you act like they werent going to get paid if they didnt...
they get paid either way...sunk cost ring a bell?
probably not eh
its not a sunk cost, because these congressman could have used that time to write, introduce, and vote upon other bills. Had they not spent their time on this, they woudln't have been in their offices doing nothing. they would have worked on other bills.
WIKI: "In economics and business decision-making, sunk costs are retrospective (past) costs that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered."
Um, sorry but I dont know how the fck you're calling this a sunk cost. There are other options - other tasks that would have been completed with the time spent. Even if their only action was for the 515 of them to refresh their email once - that is some work getting done.
IMO, your anxious rush to prove me wrong with a phrase you're using in Econ 1 has led to you calling this a sunk cost when it's not - When you get to the chapter on opportunity cost, we can try to measure what % of value was at play here. Maybe sitting in their office was much less, but a 'sunk cost'? No, sorry, doesn't apply here when we can safely assume the 535 members would have done SOMETHING to earn their salary, something under their job title. They would have been productive - if 1 of 535 picked up a piece of garbage on the floor, it wasn't a sunk cost. There were other options for that time.