Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Should former President Obama have taken the money

He will be paid $400,000 to speak at a conference put together by a Wall Street firm.  Should he have said no?  (see link here)

I think he should have said no.  But then, I'm an idealist.

9 comments:

  1. With more and more people losing faith in their federal government, I believe Obama should have said no as well. Like the article noted, it will set a precedent for other political figures. Understandably, he took it because it was a large amount of money for little work, but if we want to lessen lobbying in government, saying no would have been the right step.

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  2. I honestly don't mind that Obama chose to speak. He is an individual, and should be able to make his own economic and professional decisions. Furthermore, compared to the atrocities that are occurring in D.C. now that he is out of office, him turning down a speech would hardly set a precedent (if even get noticed at all).

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  3. I agree with Zoe. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking the gig. In fact, he may be able to do more good than bad by speaking (although it doesn't necessarily set a good example).

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  4. I agree both with Zoe and Nick. In recent news we witnessed how everyone anxiously awaited Obama's return from vacation to speak on President Trump's first 100 days and so maybe this was a fee due to high demand. However, we have seen other top officials accept offers like this and they continue to speak for ridiculously high fees so i'm not sure why Obama is in the spotlight for this now.

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  5. I think that anyone getting paid $400,000 for one speech is a little ridiculous in and of itself. That is more money than thousands of people all around the world would earn in 10 years. Crazy.

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  6. I agree with Zoe, Nick and Chris. I honestly don't get the big deal in accepting the money. I doubt that's Obama's asking price. It's a drop in the bucket for Wall St. so why not make use of it. I don't believe the price tag is the issue. I would love to hear what the likes of Obama and Clinton have said in their speeches (that's the more interesting part).
    Also, just to note, it's no secret that Obama is closer to the center-left than we all make him out to be, so why are people so shocked by his "support" for Wall St.?

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  7. I agree with most of the previous posts. I think it's really not a big deal of taking the money. Think about a lot of Celebrities, some of them charged even higher prices.

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  8. Beyond that, we don't even know what he's gonna say. He could go up there and defend a single-payer program for all we know.

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