Congressmen - Just a bit more than average Joes in terms of wealth

The readers (and commenters) over at National Review are having a field day with Trouble Reading Tables? by Kevin D. Williamson. Williamson is pointing out that a writer at Salon, Kali Holloway has made a rudimentary error in reading a table. She has interpreted what should be billions as millions. Everyone makes mistakes, so in some ways this fairly gratuitous humor. But that doesn't stop some of the comments being pretty funny.

If advocacy journalists were not so prone to seizing on ephemeral data, then misinterpreting it, and finally trumpeting their unsupportable conclusion, pointing out her error would be just a little unempathetic.

However, Holloway does, I am afraid, rather bring it upon herself. She misreads the unit of measure from the table. A mistake anyone in a hurry could make. But then she compounds the error by demonstrating a startling lack of contextual awareness.

Holloway wants to make the point that the average Congressman is richer than the average citizen. Fair enough. But to make her point she compares their net wealth to that of countries.

The top five members of Congress are worth more than the GDP of entire countries. At $200.5 million, Republican Dave Trott’s personal wealth is greater than the GDP of both Peru and Iraq ($200,269 and $195,517, respectively). Democrat Jared Polis is worth $213.2 million, more than the GDP of Algeria and ($208,764). Democrat John K. Delaney is worth $222.4, greater than the GDP of the Czech Republic ($208,796). Another Democrat, Mark Warner, is worth $254.2 million, which beats out the GDP of Greece ($241,721). While Republican Darryl Issa, the richest man in Congress, is worth an incredible $448.4 million, which makes him worth more than the GDPs of Bolivia, Croatia, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong put together ($30,601; $57,869; $67,203; and $274,027, respectively). And that’s still $15.6 million less than he was valued at last year.

It takes a special blind unawareness to think that Mark Warner (with a net worth of $254 million) is richer than the entire country of Greece. She misread the table and believes that Greece's GDP is only $241 million (instead of the actual $241 billion). That is one numerically sheltered life. The suspicion of profound innumeracy is multiplied when you recognize that she is choosing to compare a net worth number ($254 million) with an income number ($241 billion). You can't help but suspecting that Holloway doesn't know the difference between wealth and income.

Holloway tops off the beclowning with a bewildering final conclusion.

6) Surprise! Most didn’t get there by pulling themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps

Most of the members of Congress are rich because they arrived there that way. In fact, of this year’s freshman crop, half were already millionaires when they took office.

It is as if she doesn't even realize that nothing she has written addresses whether the members of Congress pulled themselves up by the bootstraps. If they are like most wealthy Americans, that is indeed what they did. Very few inherit a fortune.

More alarmingly, Holloway doesn't seem to understand the implication of her statement "Most of the members of Congress are rich because they arrived there that way. In fact, of this year’s freshman crop, half were already millionaires when they took office." Surely that is exactly what you want. You want Congressman to have made their fortune in life before undertaking public service. What you don't want is for them to become millionaires while pursuing public service (a la Harry Reid). That is the very opposite of what you want.

So poor old Holloway. Embarrassments galore.

But Williamson does make a worthwhile point.

The larger theme of the story, that members of Congress are shockingly wealthy, is poorly understood as well. The average member of Congress is about 57 years old, and they are mostly married, mostly savers and investors, and mostly college graduates in two-income households. Their net worths are about the same as other similar households.

To Holloway's point, you don't want Congressman to be so rich that they are disengaged from the reality of the citizens of the country. That would be problematic. But are they that rich? Holloway's evidence is:

2) Congress is mostly made of millionaires

The rich (and very rich) are right in their element in Congress. Millionaires made up more than 50% of Congress in 2013, with nearly 271 of the 533 members claiming personal fortunes of at least seven digits. The median net worth of members was $1,029,505 in 2013, up 2.5 percent over the year prior. Contrast that with the median net worth of your average American household, which sits at a comparatively paltry $56,355.

But once again she is demonstrating her innumeracy by comparing apples and oranges. The average American household is just that, the average for all households from singles, newlyweds to just retired to aged. Personal wealth accumulation follows a parabola that is highly age related with maximum net worth usually peaking sometime around 60 or so.

What is the average age of a Congressman? The average House member is 57 and the average Senator is 62. So what Holloway needs to compare is apples to apples. What is the average net worth for a sixty year old? The average 60 year-old's net worth in 2010 was $180,000 per the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finance. So your average congessman is about five times richer than the average constituent of the same age. That's a lot but it doesn't put them into a different league. I suspect the numbers might be even closer if you factored in profession and education attainment as variables that affect net worth.

So sure, there are a few multimillionaires in the deca- and centimillionaire ranges but most of the rest are reasonably close to their comparable constituents. So what Holloway is really beefing about is the class structure of Congress rather than net worth per se. Congress is substantially made up of lawyers and businessmen (per Membership of the 113th Congress) who, on average, will have greater average net worth than the rest of the population. More critically yet, Congress is made of people who are have been serially successful over long careers.

And despite all the issues Holloway might be trying to raise, there is something reassuring about the broad diversity of Congressmen.

102 educators, employed as teachers, professors, instructors, school fundraisers, counselors, administrators, or coaches (90 in the House, 12 in the Senate);
• 2 physicians in the Senate, 17 physicians in the House (including 1 Delegate), plus 2 dentists, 2 veterinarians, and 1 psychiatrist;
• 3 psychologists (both in the House), an optometrist (in the Senate), and 5 nurses (all in the House);
• 5 ordained ministers, all in the House;
• 33 former mayors (24 in the House, 9 in the Senate);
• 10 former state governors (all 10 in the Senate) and 8 lieutenant governors (4 in the Senate, 4 in the House, including 2 Delegates);
• 7 former judges (all in the House), and 32 prosecutors (8 in the Senate, and 24 in the House, including a Delegate), who have served in city, county, state, federal, or military capacities;
• 1 former Cabinet Secretary (in the Senate), and 2 Ambassadors (one in each chamber);
• 262 state or territorial legislators (219 in the House, including 2 Delegates, and 43 in the Senate);
• at least 100 congressional staffers (20 in the Senate, 80 in the House), as well as 8 congressional pages (4 in the House and 4 in the Senate);
• 5 Peace Corps volunteers, all in the House;
• 3 sheriffs and 1 deputy sheriff, 2 FBI agents (all in the House), and a firefighter in the Senate;
• 2 physicists, 6 engineers, and 1 microbiologist (all in the House, with the exception of 1 Senator who is an engineer);
• 5 radio talk show hosts (4 House, 1 Senate), 6 radio or television broadcasters (5 House, 1 Senate), 7 reporters or journalists (5 in the House, 2 in the Senate), and a radio station manager and a public television producer (both in the House);
• 9 accountants in the House and 2 in the Senate;
• 5 software company executives, all in the House;
• 3 pilots, all in the House, and 1 astronaut, in the Senate;
• a screenwriter, a comedian, and a documentary film maker, all in the Senate, and
• a professional football player, in the House;
• 29 farmers, ranchers, or cattle farm owners (25 House, 4 Senate);
• 2 almond orchard owners, both in the House, 1 cattle farm owner (a Senator), 1 vintner (a House Member), 1 fisherman (a House Member), and 1 fruit orchard worker (a House Member);
• 7 social workers in the House and 2 in the Senate; and
• 9 current members of the military reserves (8 House, 1 Senate), and 6 current members of the National Guard (all in the House).

Other occupations listed in the CQ Roll Call Member Profiles include car dealership owner, auto worker, insurance agent, rodeo announcer, union representative, stockbroker, welder, venture capitalist, funeral home owner, and software engineer.

I do suspect that Congressmen are subject to the Washington, D.C. bubble, and are prey to regulatory capture. But on average, apart from being serially successful, they look like a pretty broad representation of America.