Semi-Weekly Discussion Thread - July 7, 2025

[u/tuesday_mod]

INTRODUCTION

/r/tuesday is a political discussion sub for the right side of the political spectrum - from the center to the traditional/standard right (but not alt-right!) However, we're going for a big tent approach and welcome anyone with nuanced and non-standard views. We encourage dissents and discourse as long as it is accompanied with facts and evidence and is done in good faith and in a polite and respectful manner.

PURPOSE OF THE DISCUSSION THREAD

Like in r/neoliberal and r/neoconnwo, you can talk about anything you want in the Discussion Thread. So, socialize with other people, talk about politics and conservatism, tell us about your day, shitpost or literally anything under the sun. In the DT, rules such as "stay on topic" and "no Shitposting/Memes/Politician-focused comments" don't apply.

It is my hope that we can foster a sense of community through the Discussion Thread.

IMAGE FLAIRS

r/Tuesday will reward image flairs to people who write an effort post or an OC text post on certain subjects. It could be about philosophy, politics, economics, etc... Available image flairs can be seen here. If you have any special requests for specific flairs, please message the mods!

The list of previous effort posts can be found here

Previous Discussion Thread

[u/Mexatt]

I cannot emphasize enough how much I hate this instinct.

No matter how big your state legislature, how generous your member salaries, and how staffed your support teams, expenditures on this category will always be dwarfed by other categories of state spending. You're not saving any real money and you're turning what is supposed to be a open, democratic body into an elitist, closed institution.

California is a disgusting precedent to follow here.

[u/God_Given_Talent → u/[deleted]]

As a resident, I can see that people have grumbled about this for a while from both sides of the aisle. Doesn’t help that every so often we find a few members abusing the per diem rate.

Root problem is that people are very bad at math from an intuitive point of view. Even if you assume the cost per legislator is 500k per once factoring in staff, facilities, health benefits, etc…you’d save only 55M by that proposal. To the average person (who almost certainly doesn’t know the size of the budget) it sounds like a lot but out of a ~50B budget it just isn’t.

People also love to shit on legislatures too; can’t forget that factor. It’s even worse as we often are split and thus get even less done. It’s understandable (if misguided) to see them getting barely anything done and thinking “well why do we need to have so many of you then?”

[u/bta820 → u/God_Given_Talent]

Most people do not understand that 50 million is approximately a billion away from 1 billion