I'm not concerned about you "attacking" me nor do I think you are and the RJs ARE lesser planes. But that "simple" system you refer to is actually rather complex and costly and really not of a huge benefit on an aircraft designed to fly relatively short legs. Autothrottle's pay for themselves on the longer legs where they can more accurately hold a speed and more smoothly adjust the power, which saves fuel by eliminating the more significant and less accurate power changes that come from human inputs. They are not designed to be a "cruise control" or crutch to free up time for the pilots to do more important things on the flightdeck (like sudokus and crosswords).