Why is it an either or situation?
Get the UR AND the priority club
Or get 3 UR/Mileage cards?
Why would I buy them when I can get them for free with the card? But I get what you're saying, and you're right. I just knee-jerked to seeing someone say 80,000 points are "only" worth $480 when I always get waaaay more "value" (and not inflated) out of them than that. I think where we're running into trouble is when you say that you "can't claim anything is worth more than what you paid for it"!? If that were true then nobody has ever gotten a "deal" because no one can claim to have bought anything worth more than they paid for it. Again, I see what you're getting at but it's obviously much more complicated than that. Or you wouldn't have a website. (Makes for a very interesting discussion 
Also I would have to disagree with your claim that there's a lot of other better card offers out there right now, especially for those into hotels. A 50,000 mile deal, for instance, for an airline card can't match the amount of value 80,000 (free) PC points could potentially get you. (You say $480, I say more. You say tomato, I say tomawto. Could be just semantics here.) But as usual, each to his own...
You're right. By definition a deal is something that was more expensive and will be more expensive. People buy things when there is a deal (like the xbox kinect for $199 that was widely available on BF) to flip for a profit when the deal will end.
If Amazon always charged the same price for an item then how could I claim it was a deal? Prices fluctuate and create deals at the trough and find suckers at the peak.
If a GPS is always $250 nobody would claim they got a deal.
The price for PC is 0.6cpp. You may get good value out of it, but you'll never be able to sell PC points for anything above 0.6.
You show ignorance though when you claim that you can't get more 50K miles than 80K PC. I just helped someone book a BusinessFirst ticket from NYC to Maui and the Big Island for less miles than that. You can't buy that ticket even in coach for $480. Yet for $480 you can buy 80K PC and go and try to get any value you want out of it. If the value was really $4,000 I would just sit by a computer all day and buy up PC points.
So I will clarify my statement though. Things can't be worth (or valued) more than they cost when the cost of the item is constant.
