Star athletes are over paid

I see your point but you are ignoring some basis of economics. 1. The basis of ecnomics is allocation of resources. Resources are very limitied that's why there is diffrent value for each currency. When one gains wealth it means the money comes from someone else's loss. This can be tracked from the very core of the working capital. Todays economy is tightly held by all nation through the international working capital. Africa is the place where most lucury resourses such as coffee, and cacao come from. Thus, you can't say the poverty in Africa is their problem. Indeed, it is the first world countries benefiting from them. Things that athletes promote such as nike, Jordan, come from those thrid world countries because of the low production cost. Those labors won't get paid even 1/100000000000000000000000 of what star athletes would make from getting into acontract with the particular brand or products. You see my point? Athletes in fact benefit from those labors from the third world countires. Just like everyone else living in the first world countries are partly guilty for this. 2. Financial market is one of the most competitive career fields. Investment is not something that you can do during your shift of the day. It takes long time, costs, and lots of analysis. If this was so easy then there is no rational reason behind those smarties all trying to merge themselves in the Wall street. Investment related business provide very tough working conditions. You need to be ready to work on a clock basis and most likely you will over work during the on-season. This is why people working in this section don't have long career life. Most of them get drained by their mid 30s and are serious about leaving their job. They do handle more professional skills and knowledge and it has to be very wide. For multinational businesses, they have to form corporation at each nation; this requires knownledge in international law and laws of both host/origin country. They have to understand the cultural differences in order to success in marketing, know the different capital structure, taxation system, government subsidiaries, and the inflation and exchange rates. For athletes all you have to do is train and play at their hardest on big games. They may have agents who handle the contract, team doctors who handle medical service, and even cooks who cook nice, nutrient meals for them. 3. Based on what are others less paid? There are considerably few star athletes than managers at the firms and divisions. Athlelets are minorities in population but they make considerably lot more money that the rest. Others are not less paid. Money is also a limited sourse. When someone holds more then someone else's gotta holds less. This implies money is being unfairly distrubuted. There are others work hard with good work ethics and appreciate every minutes of thie life but just can't afford anything to improce the quality of their life while many star athletes do drug, party, paying prostitutes to please them. And they once in a while go out and take pictures with poor kids with so dearest manner that they say they deserve more money with the GMs in the off-camera scene. It is their way to justify their actions. 4. They deseve glory? Don't get me wrong but that is a set-up marketing. Those franchises only try to make the player the best because once the player rises as a star - some sort of king in that sports - they can benefit from the player by using the player's name and picture to promote their products. This is like some people believe Apple is so much better than PC. The chips are made by intel and much of the internal parts are from other companies which means they are basically the same in terms of processing mechanism. They both have their products made in China so the quality control doesn't seem to be very important to them. But what apple does is throw tons of money in marketing trying to make people believe their products are superior. When people who are not very aware of their capital structure and manufacturing system, start believing that apple products are so much more to offer than PC, people will pay the premium to buy them. In fact apple products are mediocre just like the PCs or the benefits will be relatively smaller considering the premium. There is no glory of throwing the ball to entertain people, but it's the people believe that is so glorious. There are others who consider surviving is the glory. 5. Those franchises don't really care about the game their players play. They are all corporations that work in the best interest of maxmizing their own wealth. Thus it makes sense they pay their athletes because athletes indeed are their assets. Think of locking animals up at the zoo then feeding them so that people would pay the zoo keepers to watch those animals. High salary for athelets are franchises attempt to keep their assets in their business. And just like the bankers get their paychecks from the banks - as you believe they are overpaid as well - the athletes are getting theirs from their employers. And I do believe star actors and such are over paid as well. 6. When athelets go bankcrupt it's mainly becuase they party, do drugs and gambling. When money are spent on drugs and gambling the odds of those money flwoing back to the economy is highly unlikely. Why would dark businesses pay taxes and all that if their money is dirty. They do in fact launder them and keep them in stacks of cash. No money going back to banks -> insufficient funds for positive investments -> main cause of economic distress. 7. Everyone tries hard to success. Those wall street bankers, lawyers, doctors, and professors went through very stressful education and training. They gave up the same thing that athletes would have gave up in their life. But they don't get paid that much. Not even the best athletes get paid as much as star athletes. Star athletes are choosen based on what league they play in and how the public responds to that relevent market. Look at Yao the former NBA player. He sure had skills, physical, and good attitude. Do you believe he would be as famous and respected if he never merged himself in NBA, the bigger market where people - including myself - go nuts for throwing a ball in a basket (when I describe this to childeren from the third-world country, they probably give me a weird look as if saying "you are ovbisouly num nuts") Like I said not every people consider throwing, kicking, or striking a ball glorious. When hard time comes and you are facing a death, you would crap in your pants but feel no shame. When it comes to matter of surviving, medals, recongnition and such are no glory. I would rather credit those soldiers who fight risking their lives instead of star athletes. Soldiers don't get paid, no respect these days, their GFs and wives cheat while they are away, and thanks to budget cuts there are many lay-offs for them. No offense but some of my words may sound extreme just a liitle. Thanks for the response anyway.