No Stupid Questions

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 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.

Look up Ronald Reagan's administration.

I don't think doctors fit in that group. They are paid well, and respected, far more than nurses on both accounts.

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.

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

Two words: Ronald Reagan.

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.

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.

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.

Obligatory reminder that highest paid athlete in(western) history is Gaius Appuleius Diocles a Byzantine era Chariotter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles

False dichotomy. First not all athletes are paid « astronomically ». That’s only a particular subset and in very particular exposures. The reason they makes millions is because they makes billions for the team’s owner. Now this owners use their billions to ensure that the world continues that way.

Second athletes have normally a really really short career vs. Doctor. They mortgage their bodies (and their mental sanity) in a 10 years period and are unable to work very well after that if your salary don’t represent that their no point in doing it and the owner will not make money.

All in all. Athletes are workers (with some benefit) like us and should be seen as such. The real grinch are the owners

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.

The top comments seem to have a lot of people from the US seem to be ignoring the rest of the world exists and screaming Reagan (the US president from 1981-1989). I honestly don't know how accurate that is but it is obviously not nuanced and probably biased by anti-Trump sentiment

I'm not sure how accurate this article is either but it mentions the salary cap for soccer in England being removed in 1960 and that leading to a rapid increase in wages there.

https://www.salaryleaks.com/blogs/average-salary-premier-league-history

A quick scan of the internet led me to this chart that compares top soccer players to median income in (for some reason) the US

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From: https://www.expensivity.com/soccer-salary-inflation/

Here's another chart from the same article for how many times a US families income a top international player makes (and like the England article the 60s look to be exponential growth, then noise in the 70s then pretty clear from the 80s):

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A lot of that analysis has space for biases but I'm pretty sure that modern large sports wages predate Reagan but also that the people mentioning rich athletes in Roman times are a bit off too

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 believe the standard singularity was in 1971. At least, according to wtfhappenedin1971.com

Bread and Circuses, nothing else for the filthy plebs.

You mean the social sector being chronically underpaid with no improvement in sight? I blame less and less regulated lobbyism, a.k.a. legal corruption. Because the social sector doesn't have one, usually. It would often amount to the government bribing itself. What, politicians making good decisions without looking out for a payday, you say?