If you want to be a Senator, you need to raise an average of $8,700 every day for the two years prior to the election.  If you’d like to be in the House of Representatives, you only need to raise $1,700 per day, on average.  These numbers are part of a stunning infographic published by RootStrikers.

If you need to raise $8,700 per day, who are you more likely to meet with? People who have ideas or initiative, or people who can hand you money.    And consider this too (another bit of information from the infographic): Only .26% of the people funded 68% of contributions to people running for Congress.  Rootstrikers was founded by Lawrence Lessig, who has a knack for coming up with shocking irrefutable statistics relating to political corruption relating to money.

The system is designed to discourage ordinary people from running for Congress.  People with a distaste for asking for money are much less likely to run.  People who are not functional pychopaths are less likely to run (and see this astute comment here).  Or is there a huge overlap between those two types?  Seems so.