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Comment by ashkankiani | Hacker News Reader

Are you seriously trying to compare half a billion total spent by a single man (just Elon) to middle class people contributing $50 to an election?

According to the data I could find, on average the middle class donate <$100. At least 55% donate <$100, with most being small donations.

Let's be generous and use $100. That means one person exerted the equivalent pressure of 5 million people.

What the fuck are you on about at this point. What is this stupid technically correct "but many people spend on elections" nonsense? Are you being purposefully obtuse?

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> Are you seriously trying to compare half a billion total spent by a single man (just Elon) to middle class people contributing $50 to an election?

Yes, I am.

It is a policy failure to allow ANYONE to spend money to influence / support elected officials. Your only influence should be voting.

But, the wealthy use their wealth to influence policy. Policy that benefits them. Like policy that allows them to spend infinite money to influence elections. How do the non-wealthy stop that?

You do realize more money was spent on the party opposing Trump? Money can lose. Money apparently doesn't like the right wing but the right wins anyway without money.

Agree.

It feels odd that you would point out the little guy when there is kind of this elephant in the room.

You could have just said we need to get money out of politics.

So, if you had many billions, you wouldn’t run ads to help Democrats win? You’d sit by and let Trump or similar win without even telling people how bad he is? How could you live with yourself?

It’s funny because a decade ago nobody cared that the Silicon Valley and Hollywood rich sets consistently poured money into the Democratic Party.

Then when they took the party far to the left in the 2016-2020 era, and Silicon Valley noped out and started supporting the GOP just to block them, then suddenly it became a big problem where their donations were going.

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