The newest statistic floating around is that more than 50% of congress is made up of millionaires for the first time. (This statistic is correct, not liberal propaganda). This probably doesn't represent a huge, recent change, as representatives have always been wealthy at a percentage that dwarfs the people they represent. However, I think this number puts the difference in very clear terms.
About 9 million "households" have a reported net worth of more than 1m (in America) This is a bit of a difficult statistic to interpret but I'm going to try.
Of course many of these households are households of one. Many others are couples. Plenty of others include kids. Averaged all together, you'd probably get an average of 3-something. To be inaccurately generous to the other side, let's say 4.
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When I say inaccurately generous, the average number of kids in a household with kids is between 2 and 3. So the average household size in a household with kids is between 4 and 5. So clearly the average household in general is not 4. But my point can be made clearly even spotting the opposing argument a couple of touchdowns.
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And now for some grade school arithmetic.
9 * 4 = 36. (By the way, the 9 was rounded up too.)
So, that makes 36 million Americans who are part of a "millionaire household", at the absolute most. Now for the percentage!
36/ 300 (for 300 million total Americans) = .12 = 12%.
According to the 2012 census, 15% of Americans are living in poverty. So....
300 * .15 = 45 million.
Once again, 36 million living in a millionaire household, 45 million living in poverty. Again, this is not new, I doubt if there has ever been a society where the poverty-stricken did not outnumber the wealthy. And that's fine. Actually that's probably pretty good. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about relative representation in the body that makes our laws.
So, being that all members of congress draw a 6-figure salary, none of them live in poverty. So this group of people's (numbering 45 million) number of representatives is 0.
Millionaires, on the other hand, have 268 out of 534 current members of congress that represent them economically. So, mathematically, that top 12% has infinitely more representation than the bottom (at least) 15%, and more than half of all representation. In fact they'd have infinitely more with 1 representative, so they've got infinity times 268 more representation. (I apologize to serious readers, if there are any, for this last "statistic".)
I think if we continued to break these numbers down we'd see that plenty of others above the poverty line have literally no representatives that reflect them, but the stats I've laid out already clearly demonstrate that congress is rigged to advocate for the wealthiest and silence the poorest.
This goes a long way to explaining how they could possibly allow cuts to food stamps and unemployment insurance - these cuts literally don't affect any of them. So anyone in congress who opposes these cuts does so not out of self-interest, but out of sympathy, which anyone can tell you is not as strong a motivator as self-interest.
My point is, when someone like Elizabeth Warren says the "game is rigged" against poor and working people, she is demonstrably correct, and correct in a way that a 6th grader should be able to understand. So how can this point of view be dismissed as radically liberal? Only because the game of politics is rigged, thoroughly, and it would take radical change for this not to be the case.
Indulge me in an imaginary example to summarize my argument.
Say a bill is up for a vote. The bill would cut taxes for millionaires by 75%, while cutting all benefits for the poor and feeding them into a huge meat grinder. A majority of congress (enough to pass the bill) would stand to reap millions of dollars in benefit from the tax cuts, and literally 0 of them would be going into the meat grinder. Would the law pass? Also, how far is this from what is happening in real life, today?
The truth hurts.
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