More than Fifty Percent US Congress Wo/Man Part of Millionaire Club

New race is to be part of One Hundred Million Club in Congress!!!
Looks like it is great profession. Time to think about it. It is amazing to see how these politicians gain so much wealth during their tenure.. They get fairly decent salary (around $170K per annum) for living..

However, that is certainly not enough to make them millionaire... Somehow their gains are tremendous.. Irrespective of country.. politicians are same.. moment they are in power, somehow their investment decisions are great or they somehow inherit some serious money..

I don't know... how they do it. I am sure there must be some kind of consultants to help them do it.. very special kind of consultants.. who only advise them on how to get millionaire or multi millionaire..

In general there is no issue with wealth gain.. however, problem is, moment these politicians are part of millionaire or multi-millionaire club, they simply can't empathize with the mass population they represent.. which is still mostly part of non-millionaire club..

Here is the news detail about it.. little older but still relevant..

Dec 27th 2011
Capitol Hill millionaires club

Economic pain not felt by lawmakers as wealth gap grows

By Eric Lichtblau

New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., was first elected to Congress two decades ago, he was comfortably ensconced in the middle class. Pastor held $100,000 or so in savings accounts in the mid-1990s and had a retirement pension, but like many Americans, he also owed the banks nearly as much in loans. Today, Pastor, a miner’s son and a former high school teacher, is a member of a not-so-exclusive club: Capitol Hill millionaires. That group has grown in recent years to include nearly half of all members of Congress — 250 in all — and the wealth gap between lawmakers and their constituents appears to be growing quickly, even as Congress debates unemployment benefits, possible cuts in food stamps and a “millionaire’s tax.” Pastor buys a Powerball lottery ticket every weekend and says he does not consider himself rich. Indeed, within the gilded halls of Congress, where the median net worth is $913,000 and climbing, he is not. He is a rank-and-file millionaire. But compared with the country at large, where the median net worth is $100,000 and has dropped significantly since 2004, he and most of his fellow lawmakers are true aristocrats.

Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” decried by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the past six years, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group.

Congress has never been a place for paupers. From plantation owners in the pre-Civil War era to industrialists in the early 1900s to ex-Wall Street financiers and Internet executives today, it has long been populated with the rich, including scions of families like the Guggenheims, Hearsts, Kennedys and Rockefellers.

But rarely has the divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent. The wealth gap may go largely unnoticed in good times.

“But with the American public feeling all this economic pain, people just resent it more,” said Alan Ziobrowski, a professor at Georgia State who studied lawmakers’ stock investments.

There is wide debate about just why the wealth gap appears to be growing. For starters, the prohibitive costs of political campaigning may discourage the less affluent from even considering a run for Congress. Beyond that, loose ethics controls, members’ shrewd stock picks, profitable land deals, favorable tax laws, inheritances and even marriages to wealthy spouses are all cited as possible explanations for the rising fortunes on Capitol Hill.

What is clear is that members of Congress are getting richer compared not only to the average American worker but even to other very rich Americans.

While the median net worth of members of Congress jumped 15 percent between 2004 and 2010, the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans remained essentially flat. For all Americans, median net worth dropped 8 percent during that period, based on inflation-adjusted data from Moody’s Analytics.

With millionaire status now the norm, the rarefied air in the Capitol these days is $100 million. That lofty level appears to have been surpassed by at least 10 members, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a former auto alarm magnate who is worth somewhere between $195 million and $700 million. (Because federal law requires lawmakers to disclose their assets only in broad dollar ranges, more precise estimates are impossible.) Their wealth has created occasional political problems for Congress’s richest.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, was challenged about her wealth, as much as $196 million, by a member of her own party a few weeks ago. Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., who is among the poorest members of Congress with as much as $464,000 in debt, attacked Pelosi at a closed-door Democratic caucus meeting for endorsing a congressional pay freeze, according to a report in Politico confirmed by other members.

Richardson told Pelosi that, unlike her, some members needed the raise. Members now make a base pay of $174,000 and would get a cost-of-living adjustment automatically unless they were to decide, for a third straight year, to pass it up.

Is housing really poised for growth?

There were some encouraging numbers on housing.. especially on new construction starts.. Looks like numbers were slightly better than previous year and there is lot of buzz if US housing industry is coming out of recession.. Housing is big sector and once housing comes up hope is that rest of the economy will also follow.. I hope that too..

However, in my view it is too early prediction.. I still feel that banks are still sitting on lot of inventory and big chunk of mortgages are still underwater. It will take long time to this mess to clear up.. But this is just my view.. Important thing is Jobs growth and this growth too should be happening in real services and products-manufacturing. by "real", I mean that it should be a net benefit to US economy.. it should be able to generate some kind of export revenues or reduce imports..

Fortunately, we are in Silicon valley where we see lot of spurts and growth in innovative companies which redefine or create something new for entire earth.. We need more silicon valley in US or even this silicon valleys should be extended..

All this fighting in congress/senate on payroll tax cut etc.. are simply waste of time.. I don't think any employer is going to hire more employees if payroll tax is 2% less or more... there should be bigger things which should matter more to employers.. these type of doles remind me of Indian politicians promising (and sometimes delivering as well) free rice or electricity..

Any how, we are digressing from main topic.. coming back to housing.. enjoy this article for details:

Housing poised for turnaround

Homebuilders find niche in building apartment units

By Derek Kravitz

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The depressed housing market has held the economy back for four years. No longer.
Home construction has finally begun a gradual comeback and should add to the nation’s economic growth in 2011, a turning point in the recovery from the recession.

The main reason appears to be a positive consequence of the weak economy: Apartments are being built almost twice as fast as two years ago. Renting is the only option for many people who have lost their jobs, their homes or both. Builders in November broke ground on homes — houses and apartments alike — at an annual rate of 685,000, the government said Tuesday. That was a 9.3 percent jump from October and the fastest pace since April 2010. The numbers show how far the housing industry has come and still has to go:

■ Builders should start at least 600,000 homes this year. That’s up from 587,000 last year and 554,000 in 2009, the worst year on record. In a healthy market, economists say, about 1.2 million homes are started each year.

■ The pace of apartment construction has soared. About 175,000 will be started this year, also roughly half the number in a healthy economy.

But it’s far more than the 97,000 apartments begun in 2009.

■ Single-family home construction, which accounts for about 70 percent of the housing industry, has essentially stalled for three years.

This year will probably turn out to be the worst in the half-century records have been kept.

Construction of singlefamily homes this year could reach 440,000. That would be below last year’s 471,000. In a good economy, builders would break ground on about 840,000 homes.

New homes are 20 percent of the housing market but have an outsize economic impact. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Since the recession began in December 2007, housing has subtracted between 0.5 and 1.1 percentage points from U.S. economic growth each year. Cuts in spending by homeowners have further reduced growth.

But economists say apartments are going up so fast that housing should add to economic growth this year, even if fewer families are buying houses. The U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent clip last quarter.

“Finally, it appears that the process of healing is under way,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist at Naroff Economics.

The better-than-expected housing data helped the stock market shoot higher.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 337 points, its fifth-best performance of the year, and closed back above 12,000.

Housing stocks had an even bigger day. PulteGroup, a home construction and mortgage company, rose more than 10 percent, the best performance in the Standard & Poor’s 500.

Patrick Newport and Michelle Valverde, U.S. economists at IHS Global Insight, said in a note to clients that the figures demonstrate that the housing industry is “finally getting off the mat.”

The industry seems to think so, too. A survey of industry sentiment this week found builders were more optimistic than at any time since May 2010.

But the numbers remain weak, even though mortgage rates are near record lows and home prices have fallen by a third since 2006.

Tighter lending standards are preventing many families from buying houses, and diminished prices on singlefamily homes have given the industry little reason to build more.

Builders are also competing with foreclosures, which hold prices down.

Yet they have found a way to make money — by serving the rising demand for rental apartments.

The average rent has risen 2.4 percent this year to $1,004 a month, according to the real estate data firm Reis. It rose 1 percent last year and fell 2.7 percent in 2009.

---

PAUL SAKUMA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Construction worker Will Capper works on a new house in Palo Alto as home building picks up in November.

West on the way to Japan - Part Three-Final

Finally, we come to other side of Atlantic.. North America.. Surprisingly.. there are three very different major countries with different kind of economies..

Starting with Canada.. I guess "All is Well" in that part of north west.. Canada's conservative (as compared to its southern partners) economic policies coupled with sudden burst of energy related activities are giving boom time to the country.. and it is prospering like anything we are yet to see in west.. However, due to sever weather conditions, only very few brave people are willing to relocate to Canada despite several great incentives over there.. I think we all agree that Canada is not going to be Japan any time soon.. Except if Crude oil prices comes to less than $40/barrel.. Which is highly unlikely.. in case that happens, we will re-visit this country later..

Then comes the biggest fish in the West.. our dear beloved (or equally hated by many as well) United States of America.. Which has been biggest and strongest growth driver for long time in wild wild west.. Several things were on US side.. At least from beginning of twentieth Century.. Starting with great minds.. excellent democracy.. abundant resources.. very limited population.. relatively easy immigration policies.. almost none or very few direct hostile attacks... lot of hostile activities in rest of the world...  US took full advantage of all these and many other opportunities.. Very well executed and results were terrific.. It resulted in great infrastructure and US become super power of twentieth century..

But at the dawn of twenty first century (or even earlier) things started declining.. and multiple factors combined to accelerate this decline.. I would say most important was or still is... outlook and thinking of mass population..

if entire population starts following up mob phycology and starts following and taking dumb decisions.. then only GOD save us.. (but only if GOD exists??). It all started with blind wars in middle east and Afghanistan... wars without well defined objectives.. On one hand funds are being cut in schools and teachers are being laid off to save couple of million dollars a year.. on the other hand couple of billion dollars are being spent every day as if it is simple change... Even after spending more than trillion of dollars on these wars.. we are still not sure if we achieved anything or simply created more hatred and fanatism against US.. at the same time sacrificing limited resources on at this crucial juncture on these wars instead of schools and infrastructure of the nation..

At the same time, I would be very cautious and will be clear.. a decade of decline is very short time on overall scheme of things.. There is still lot of good things which can still take back this country to its glory days.. more importantly.. lot of those good or great things doesn't exist in rest of the developed world and even in many of so called emerging economies.. If US can bring its act together we still can change the course and bring things back to normal..

Coming back to Comparison with Japan.. USA is almost exactly opposite of Japanese thinking and culture.. US society is based on consumption.. consumption beyond our means..  However, Japan is more purely driven by exports, savings, manufacturing, work and work and work and work.. In Software engineering terms, if US is R&D/Innovation and development then Japan is QA and Support (oops.. it didn't fit that well..). Though I feel that Japan was hurt more by Chinese manufacturing where as US was hurt more by Indian IT.. I guess, I am not making much sense.. so I will stop now on this.. but lastly, I feel if current condition of US can be compared to any one.. then it has to be UK.. UK was King of nineteenth century and it ultimately lost its prestige and wealth in Wars.. US is almost on same path.. unless we change our course fast enough and focus on our internal situation.. but challenge is that all the economies of world are so tightly integrated that if one country sinks.. it will sync rest of the world as well..

On internal issues.. Any country is on definitive course of decline and demise if their congress takes few minutes to pass budget/grants for wars/army and debates for weeks/months for grants to cash strapped schools and universities.. or sometime they never pass as well.. How bad congress can get when they can't even agree on cuts/spending of 10-15 million dollar where as result of that itself is loss of more than thirty million dollars per day.... loss of payroll and different projects.. What a bunch of morons!!! How careless they can be.. Had it been any organization, all these morons should have been fired or made to work late night till they figure solution to this petty problem.. These kind of examples show how bankrupt a country is..  and what is more to come..  enough of blah blah..

When will we achieve real democracy in India

Even though we say that India is biggest democracy of the world, we are far too behind in real democratic style of governance. In my view, real democracy is achieved when elected representatives fear the electorate rather than making electorate feel feared. Once this fear is instilled in elected representatives, rest all things will be taken care automatically..

I am sure many Representatives in US must be corrupt in some form or other. Still, there is fear of electorate.. Several reasons, elections every two year, term limit on highest post and most importantly there is real democracy in parties itself... Whether it is party president or whether it is nominee for presidential candidate or even for seats in congress/senate... there is true democratic way of election.. There are no bigshots at the top who dictate who will get ticket for which constituency or which governor/presidential nominee.

Whereas in India, it is all "High Command"s wish.. Instead of fearing electorate, representative fear "High Command".. and hence they fear party "High Command" or icons who some how create and spread fear or so called charisma on masses and hence on their own Party members and Representative.. .

Prime example is Nehru/Gandi family's grip on India's largest party. Only lineage is the criteria to become party head and hence control government either directly or through remote control and hence create all form of corruption and fear of themselves. If anything needs to happen, first they should kick out this family business out of party business. I can't believe there are no good leaders out of 1.2 billion and growing population.

Though nothing is perfect, but we can see outcome of loosened grip of this family on Congress and Nation for few years in 1990s after sudden death of Rajiv Gandhi.. By no means, I am supporting and praising terrorist attack.. Principally, I am against any kind of violence.. However, that event really led to Narsimha Rao's government which was free of influence for some time.. By no means, it was cleanest or non-corrupt government.. but still, changes started during those times are foundation for India's great progress till now.. We had hoped that we will get rid of family and won't need them forever.. there was great lineup of leaders like Scindhia/Pilot in Party who were ready to take over reigns of party.. however, during unfortunate events in next couple of years this entire line up of leaders died in "accidents" and we were left with Nehru/Gandhi family..

Digressed from real topic of this blog.. but still it is great example.. when there is slight improvement in democratic process..

So, in my view we should start real revolution to fix this mess we are in. Once these issues are taken care of, rest all the issues like corruption will be fixed automatically.. I really don't think that this "Lokpal" is going to fix things completely.. What if Lokpal itself is corrupt.. we might be in even worse situation.. I agree, Anna is nice person.. but then we don't know for sure about his followers.. In my view, it is all patch work.. We need to attack very foundation of this corruption.. and that foundation is "Power in hands of High Command" not in hands of public..

So our revolutions should be focussed on fixing these fundamental issues.. As these things will never happen on their own.. These very same people will not let it happen that easily.. if something like this happens, they will have literally abandon their posts as there will be surge of new and energetic leadership into the country and society as a whole..

First and most important step is to force these iconic figures out of the party. I won't mind a simple and plain revolution in India to kick Nehru/Gandhi family out of the country itself... Once they are out, then amend constitution to make terms of party presidents max to two years and they can't be re-elected for next five or 10 years. Same rule needs to be applied for Prime/Chief Minister post as well. I guess, our founding fathers did a great job in preparing constitution while copying it from UK's constitution.. but in the end, this same constitution is keeping aristocracy still very much alive in India... I think it is time to add or copy some of the constitution from US as well.. No system is perfect.. I won't say that US or UK or India's system is perfect.. However, we need to continuously  evolve it and see what could be best in which situation..

When our constitution was originally made, it had provision of continuously grow number of seats based on population growth.. I think sometime in 80s it was changed and number of parliamentary seats were frozen on account of space constraints in our Parliament. I think, cost of extending Parliament building would have been not even one hundredth of one of the scams we had faced here if more representatives would have been there.. Very clearly, more the number of representatives easier it would have been for new comer to win the elections and reach parliament.. Lesser the dependence on big parties or their high command.. Better and bigger audit of different government programs..

Again, coming back to core topic... We need real democracy in parties.. That can be only achieved if we amend constitution to force any regional/national party to have regular elections to elect their leaders and even elections for nominees for Parliamentary elections.. Once these elections starts, no single person can control these parties and hence the governments.. It may seem another headache or cost to have these extra and more frequent elections but this cost will be substantially lower than the cost of one single scam if it can prevent.. Power needs to be in hands of people.. not in few families or individuals..

Unemployment benefits

It is really sad to see unemployment benefits getting expired for Four million Americans right when holiday season is kicking off. I wish our politicians more focussed on real people's issues instead of just fighting each other on useless partisan issues like tax break extension and other issues.

I liked optimism of President Obama about this unemployment and other issues which are under negotiation table. I guess he is very cool and confident about resolving these issues before congress breaks away for holidays. If I was on his place, I would have been critical about Republicans and given them my piece of mind. Well, that could be the reason I am not President.

Another thought about these unemployment benefits. Apparently these are expiring for around four million people who are still unemployed after one and half years. Even though I am in favor of extending due to holidays at this time, but there has to be another solution. Obviously, other solution is that get these four million people jobs. But apparently we don't have jobs. What I heard and read about unemployment in this recession is that it is even worse due to extremely bad real estate. Due to bad real estate,  many of these peoples are stuck at same place and are unable to move to places which might have jobs for them.

What do we do now... Fed is doing everything in their power to boost real estate market. But they are at the most able to hold real estate prices. Without their support for mortgage backed security, mortgage rates could be easily double of what they are right now and may be real estate prices further half of what they are right now.

However, in my view government should start encouraging people to move. Give them some benefit or incentive so they can move and go to places where there are higher chances of getting job. Make this sub-prime mortgage easier to ditch and move to places where there is demand for their skills. Start some kind of program where if they move, say more than 1000 miles and are able to get job within 30/60 days they will be gives some extra benefit.. May be 10K moving bonus.

What else could be done.. another idea.. offshore your human resources.. Americans are trained to be excellent sales/marketing and managers. May be start some program, let us say instead of paying them unemployment benefits at home, government will give them half the amount if they decide to move to Middle east, India, China, Brazil, Russia or any country outside of USA. That way these people will see the world and gain some good experience and even help the country where they will move. At this moment, with all of our economies interlocked, any nations' prosperity will percolate to rest of the countries. That way we may have even better world!!