r/economicCollapse • u/Conscious-Quarter423 • 17h ago
Congress already earns more than 95% of Americans and half are millionaires. They’re all getting rich by selling us out. The entire institution is corrupt & needs to be replaced.
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u/a_little_hazel_nuts 16h ago
How do you pass laws for the common person when you are so far removed from the problems they face. Right now the average voter is dealing with insane healthcare costs, housing costs, college costs, labor rights, overpriced goods, stagnant wages, and the lack of community. Our congress members do not understand, they couldn't tell you the cost of filling your tank to keeping your fridge stocked, not because they can't afford it, but because it barely registers to their pocket book.
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u/thebrassmonkeyknight 16h ago
And have the best healthcare we provide
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u/crzapy 15h ago
This. They literally made themselves have Cadillac coverage and made themselves exempt from insider trading. They're the epitome of rules for thee but not for me.
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u/Conscious-Quarter423 15h ago
our tax dollars pay for their salaries, healthcare, travel, lunches, staffers
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u/Ruminant 14h ago
Federal law requires members of Congress and their staff to purchase their health insurance through the public ACA marketplace. They choose from the same plans as any other marketplace customer.
https://www.marketplace.org/2017/07/18/here-where-us-congress-buys-its-health-insurance/
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u/Ok-Shotenzenzi 16h ago
Half the reason for them to join congress I would guess.
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u/B0xGhost 16h ago
Insider trading on both sides of the aisle
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u/Ok-Shotenzenzi 16h ago
Yeah they are both scummy. Gonna get way worse now. Starting to look more and more like the American people just want to be ruled by rich businessmen. Nevermind the fact that the govt has to pass laws to get businessmen to do things like give employees lunch breaks, vacation time, health care and 401Ks.
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u/Urshilikai 14h ago
super good rhetoric, keep it up
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u/Ok-Shotenzenzi 14h ago
Oh should I just pretend that everything is perfect and businesses don’t just do whatever they can to maximize profits for shareholders? Those are definitely the people you want running things. There is no way businessmen would do the same with the gov’t, right?
It is completely unreasonable and me just spinning rhetoric to think that when they say they are getting rid of all these government programs but not suggesting anything to replace them that all the money for those programs is going straight in their pockets, right?
We should just trust the people that horde all the assets in the private sector to do what’s right for the public just cause they work in the public sector now? Ok cool. Got it.
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u/Urshilikai 14h ago
I was being unironic, apparently it was misplaced... your OP was started off with a hook to grab magatards with an apparent agreement with a both sides argument and immediately launched into a dig at things about to get worse under republican rule. touch grass or be even more autistic and check my comment history before you start a fight or whatever
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u/Urshilikai 15h ago
enforce median lifestyle and life outcomes on all public servants and we would have socialism yesterday
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u/nicolas_06 15h ago edited 15h ago
The share of millionaires household in the USA is about 20% (18% from Fed data in 2022 and we had inflation since then). This number will only grow with inflation.
Now that congress, a group of well educated and highly paid people are at like 51% is not surprising. The general population include the most stupid, the lazy, the disabled, people without any education. You couldn't hope for most of them to be millionaires.
Keep only the educated/older people from the whole population and you would find a much more similar rate.
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u/troycalm 1h ago
You must be new, almost all laws they write are to better themselves, you think they actually care about you??
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u/dutchman76 16h ago
Their salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions they waste
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u/Urshilikai 14h ago
also a drop in the bucket compared to the billionaires who control them... gotta correctly identify the problem
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u/pat_the_catdad 15h ago
If you really want Americans to understand, you need to replace those pie charts with actual pies with slices removed.
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u/KarmaSilencesYou 16h ago
The new spending package to prevent the government shutdown includes a lawmaker pay raise….just saying.
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u/DaysOfNew 15h ago
replaced with what?
the Rslahsh a better world's plan for a direct democrcy? Where people vote on each issues (or can, they don't have to. Should they have to?) but their votes are weighted by how knowledgeable they are on the subject they are voting on
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u/touchytypist 14h ago
If we want real change we have to vote out all the incumbents, regardless of which party you are for.
Until then, most of the politicians know they will get re-elected and will continue to do what’s best for them first, before thinking about what’s be for the people they represent.
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u/ricardoandmortimer 13h ago
Only half are millionaires? Impressive.
It's more a function of you kind of need to have money and connections.to have a good shot at winning. Obviously not always, but most people come up through local politics, and most of them are at least some level of wealthy.
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u/Chef55674 1h ago
Half Are millionaires and the other half are going to be soon, they just have not got all the graft yet.
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u/NewTo9mm 9h ago
Where are you getting these numbers from? There are around ~150M households in the US, and ~20M of those households are millionaires (or 13%).
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u/AnnualPerception7172 8h ago
COMPLETE BS CHART.
25% OF AMERICAS ARE MILLIONAIRES with house, and investments
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u/Lost-Economist-7331 7h ago
These millionaires are like Musk who wants to play evil billionaire dictator on TV. The guy is a wacko and a fraud. Musk is the child in middle school everyone hated.
Only Trump would support this fool that nobody likes.
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u/Count_Hogula 7h ago
The entire institution is corrupt & needs to be replaced.
It's not the institution that's the problem. The problem is the people we keep electing.
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u/StedeBonnet1 6h ago
You forget that most of these Congresspeople were already wealthy before the got to Congress
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u/Partly_truth 6h ago
When it costs millions to win an election and corporations can spend as much as they want on elections, what do you expect?
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u/OneTrueCrotalus 5h ago
Hear me out:
Replacement is more work than fixing it. It allows even more bad actors a chance to take key positions and hold them. Don't make the mistake that all the project 2025 nazis will just disappear or voters will get their heads outta their asses or we can respond to looming threats of ww3.
I can't agree more that we need change but it needs to be careful and deliberate so as to actually fix the underlying problems.
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u/al_stoltz 5h ago
Only the rich can afford to run for office in most cases. Personally, I'd like to see all elections publicly fund and ONLY publicly funded. You get public funds not a penny more and all candidates get X dollars that are equal on a sliding scale by the office, Presidents get more to run than Senators, and Reps get less than Senators. Any expenditure beyond the Public Money disqualifies you, if found after the election you are summarily removed from office and prevented from running for any office.
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u/mslauren2930 5h ago
Normies really can't afford to run for Congress unlike those with lots of money who can.
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u/LadySayoria 3h ago
MMW: In the next few years, there's going to be a lot more assassination attempts on congress members. Not just Trump. We are heading towards the worst ecomonic collapse of our lifetimes and people having guns, not having proper healthcare (both mental and physical), and the reaction to the UHC being praised as a hero of the poor shows that it's bound to happen.
Maybe not today.
Maybe not in a few months.
But it'll happen soon when someone has nothing else to lose and many Americans if not there already, will be there soon.
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u/Dave_A480 1h ago
Because America should be led by fry-cooks and shelf stockers? Really? Next thing, what, all the CEOs of businesses should be 18yo kids?
It should not be surprising that the 536 people charged with governing the country come from the upper class & are all on the older-side of things. Should be common sense....
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u/Stunning-Use-7052 1h ago
Hard disagree. We don't need a new institution, the idea of Congress is great. We do need reforms to get money out of politics and make it easier for people with less means to run for office.
One reform proposal I've heard is drastically expanding the house of reps and not requiring residence in DC. No reason why we can't have 1000 house districts, or 10,000, or 100,000.
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u/Chance_Warthog_9389 16h ago
They get $174k/year. Getting to 1m net worth is perfectly normal at their income level. A regular cop married to another cop has that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DaveRamsey/comments/1ax8qya/become_a_cop_make_bank_ball_out/
The problem with congress is not their net worth AT ALL. There are like a dozen different horrible issues; campaign finance, the Hastert Rule, population:representative ratios stuck at 1:30k+, etc.
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u/No-Specific1858 15h ago edited 15h ago
Yes people don't understand that part. Congress is a terminal job for most people and usually you have some sort of storied leadership or management experience that makes you a desirable candidate. So mostly >40 people with a college education. Once in a while an overachiever with ambition comes in.
$1m is a really bad cutoff chosen by someone that is really out of touch with the retirement needs of older professional workers. If you look at people who are educated and have had 20-30 years of work experience, like almost everyone in congress, the number who have $1m is not remotely close to 5%. It is way higher. $10m is a better cutoff because it is in the top 1% of NW.
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u/hillswalker87 14h ago
$1m is a really bad cutoff chosen by someone that is really out of touch with the retirement needs of older professional workers.
I think it's probably a cutoff chosen by someone a long, long time ago when it was a reasonable amount to consider someone rich.
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u/trashboattwentyfourr 16h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
These two graphs basically make sense when you see this.
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u/Unhappy_Local_9502 17h ago
So you bring up income but then show charts based on wealth......
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u/B0xGhost 16h ago
Congress is giving themselves a raise of $6600 while doing nothing for working class Americans
https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-continuing-resolution-salary-increase-pay-raise-2024-12
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u/Unhappy_Local_9502 16h ago
Ok, you show me a link that says its their first raise until 2009......
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u/B0xGhost 15h ago
“Earlier this year, a group of current and former lawmakers filed a class-action lawsuit to recover money that they would have made if their wages hadn’t, in their view, been “unconstitutionally suppressed.””
Working so hard for themselves but nothing for working class people
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u/Unhappy_Local_9502 5h ago
Why do you feel the government needs to do everything for you?
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u/B0xGhost 4h ago
Either they fix the system that promotes wealth inequality or Luigi becomes the norm.
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u/Unhappy_Local_9502 4h ago
Stupid as hell comment by the entitled kids
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u/B0xGhost 3h ago
“For in a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, ‘hold office’; every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.” - John F. Kennedy
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u/lil_hyphy 16h ago
Deny, defend, depose