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Retiring House Republican says $174,000 isn't enough money for members of Congress: 'Most of us don't have wealth'
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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politics
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They make deer $100k a year and have so many subsidies like for housing and travel. We could pay them millions and they would still take bribes. The problem is our economic model that puts money over people and our social values that puts power over people. And Singapore still has corruption!
$100k/yr plus benefits is nothing. That's a junior engineer salary. You want the people guiding the way your entire country runs to be paid less than the UPS driver that hands you cat food in a box. Doesn't make sense.
Pay politicians a salary that would make taking bribes useless and you'll find they won't. It will also attract better candidates. If you keep trying to elect bottom feeders for the lowest possible salary, you get what you have now.
Minimum wage is 2.13 an hour plus tips. Don't insult people who work for a living like that.
Not for anyone in the country since there's a federal minimum. Don't be stupid you lose all validity. And absolutely the barista at Starbucks doesn't deserve the same pay as someone running the whole country. You have to be very stupid to not understand that everyone's value of work output is not equal. Nobody with the skills to make more is making $5/hr. Not everybody has the skills. No matter how you want to pretend, humans are not all equal in their abilities. Try a fight with The Rock. Go head to head with Ken Jennings in Jeapordy. Go carve a marble statue. If you can do it the same way, cool. Chances are you can't. And so you won't be compensated the same way as someone who can. If you can't find where you shine, you'll never make much as your skills are mediocre at best.
Everyone deserves a living wage. Except the pieces of shit who make sure that doesn't happen. Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz may be your betters, deserving of greater wages for the work they don't do. If you think you're worth less than that ambulatory garbage, I absolutely agree.
A society designed by and for the sole benefit of the rich? Yeah, adding more money at the top surely is the answer, it must trickle down eventually, right? Right..?
Politicians aren't "the top" economically, or even anywhere near the top. If they're relying in their salary to pay their expenses, they're working-class. Conflating politicians with actual elites leads to absurd conclusions.
100k/yr with the best health insurance in the country is a ton for how much time they spend working. The house works about 2 days a week and the senate works a little more than that.
You have zero idea how "work" works not in a service position then. You're always working. Those dinners, events, and even interactions like getting food at a restaurant is working. That's literally the point of a representative in a representative Republic going back to when the Romans did it.
100k/yr is a shitty salary for anyone in 2024 with a modicum of responsibility.
They're the ones who determine their own salary, so if they think that $100k/yr is enough, it's almost certainly way more than enough.
I guarantee you they don't think it's enough. But their whole schtick is to appeal to their base class, 75% of which make less than them and don't understand their jobs. Giving themselves a raise when people feel the economy is poor (statistically it is not, but feelings are what makes politics, not facts) would cost them their job. It's all a big calculus.
So you don't take the raise, but you take the pork spending kickback. Don't take the raise, but use your closed door information to trade stocks that doesn't count as insider trading. They're getting paid one way or the other.
You can really tell a lot about Lemmy's demographics by looking at the upvoye/downvote ratio on these 2 comments. Of course 100k a year isn't "nothing", it probably puts you into the 10th percentile in earnings for this country.
In 2022, $100k/yr puts you in the 77th percentile. Having your ruling class be in the top 23% of earners is very low.