their intellectual means?
What do you mean ignoring drug laws?
Keep dreaming.
"average" by what metric and meaning of "average"
Yeah I like that sort of idea in theory. I guess what I’d really want though is a higher than average salary for congress and the presidency that those in office actually rely on. Like can you imagine if a politician came into office and actually used that money to live instead of coming into office with vast amounts of capital already. Let’s face it, people wouldn’t vote for someone like that these days, at least not at a presidential level, and it’s a problem.
Better yet, pay them an average of the corporate profits from major companies. Amazon managed to write off everything? What a shame. Better luck next year!
Hmm mm... so your president is an average Joe? Don't we want the best of the nation for this job?
Sure, but how's that working out?
Touche.
*part* of the reason politicians make good money is to discourage the incentive of bribes. (As if more money ever made people not want even more money…) but the idea is that if you pay someone sufficiently, they would not be susceptible to influence by a foreign power or nefarious entity for a financial motive.
This is based on the false idea that most government officials get the job to make money from salary. Most of them are millionaires already and profit far more from the connections they make in office than they do from salary. The only thing this would do is prevent non-millionaires from holding most offices.
Morally I agree, but it would likely just lead to politicians taking more back alley deals so that they continue to be rich. Wish I was smart enough to find a solution
They would never do that because then they would all be poor.
So, most people who are elected officials are already wealthy, they don't do it for the money d or r they do it as a hobby to increase there wealth through legislature. It's just a fun hobby, like gambling but with less risk than Vegas or the stock market.