Trump’s 17 cabinet-level picks have more money than bottom third of American households combined

[anon36081309]

They ARE more likely to have basic human empathy, so, yeah, I’m OK with that.

[anon85905360]

@D0MINATRIX

And many of that bottom third expects the donald to have their best interests at heart. What was it that P.T. Barnum said…?

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them” ?

[Felton]

@nemomen

Yes, there are only two options when selecting cabinet members. You can choose unqualified billionaires hostile to the purposes of the departments they’ll be running, or you can choose unsuccessful poor people. Like everything in the world, it’s a totally black and white binary polarity.

@nimelennar

You know, I wasn’t initially in favour of this idea, but after seeing how many people are in favour of it, I’m going to have to start actually considering it.

Let’s get a sense of how the general populace feels about this.

###Which should be running the government?

• Unqualified billionaires
• Unsuccessful poor people

[anon27007144]

@nimelennar

We should really just have an administration composed of homeless people and see how that works out.

Slappilapigus:
Because putting very unsuccessful poor people to run the country would be so much smarter.

Friedrich_Hayek:
You are right we should have homeless poor people running government and see if that improves the way things function…

You know, I wasn’t initially in favour of this idea, but after seeing how many people are in favour of it, I’m going to have to start actually considering it.

Well, I’m with you fellas!

[Snowlark]

@D0MINATRIX

And many of that bottom third expects the donald to have their best interests at heart. What was it that P.T. Barnum said…?

A sucker is reborn every four years?

[psychonaut]

And what proportion of Americans did Obama’s cabinet have more money than? It may not be as high as 1/3, but I doubt the figure is negligible.

[daneel]

Donald Trump's Cabinet Is Really, Really Rich

Seems like most of Obama’s cabinet’s wealth comes from Penny Pritzker. I imagine she has more money than a pretty good proportion of the population on her own.

Penny Pritzker

[KarlS]

The most surprising thing is that Trump is fine with being the poorest man in the room.

[anon35121463]

@Felton

Let’s get a sense of how the general populace feels about this.

Gets my vote. Helping the homeless and the unemployed, one cabinet post at a time!

[SenorSchaffer]

They probably deleted their cookies and the password recovery process was waaaaaay too much.

[SenorSchaffer]

[atl]

Well, four of them are billionaires. The fifth one on the list is at $25M or so, making him and the rest pretty much lost in the day to day swings of the market.

[enso]

@Felton

Who woke up the false choice strawman sock puppet brigade?

[frauenfelder]

Yes, it’s either/or. You are a genius!

[Wanderfound]

@Slappilapigus

Because putting very unsuccessful poor people to run the country would be so much smarter.

No, in practice the choice tends to be between “rich people who are opposed to the mission of the department they run” and “rich people who are paid to subvert the mission of the department they run for the benefit of their corporate donors”.

Poor people don’t get a say either way.

[anon3894935]

And still there are people all over the internet smugly saying how great it is and they can’t wait for the corruption-free Trumptopia where the economy will be just amazing. I’m still not buying that anyone is that gullible- they know damn well that Trump won’t make life better for them, but as long as he makes it worse for everyone around them (especially those uppity women and coloreds), they’re satisfied.

[SheiffFatman]

I wish I could remember who it was, but someone made the point that (one of) the problems with David Cameron’s posh-boy cabinet wasn’t that they didn’t know they were well-off, but that they were so much better off than the great majority of the populace that they couldn’t appreciate the difference between someone earning a comfortable £60,000 a year and someone struggling on £16,000: it was all chicken-feed to them, so really what was the difference?

[anon73430903]

Wealth is not a good way to judge potential success in government. If it was then the Great Train Robbers should have become the government of Britain.

[miasm]

Steve Silberman (stevesilberman)

via Sean Carroll’s twitter

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meme-ified image link

[anon68952647]

@Slappilapigus

Because putting very unsuccessful poor people to run the country would be so much smarter.

That is some seriously deep analysis right there. Hoo Boy!