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.
I think some of this is related to radio, tv and internet too. Before radio few people could follow a game live so the audience, or at least live emotional audience, is a lot smaller and that’s pretty aligned to profit. Or put another way, if every Messi or Taylor Swift fan gave 50c every year they’d be filthy rich but that was harder to acheive before radio with things being more local.
Look up Ronald Reagan’s administration.
lol
Was gonna say “IDK, but I am willing to bet it was during Reagan’s presidency” and this is the first comment I see.
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.
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 don’t know about athletes, but for us normies, it was the 1980’s with Reaganomics, early recession, rising inequality, “greed is good” culture, heightened Cold War tensions, the emergence of the AIDS crisis, and societal shifts towards consumerism. The 80’s was also a time of technological boom with computers, MTV, and cultural dynamism, with critiques often focusing on increased individualism, materialism, and social challenges.
A lot of jackass answers in here but this is the answer to the spirit of the question.
Reaganomics or it’s other name “trickle down” economics is what you want to start looking into.
All the graphs:
I think the seeds may have been planted with the radio. Once athletes became celebrities it was only a matter of time. I know little about baseball, but even I know who Babe Ruth was, who played into the 1930s. TV blowing up in the 40s added an additional layer of connecting the names to the faces. This eventually gave way for MTV to come into the mix creating the beginnings of modern pop culture.
I’m not sure why OP or other comments are so hung up on the Athlete part? One of the most famous and wealthiest athletes of all time was a Roman charioteer. Gaius Appuleius Diocles was a celebrity across empires and predated doctors, Jesus and the radio. The only people that got paid more than Gaius were landowners/lords, which is still true to this day.
If I had to guess, “athletes” was the first thing that popped into their head. But I have to assume they mean people who don’t “arguably” contribute to furthering of humanity. So Actors, musicians, athletes vs doctors, teachers, scientists, etc.
Artists contribute to society and humanity as much as scientists. Arguably, the great painters, writers, and musicians as well as the great physicists and other specialties should regularly be paid more than athletes, movie, and radio pop stars.
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.
There was definitely a time when professional athlete was hardly a career, and certainly not well paid. So for a time teachers and healthcare workers got paid more than athletes.
You really have to split it up. Teachers and nurses have always been paid pretty poorly. They were traditionally female only professions, and expected only to work until married or what not. Or they were nuns, and didn’t get paid directly. Doctors of course, being traditionally male only got paid a lot better. But I agree that for most of human history, professional athletes were just rich peoples kids. They weren’t even getting paid most likely. It would be interesting to try and figure out who the first true professional athlete was. Someone who wasn’t born into money, and actually got paid a living wage.
Professors used to be paid the same as surgeons. Surgeon salaries kept up with inflation, professor salaries did not.
OP is also only comparing top earners. For every athlete who earns millions, there’s probably hundreds of athletes who make around median income or less - it’s the kind of career where people will keep doing it even if it pays barely enough to pay the bills. There are a lot of doctors who make more than the poorer professional athletes, and doctors don’t age out.
Is pretty meaningless to look at top earners.
Some specialist doctors are making a million dollars a year, but the average is closer to $375,000.
Much like musicians, there are huge numbers of “professional” athletes that are not making a living wage. The low end for medical doctors is plenty to survive.
I think it’s distasteful when people complain about people earning six figures not getting as much as others, while we have people dying in the streets from capitalistic poverty.
People die in the streets under socialism and communism as well. You understand this, right?
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.!
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.
Complaining about athletes just makes it sound petty. Athletes are just employees, if you’re going to complain, complain about the athletes’ and nurses’ employers. Rich people never gave a flying fuck about their employees, and underfunded schools are a feature for them, too.
Baseball players went on strike in 1972. They’d had a ‘union’ since the 1800s, but always bowed to the owners.
I always hate when this argument is used when were talking about celebrities here. As if a famous athlete or a famous musicians relation to labour and the benefits of that labour is at all comparable to say a coal miner’s relationship with capital.
Professions that have a high pay cealing do have a different relationship to capital than miners, nurses etc., but most athletes and musicians still aren’t millionaires - a lot of professional athletes and musicians actually earn less than median wage. It just feels like a waste of effort to complain about a celebrity who owns tens of millions, when the core issue is the people who own hundreds and thousands of millions.
We aren’t talking about those athletes. Nobody thinks that professional athletes that don’t make any money are overpaid.
hey now be fair, there are absolutely sports fans who think the teams they dislike would be paid too much if their salary consisted of lethal injections.
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.
How about both?
Was thinking about this in the context of a joke I heard in the late 90s:
What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.
We didn’t we have jokes like that about the billionaires; at the time people were glazing Bill Gates. It’s wild because billionaires are the ones writing the laws, lawyers just act it out.
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?
