how the market values what we do

[Belegon]

most athletes a hell of a lot less than a million dollars over a whole career, let alone a year. Not everyone in sports gets paid that way...

Sports figures have their place and they can be very important in the right circumstances. Think they are without merit? Tell it to Jackie Robinson, tell it to Roberto Clemente, tell it to Jim Abbott, tell it to Lance Armstrong, tell it to Billie Jean King or Martina Navratilova, tell it to Kerri Strug.

Just because there are some out there who are pompous jerks...

go ask ten people on the streets of Chicago the significance of #23. Now go ask them the significance of 343.*

there is a value in allowing people to forget the troubles in their lives by escaping into the exploits of their teams or the individuals they admire. A whole region can come together to support a team and in the process they can feel joy and togetherness in a way that can outlast the actual events. Go ask people in New England how they felt last fall.

I'm not saying that I don't feel we should be giving more compensation, both monetarily and in terms of respect, to such crucial figures as firefighters, teachers and policemen.

But it is not wrong or immoral for a man or woman doing a job that creates a large income for the owner of the business they work in to ask to be compensated in porportion to their value to that business.


*343 brave souls of the NYFD lost their lives on 9-11-2001. I value their memory. But I doubt you would get more then 1 or 2 who knew that, while Michael Jordan's name would come up 8 or 9 times. and always with a smile. joy is a precious thing, regardless of how it is created.

 

[SeaCat]

There are a lot of those people working around the Gulf Coast right now.

And most of them will get paid nothing for what they are doing. Many of them live there and are doing this to help out their neighbors. Too many of them are volunteers, coming in forom other states to help out. What are they getting from this? Shitty living conditions, dangerouse work, and in most cases no pay. On the other hand they get the knwoledge they are helping their fellow man/woman.

I don't see Emmit Smith down there digging in, nor do I see any other Sports "Heroes" down there. I do see these same sports Heroes on the news complaining about how they haven't heard from their families and the government isn't doing enough to get them in touch with their loved ones.

R. Richard, You may wonder why I am so unhappy with the "Sports Heroes". It started several years ago when we had a Baseball Players Strike. During this one of the players, a Catcher for the Boston Redsocks was on the news complaining he was getting paid "Only 2 Million a Year". Only 2 million a year? Hello dipshit. 2 Million is more than most Americans will ever make in their lifetimes and you're complaining that's all you make in one year? You commented about Emmit Smith, what about the soldiers we have in Iraq, making what amounts to slave wages while fighting on with injuries that would make any of us curl up and cry for Mommie? What about the cop on the beat, doesn't he deserv to make the same kind of money these "Sports Heroes" make? He keeps them and their families safe, not to mention the rest of us. I understand this being a nerve for you, but for those who play for real it's even more of a nerve. (You know, I think this is the first time I have disagreed with you. Strange.)

Cat

 

[cantdog]

I can't remember thinking of a sports figure as a hero, exactly. But Belegon is quite right. If the efforts of these fellows make billions, where's their cut? The career is a damn short one, as careers go, and they're generating billions of money. Why should some jackass in a suit pocket it all? I have no qualms at all with big league salaries in the millions, nor rock stars' nor headliner actors. The fact is, they ought to have it, for the reason Bel cites.

The fact that some dedicated dopes in critical and difficult jobs are underpaid is completely unrelated. Paying a football player less will not pay them any more, you know. It'll just line the pocket of some speculator who decided to invest in a sports team, someone whose only virtue is wealth, someone who wouldn't make a penny but for the dedicated athletic performance of the actual player.

Many firemen risk their ass for damn little, some for nothing. Their ass is worth more than that. But they make no one any money, the way the accounting is done. All they do is cost money, tax money. Property tax, usually, in this country. The big contributors to their paycheck are businesses and upper class home owners. These are the same assholes who stand to gain when the sports figure is cheated out of a fair share of the billions he or she creates, come to think of it. Businesses and upper bracket homeowners run the communities and set the priorities that keep outlays for teachers and for decent fire equipment low, while exempting as many businesses from tax liability as possible.

Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with democratic principles.

 

[impressive]

joy is a precious thing, regardless of how it is created.

 

[rgraham666]

Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with democratic principles.

As my favourite writer put it, "Capitalism was content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet."

It's why capitalism is so fond of China now. There are going to be no demands for unions, or better wages and living conditions under the Red mandarins.

Not for long, anyways.

 

[cantdog]

The demands for unions and justice in this country, back when unbridled, devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism was the rule, faced the same deadly opposition you refer to, Rob. The Pinkertons and other private goons hired by the companies were wholeheartedly joined by the police, and the Army as well, to kill any upstart workingmen who might dare to inspire a general revolt against that system.

One of the weaknesses of capitalism is that the rich classes it creates, like all rich classes at the top in any agrarian-based society, do not have any rules placing limits on them except their own cultural constraints. Anything goes, if you have the money to back it up. Swindling is good business if you can get away with it. Spewing coal tars, mine tailings, heavy metals, PCBs and whatnot all over the landscape-- just fine. That's the government's concern to clean up. Regulation of it? No, how can we ever compete? Killing people or maiming them with unsafe workplaces? Just fine. If there are too many rules against it, move the factory to Sumatra or Haiti. And so on.

Money talks. It talks too loudly, and it confers utter impunity. Almost utterly, that is. Because the victims of it, the workers in China, will rebel, will demand justice.

They may demand it in Commuunist terms, using arguments about the common good, though we in this country cast our argument in democratic terms, but they will ultimately do it, just as we did. And the police and armies will kill many thousands, just as they did here. Which will galvanize resistance, as here, escalate confrontation, and create enough chaos that the people with the money and the power, the Roosevelts of China, will be forced themselves to reform it, in order to continue to do any business. It'll happen in Sumatra and in Haiti, too.

That's why the right to unions and social justice is written into a document like the European basic declaration of rights. They are "rights" only because if you don't have them, people rebel, people die, and your society teeters into chaos. To call them "rights" and to limit yourself by enforcing them is only being prudent over the long term.

"Rights" look like that to the amoral apes in power. You don't have to believe that humans have some mystical endowment with inalienable perquisites. But you ought to realize, even though you have the power to do whatever you may want to do, that there are after all certain things which cause the sheep to look up and consider biting you. You can violate these rights a little and get away clean, but if you make a habit of it, your police and your armies will be powerless to protect your profits.

This is not a parlor game. Massive thefts and killings on such a broad scale, done merely to make a few thousand people insanely wealthy and powerful, is a wonderful plan. Ayn Rand loved it. Amicus sees a mystic rightness in it. But there are practical limits. You'll need bread and circuses, distractions-- elections will be a good idea, there's a lot of illusion potential to an election. But there are lines which history shows us can't be crossed. Those are referred to as "rights."

 

[cantdog]

I snarl too, I guess. Where were we? Salaries for the circus performers? That's a good idea, too, even for the promoters of the circuses. The cities will build you free facilities and upgrade them at your whim, because you can threaten to move the franchise to another city if they don't. Your taxes will be laughable for the same reason. The cities know that a big enough town needs its own circuses. They'll stay in line.

Paying the stars millions only adds to the luster of the whole circus. The sheep love that. He really hit it big, they will say. He trained his ass off every day for hours and he played on despite crippling injury. By doing that he inspired the team to victory, making us all more money. Cover him with gold. The gladiator analogy holds.

 

[cantdog]

I really am feeling a bit cynical today.

But since our Labor Day is coming up, let me drive it in that the wise have always held that the laborer is worthy of his hire; that you do not bind the mouths of the kine who tread the grain.

For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little. Truly, with stammering lip and with alien tongue he will speak to his people, to whom he has said, “This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose”; yet they would not hear. — Isaiah 28: 10-12