{"id":35241,"date":"2011-04-14T07:02:38","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T12:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=35241"},"modified":"2011-10-23T16:59:50","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T21:59:50","slug":"if-congress-looked-like-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/04\/14\/if-congress-looked-like-us\/","title":{"rendered":"If Congress Looked Like Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sonita M. sent in a link to an image at <a href=\"http:\/\/awesome.good.is\/transparency\/web\/1104\/congress\/flat.html\" target=\"_blank\">GOOD<\/a> that shows the makeup of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives now in terms of various characteristics (race\/ethnicity, gender, political party, religion) and what it would look like if its members were more demographically representative of the U.S. population as a whole:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/transparency.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-35243 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/transparency-500x342.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"342\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/transparency-500x342.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/transparency-1024x701.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/transparency.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As they point out in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.good.is\/post\/infographic-what-congress-would-look-like-if-it-really-represented-america\/\" target=\"_blank\">accompanying article<\/a>, however, the area where Congress most differs from the U.S. population as a whole is in terms of socioeconomic status. The average wealth of members of Congress, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/pfds\/averages.php\" target=\"_blank\">OpenSecrets.org<\/a> (they don&#8217;t specify if it&#8217;s the mean or the median, so I presume it&#8217;s the mean):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/wealth.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-35244 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/04\/wealth.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"323\" height=\"239\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the U.S. as a whole, median wealth was $96,000 in 2009 (the mean was $481,000), according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/pubs\/feds\/2011\/201117\/201117pap.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Federal Reserve<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2011\/03\/24\/pf\/financial_crisis_outcome\/\" target=\"_blank\">CNNMoney<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sonita M. sent in a link to an image at GOOD that shows the makeup of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives now in terms of various characteristics (race\/ethnicity, gender, political party, religion) and what it would look like if its members were more demographically representative of the U.S. population as a whole: As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,55,2094,85,285,1758,1759,1760,1754,1757,42],"class_list":["post-35241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-gender","tag-gender-politics","tag-politics","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-american-indiansaboriginals","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35241"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35247,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35241\/revisions\/35247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}