this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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Median is a better choice as its less affected by outliers.
The mean average is the amount you compute by putting all the money that is earned in a big pot and dividing it up evenly amongst everyone.
Median is where you find the single most average person and ask them how much they make.
Median gives them an incentive to improve the income of the average American. Mean average gives an incentive to increase national wealth regardless of who's hands its in, and an incentive to decrease the population. That is not a good incentive.
But also keep in mind congress members are local representatives. They need to be in DC while in session, and in their state or district at other times to be available to their constituents. The job requires maintaining two households, so they should earn enough for that. Unless we provide them college dorm level mandatory housing in the capital. Then median alone is enough.
I get that you're trying to be accurate, and I respect that.
Let's use the mean, and eliminate the top and bottom 1% of earners. Which would put Congress' salary between 57,000 and 61,000
Using the median gives them a salary of 87,500 dollars.
That top 1% is a real motherfucker.
$87,500 is the median household income.
Median personal income (income of all persons 15+ with any amount of income) is $46,960.
For the bottom 1%, I assume this includes the unemployed as making $0?
And for the billionaire class, if we are talking AGI here (which I assume we are) I’m guessing they have some entirely normal AGI. If they are paying anything on their actual wealth it’s probably through some kind of capital gains tax, or hidden in some trust or shell corporation.
So before eliminating top 1% and bottom 1%, we might want to clarify those items, as the “average” worker will mainly just have a non-zero AGI they are taxed on.
Eliminating the top 1% of earners is a good policy I support, but I don't think it makes sense as a way to calculate averages.
Though your proposal might work now, in the fullness of time things will change, and the 1% may not be the right number. I don't think you can rely on governments to update numbers promptly. There are places in England that have fines in law defined in denominations that no longer exist. You can't rely on governments keep things up to date.
But your doesn't address the underlying problems with using the arethmetic mean. It seems like you're just searching for justification to pay people you don't like less.
I believe everyone should be able to live comfortably, and well designed incentive systems are effective at shaping behavior. Median is better on both fronts.
It's designed to be uncomfortable until the lowest earners in the country are able to approach comfortability themselves. The whole point is to tie people who make decisions for the rest of us to the consequences of them. It's not about inflicting harm, it's about inflicting consequences, which may be good or bad.
We want a rising tide.
Then tie it to the lowest earners. You can pick a lower percentile using the same methodology as finding the median.
Adding fixed percentage adjustments to the mean is not a good way of going about it.