well, i'm sure you will be glad to learn then that it's not the argument that is being made there.

it's just... let's say 'curious' how you, completely randomly ofc, landed exactly where dishonest people trying to appear 'reasonable', while at the same time dismissing valid criticism, did. strange coincidence...

a somewhat honest person would have noticed the points about disconnect, hypocrisy, and NOT doing the job you were originally elected to do, but unsurprisingly that all went straight above your head, lol.

The argument being made is that it's outrageous and hypocritical for Congress, who makes $X / week, to say that $Y / week is too much. There's no controversy here, it's simply what the post means as written in the English language.

It's a horrible argument, and you should be embarrassed for posting it here. Please take some personal accountability and stop accusing everyone of misunderstanding posts written at a 3rd grade level.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Sep 8 2020 01:32pm

i love how in order to make your idiotic 'arguments', you have to fully embrace your anti-intellectualism and pretend like context simply doesn't exist, lol.

Congress isnt 300 million people afaik

pretty sure no one is suggesting that everyone should earn as much as a conngressperson while doing as little work. afaik. thanks for contributing though, valuable as usual.

That's not what I said. I attacked the author AND the argument independently and that's perfectly legitimate. It's no different than attacking Trump's policy and his personality/mental capability.

Yes, we have the dollars for universal healthcare and I support that. Coverage is less of an issue than cost though since most people are covered though.

The country depends on consumerism which means robotics and extremely cheap labor are important. I LOVE creating billionaires. We've gotten some really amazing products from companies that create those billionaires.

This post was edited by thundercock on Sep 8 2020 02:43pm

The big question is if there would be any less innovation if uber-successful businessmen would still become billionaires, but only in the low single digits. Would there be any less innovation if Jeff Bezos had a net worth of 8 billion instead of 150 billion? Would it make any difference for his own life?

This doesnt mean that we should slap a Bernie-on-steroids-style 80% wealth tax on billionaires or anything like that, but it should still be obvious that such a degree of capital accumulation is neither healthy for society nor for the economy.

Most billionaires have that value in the company that they built. It's not like they are going to liquidate all their holdings and spend it so it's just monopoly money until they sell their position. Once they do, the value of the company may plummet so their actual value may be considerably less. Using stock price to estimate wealth is a rather poor metric because the stock market isn't static but it's the best we got it seems.

I don't think these people create companies to be billionaires...rather they create companies because they think the idea has value to society. If you want to eliminate billionaires, you need to reduce their position in the company (which seems highly unethical) OR cap the value of the company somehow (which also seems ludicrous and inefficient).

It's a tough nut to crack, and I dont have immediate, easy solutions - but I still consider it important that we finally acknowledge that there IS a problem.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said that no House rep should represent more than 30,000 constituents. Today we would need 10,940 Congresspeople to achieve this ideal. A long time ago, this would have been challenging. Both traveling and accommodation would have been serious roadblocks. With the internet, this is no longer an issue. Not even remotely. "Floor debates" can be streamed, votes can be taken digitally, and Congresspeople can spend all of their time in-district instead of in D.C.