Could You Imagine A U.S. President Saying "We Have To Run People Who Love Money Too Much Out Of Politics?"

To be one of the 50 richest Members of Congress last year, you would have had to have a net worth north of $7.47 million. Everyone knows longtime criminal and former car thief Darrell Issa is the richest Member of Congress- worth between $300 and $400 million dollars. Less well-known is that at least a third of Congress are millionaires (including half the senators). The minimum net worth of a Member of Congress is close to half a million dollars, considerably above the net worth of the people whose interests they are supposedly looking out for. Americans' median wealth is a mere $44,900 per adult-- half have more, half have less. As Bernie Sanders keeps reminding us, Americans are having trouble building wealth because wages have stagnated for more than a decade-- due, in great part, to a successful conservative war against unions and to pernicious corporate trade policies embraced by both party Establishments. Median household income was $51,017 in 2012, compared to $56,080 in 1999. The political system is rigged-- at every step along the way-- in favor of the wealthy. Both the DCCC and the NRCC go out of their way to discourage working class and middle class candidates while recruiting wealthy candidates, more often than not, with fiscally conservative world views.

José Mujica, once an urban guerrilla fighter with the Tupamaros, was elected president of Uruguay in 2010, beating his conservative opponent, former President, Luis Lacalle, 52-43%. In his first speech as president-elect, he said "it is a mistake to think that power comes from above, when it comes from within the hearts of the masses."

He has declined to live in the opulent presidential palace or use its staff and instead lives in modest farm house on the outskirts of Montevideo where he and his wife raise and sell chrysanthemums. He drives an old VW bug and he donates 90% of his $12,000 annual presidential salary to charities benefiting poor people. In October the Huffington Post ran a story by Roque Planas about why Mujica believes the rich should be kicked out of politics.

People who like money too much ought to be kicked out of politics, Uruguayan President José Mujica told CNN en Español in an interview posted online Wednesday.

“We invented this thing called representative democracy, where we say the majority is who decides,” Mujica said in the interview. “So it seems to me that we [heads of state] should live like the majority and not like the minority.”

Dubbed the “World’s Poorest President” in a widely circulated BBC piece from 2012, Mujica reportedly donates 90 percent of his salary to charity. Mujica’s example offers a strong contrast to the United States, where in politics the median member of Congress is worth more than $1 million and corporations have many of the same rights as individuals when it comes to donating to political campaigns.

“The red carpet, people who play-- those things,” Mujica said, mimicking a person playing a cornet. “All those things are feudal leftovers. And the staff that surrounds the president are like the old court.”

Mujica explained that he didn’t have anything against rich people, per se, but he doesn’t think they do a good job representing the interests of the majority of people who aren’t rich.

“I’m not against people who have money, who like money, who go crazy for money,” Mujica said. “But in politics we have to separate them. We have to run people who love money too much out of politics, they’re a danger in politics… People who love money should dedicate themselves to industry, to commerce, to multiply wealth. But politics is the struggle for the happiness of all.”

Asked why rich people make bad representatives of poor people, Mujica said: “They tend to view the world through their perspective, which is the perspective of money. Even when operating with good intentions, the perspective they have of the world, of life, of their decisions, is informed by wealth. If we live in a world where the majority is supposed to govern, we have to try to root our perspective in that of the majority, not the minority.”

Mujica has become well known for rejecting the symbols of wealth. In an interview in May, he lashed out against neckties in comments on Spanish television that went viral.

“The tie is a useless rag that constrains your neck,” Mujica said during the interview. “I’m an enemy of consumerism. Because of this hyperconsumerism, we’re forgetting about fundamental things and wasting human strength on frivolities that have little to do with human happiness.”