I, being one of the "shareholders" in America, have an idea.

[walldude]

I mean we are the bosses right? These fools work for us right? This is our country right?

Well, then seeing as we are trillions of dollars in debt, a seemingly insurmountable amount of money, I propose that as a nation, we file chapter 11. Then we re-organize. The first thing we do is "re-negotiate our "contract" with the elected officials. They can kiss their pensions goodbye.
Also they really don't need free health care. They can pay for it just like they want everyone else to. Then we drop their salaries to what they would consider a reasonable level.

Now they consider the fake $80 an hour completely unreasonable for a line worker in an auto plant. Well, if they insist. That means that someone who sits on his fat ass all day producing nothing and talking about the whiny constituents couldn't be worth more than $20 bucks an hour.

And thats it. We give them 20 bucks an hour, no pension, no health benefits and no job security. See how fast their tune changes. Oh and on edit: Phil Graham should be reduced to slave wages just for calling people whiners when their houses were being foreclosed on.

Until we take from them what they keep insisting we don't need they will never vote in our interests.

[dweller]

1. i think minimum wage should be sufficient

maybe then they'll consider what they could do to change it to a 'living wage'.

dp

[DB1]

2. K and R. Unfortunately the answer to your three questions is no, not in reality.

[walldude]

3. I know but it's nice to wish...

And really if we want change we need to stop letting congress set the pay schedule for elected officials. How many business would last if the employees all set their own salaries.

[DB1]

4. Very true. If the big 3 take a cut to $1 a year maybe they could propose such an equal sacrifice?

[tridim]

5. Has Congress ever voted for a pay cut for themselves?

I'd love to see that come up for a vote. The Republican floor speeches would be hilarious.

[unblock]

6. politicians will always be bought. i'd prefer it be by us.

if WE don't pay them a decent salary, someone else will, and to whom will their allegience be?

tempting as it is to punish them with a pay cut, the proper solution is the exact opposite. pay them an outsized salary, so they work for US and to, as best as possible, remove the need to essentially seek bribes elsewhere.

yes, there will always be greedy bastards who want even more, but this at least removes those who turn corrupt because they simply can't make ends meet. it's not so easy to maintain two households in different parts of the country on a congresscritter's salary.

[walldude]

7. Well I feel really bad for someone who can't keep up 2 households

while I have to choose between paying the water bill and buying food. The OP is just a fantasy but the last line still remains true. Until they know what it's like to struggle to make ends meet they will never care. Which is why you get the anti-union crap, the "the reession is just in your head you whiner" crap and the "You work 3 jobs? Good for you... how uniquely American" crap.

[unblock]

8. i'm not sure you're following my point. the second home is not a vacation home

congresscritters must maintain residence in their home district as well as have a pace in washington d.c., and travel back and forth a lot. it's not a typical commute, and it's not cheap.

[HamdenRice]

9. Worst. Idea. Ever.

The only politician in recent years who proposed such a thing was Newt Gingrich, btw, when he was Speaker, and he was given a stern bipartisan talking to and after that, shut his pie hole.

Right now, the only glimmer of hope in our economic mess is that with world financial markets so spooked that the holders of the trillions in global savings are terrified of investing in anything, the only place they are willing to park their money is in federal debt -- treasury bills.

That's because they remain the safest investment on the planet, the US having never missed a payment in 200 years, unlike most other countries.

Because there is so much demand for t-bills right now, and so many dollars bidding for them, the yield on them has been bid down to zero. That means the world is basically shoveling free money at Uncle Sam. That's right -- the world is lining up to shovel trillions of dollars of free money to the federal government precisely because it never went bankrupt.

This means that Obama can finance a stupendously large recovery plan that could include universal health care. In fact, Obama can invest in anything with a non-zero rate of return, to try to pull the economy out of recession, while also making money for the Treasury. I heard on NPR a proposal being floated of the feds directly offering long term fixed rate mortgages to consumers at the lowest rates in decades -- and that it would still make money for the government.

Don't you love the smell of democratic socialism in the morning: democratic governmental control of the commanding heights of the economy! All made possible because we never once declared bankruptcy.

This contradicts all the predictions of all the chicken littles who claimed that the dollar would go into free fall because of the size of our federal debt.