Is there a point you can find in history where we paid doctors, teachers, and nurses close to what they’re worth and more than professional athletes?
It sounds like you’re nostalgic for a time that never existed.
I don’t think doctors fit in that group. They are paid well, and respected, far more than nurses on both accounts.
Going back in history, a doctor/surgeon/dentist and barber were the same. At some point a doctor became elevated to something more than meat technician. Probably the English during the Enlightenment with their different scientific clubs that helped distinguish doctors.
Doctors are paid like crap. Physicians are paid very well.
Yea, but that doesn’t fit OP’s childlike view of the world so shut up, nerd!
What “childlike view”? Do you remember which jobs were considered “essential” during COVID-19 or were you too young?
I sure do. Of course doctors and nurses were essential because it was a health crisis. But it was grocery store workers, Starbucks baristas, Amazon warehouse workers because people are idiots and think stuff like that mattered. I remember sports teams and reality TV contestants being put in quarantine so they could safely compete. I remember it wasn’t teachers, as classes were canceled before going online only for about a year and a half.
So what’s your point?
Where I live, we’ve been treating…
- Nurses very poorly. Underpaying and overworking them, while not training enough new ones.
- Family Doctors (aka. GPs) very poorly by removing the kinds of services they’re allowed to provide, increasing expenses without increasing compensation, and again, not training enough new ones.
Doctors are paid well, but they also have incredibly high expenses (and often high student debt, too).
Unions have been squashed for decades, they used to be 40% or so, now down to 10%.
People will blame Reagan, but let’s be real they are trying to erase unions every day (and succeeding in USA).
BoTh PaRtIes are anti-union and pro-owner. Because they have the most money to “donate”, there’s no big conspiracy, just math. People who have no money don’t contribute to political campaigns, yet free speech is money, or something.
Here’s more of the bullshit about the parties being the same . . . https://news.gallup.com/poll/650147/democratic-party-seen-better-union-members.aspx
Pay attention to nuance . . . Even if the bus doesn’t take you all the way to your destination -it’s better to ride it than to have to walk by yourself.
Pay attention to this nuance… regardless of who holds office, unions lose membership and power every day in the USA. Democrats can’t stem the tide.
Are they irrevocably incompetent? Are you on the short bus?
Why athletes? People attack athletes all the time and ignore that the team owners make $ with a B instead of an M. CEOs do far less for their organization than athletes and make far more money.
Many athletes also wreck their bodies and play with potential disability or death, while not gaining knowledge and experience for any other career, aside from coaching. And they have to retire at thirty-something at best. So having athletes presumes some kinda compensation for the rest of their lives and support for their family.
It’s enough to see Muhammad Ali try to speak in interviews late in his career after he’s been banged on the head too many times, to grok the tradeoff.
How about both?
Two words: Ronald Reagan.
Only it’s the same in many other countries.
Ronald Regan is the same in many other countries?
You just made my point exactly.
What’s the same in other countries why are you being upvoted your statement makes no sense in context to what I said what point am I making in reference to what you said!!!
The question wasn’t whether it happened elsewhere. It was when it started here.!
Ridiculous pay for star athletes and celebrities is at least fair: they’re directly bringing in tons of money/profit, so why shouldn’t they be rewarded?
However they’re more a symptom than the actual problem. The real problem is the manipulative nature of sky high ticket prices, merchandising, ads, etc. how can these firms of entertainment command prices people can no longer afford, exploiting captive audiences, etc, to generate so much profit? The stars should get rewarded with a share of the profits they generate, but it’s ridiculous how much those activities generate.
In a sane world, I could afford to take my family to a game/concert/theme park, we can decide to bring in our own water, food and t-shirts only cost a little more than in the outside world, there are no ad timeouts, no region locking, no public funding, and the owners should be taxed at a higher rate than I am. But at every step, we’ve adopted anti-consumer policy, increased inequality, and it just adds up - society rewards exploitation, removes consumer protections and fairness. We’re no longer people, just products
Ridiculous pay for star athletes and celebrities is at least fair
Put another way, we as a society actually do spend wayyy more money on doctors, nurses, and teachers. It’s just that there are many millions of people who have to split that pot of money, whereas for pro athletes there are only a few dozen or a few hundred to split that comparably smaller pot of money with.
I might have the same favorite NBA player as literally millions of people in this country. I for sure don’t have the same favorite doctor or favorite teacher, though.
So if a genie showed up and said “give $1 to your favorite celebrity and give $100 to your favorite teacher,” we as a society would give way more money to the teachers, but each individual teacher would receive less than each individual celebrity who gets paid under this system.
That’s a really good point!
So they should the dramatically taxed and that money redistributed.
No, you have it backwards. If the total pot for athletes is considerably smaller than the total pot for medical professionals, than redistributing it amongst medical professionals would not significantly increase their individual incomes because there are so many of them that each would only get a small share of it.
Have you done the math? Because I think you’re underestimating how much pro stars make.
There are about 500 NBA roster spots. Total basketball related income across the league is $10.25 billion, and the CBA requires that player income make up half of that. So there’s $5.13 billion to split between 500 players, an average/mean of $10.25 million per full time player (some players get called up or put on reserve when injuries or something like that happen).
There are about 3.8 million public school teachers in K-12. If you took literally every dollar paid to NBA players and gave it to public school teachers, that’d be about $1350 per teacher.
There are other sports, of course, but we’re also talking about nurses and doctors and EMTs and public librarians and other important underpaid jobs. Taking all money from sports isn’t going to make much of a dent in those other jobs’ pay.
Source: Trust me bro
Around here most of the superintendents and principles at the schools are ex coaches. They spend education money on sports. They build huge facilities that only a fraction of the students get to access. All the while teachers spend their own money to ensure their kids have the bare minimum of supplies to learn. Its abhorrent.
Remember your princiPLEs, he’s your princiPAL.
I remember spellcheck gets it wrong and I don’t really worry about it.
I understand the skepticism on society’s priorities.
Athletes are literally 1-in-a-million individuals. They bring in crazy amounts of money from people who want to watch them play.
The real problem is that there are so many people who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to watch a sports game, but not willing to see teachers properly compensates (in my opinion). Because athletes getting a big share of the pie that they’re bringing in sounds fair to me. The question is why people have that much pie to give them, and not as much pie to give to schools.
I think the real problem is a government structure that lends itself to being captured by monied interests. The problem of capitalism chasing the money is only a problem because we have a government unable to properly tax the wealthy to ensure no one can amass the kind of wealth that makes it possible to capture the government.
It was more than 2000 years ago when the Romans decided to pay athletes (gladiators) way more money than the average roman worker. This isn’t a new thing.
This is just capitalism, isn’t it?
Athletes and entertainers that make millions do so because people pay for it in large numbers. This is what capitalism wants and does.
I agree with your sentiment but I think you’re just critiquing capitalism. If I had my way these people would be taxed up the wazoo. No baseball player or Hollywood actor should ever be worth 10s of millions, let alone hundreds, or billions.
Bread and Circuses, nothing else for the filthy plebs.
I believe the standard singularity was in 1971. At least, according to wtfhappenedin1971.com
I say it was around 1998 when George W. Bush meet with Harambe’s mom.
Always leaving the mechanics out lol. My career is always under looked but yet everyone comes crawling in when their car doesn’t work haha
