Median house­hold income is a sta­tistic that, like the unem­ploy­ment rate, gets tossed around when people talk about the state of the nation’s economy. The Census Bureau defines the fol­lowing terms:

• House­hold Income: Includes income of the house­holder and all other people 15 years and older in the house­hold, whether or not they are related to the householder.
• Median: The point that divides the house­hold income dis­tri­b­u­tion into halves, one half with income above the median and the other with income below the median. The median is based on the income dis­tri­b­u­tion of all house­holds, including those with no income.

Wikipedia makes the fol­lowing note about the median value: The median income is con­sid­ered by many sta­tis­ti­cians to be a better indi­cator than the average house­hold income as it is not dra­mat­i­cally affected by unusu­ally high or low values.

I bring this up because of our recent elec­tion. Despite the polit­ical non­sense that fol­lowed the elec­tion results, the clear mes­sage from voters is that they are not happy about the state of the economy and they feel that gov­ern­ment is not doing enough to fix the problem quickly. There is a sense that politi­cians are dis­con­nected from average working cit­i­zens and are only attracted to public ser­vice to make money and gain power. And in many cases, that per­cep­tion reflects the truth.

I can’t believe I’m the first person to sug­gest this, but I would like to pro­pose the fol­lowing: mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Senate should be paid a salary equal to the median house­hold income for the pre­vious year. While some people would argue that this level of public ser­vice is a dif­fi­cult job and should be worth a higher salary, I counter with this argu­ment: public ser­vice to Con­gress should be con­sid­ered an honor. Our rep­re­sen­ta­tives should be hum­bled that they have been elected to a post in our nation’s gov­ern­ment. In addi­tion, many of these people are already rich. The salary that comes with the job should not be an incen­tive. The oppor­tu­nity to serve and to govern should be it’s own incentive.

Tying a congressperson’s salary to the national median income could achieve two goals. First, these leg­is­la­tors would not be so dis­con­nected from average Amer­i­cans. They would have a con­stant reminder that there are thou­sands of fam­i­lies in this country get­ting by on what they are making indi­vid­u­ally. Second it would give all mem­bers of Con­gress an incen­tive to improve eco­nomic con­di­tions for those on the lower end of the income scale. Doing so would push up the median income and result in a greater salary.

I realize that how much we earn at our jobs is not the only indi­cator of how well our gov­ern­ment is doing its job. But it is one way in which people eval­uate their gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­larly during a poor eco­nomic cli­mate – like we are expe­ri­encing now. It is also true that mem­bers of Con­gress become dis­con­nected from their con­stituents. We know they care about money – the polit­ical system in this country is strongly influ­enced by it. This pro­posal sug­gests one way in which we, the working people, could get their attention.