This mentality is hardly limited to Oklahoma and Coach Stoops' new paycheck. A modern whipping boy is the professional athlete who makes millions, and seems not to deserve a penny. Yet, for all of their resentments, both are wrong. High salaries for professional athletes and college coaches are not a drain on the rest of us. In fact, they reflect our own good economic situation.
Most people believe that economic relationships are a zero-sum game.
One does well only at the expense of others. A recent political cartoon, for example, featured an evil plutocrat telling the readers that he was paying himself and his underlings obscenely high salaries while paying the company's employees next to nothing. Though one cannot expect a leftist editorial cartoonist to understand simple economics, one hopes that some folks comprehend that income does not simply fall out of the sky. Businesses are not charities. Revenue that accrues to a firm is not a pie that is distributed however the bosses seem fit.