posted
I think however that after the advent of free agency, that player demands for salary have spiraled way out control and has lost touch with reality.
I gots to say that 20 million for playing a game or making a movie is far too much; however, the other side of my brain is kicking me and it tells me that the players and actors are finally getting a bigger piece of the collective pie. In other words their efforts have been making HUGE amounts of money for owners of teams and studios for years and perhaps its time for them to get what they should from the "system."
And then getting even more nuanced, and back to a previous question...to what extent does a basketball dunk have more value to a society than a piece of art does? If one looks at the history of baseball for example, during the early part of the 20th century, the heyday of the Yankees and Babe Ruth, one can see how baseball was an instrument to quell worker unhappiness in urban areas.
After all, it was one of the few places in New York that the average worker could go and see so much green grass! Moreover, the daily grind in a factory and life in a widowless tenement were hardly something to look forward to. I imagine that were Marx to see the rise of modern sports, he may very well equate it with religion as a way to keep the masses fat, happy, and in check.
Whereas, good art tends to challenge societal norms, the status quo, ect.
------------------ Ohh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts, and plagues and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing...well I say "Hard Cheese"! ~C. Montgomery Burns
[This message has been edited by Jay (edited February 06, 2000).]
posted
It's called a free market. It's how I bought this nice computer without having to pay several thousand dollars. If you don't approve, don't contribute your earnings.
I especially love it when rabid right-wingers rant and rave about the horrors of government intervention in the economy, but when a athlete is making millions a year, by God, someone should DO something!
------------------ "20th Century, go to sleep." -- R.E.M.
posted
"One of the surest signs of a sick culture is when it begins to believe that its athletes and entertainers are people of importance." -- Heinlein.
No, I don't care for entertainers' salaries, either. You're jumping to conclusions that aren't there, which is beginning to become a pattern with you. I think you have invested far too much emotion into these arguments, and its throwing off your judgement. Otherwise, you're a class act when it comes to argument, and you should stick to it. But stay off value judgements against people you don't know. It makes you look bad. (For instance, I never should have made that crack about the fire in the theater.)
Who should get the highest salaries?
People whose professions involve risking their lives for the security of others.
People whose professions involve innovation, scientific or designwise or medical, whose applications directly benefit humanity.
And Teachers.
------------------ Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
posted
Odd. Most of the people you listed, except for most scientists and some teachers, work for the government, in one form or another. Funny, how most of them get paid very little relative to what they probably should, when working for the entity with the biggest budget in all of history.
------------------ You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend far too much time reading this sort of trash.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
