Is the salary of public figures (actor, football players...) fair?

[m-shanghai]

Yesterday night, I was taken my dinner with my family and we were talking about what actresses, actors, singers, football/basketball/tennis/etc. players to... entertain us?

They win millions each year of dollars to kick a ball, sing or act when people like teachers who help us in the process of learning win about 2,000-2,500€ per year (in Spain)

As an example: Leo Messi (football player of FCBarcelona) at the end of this year, will have, in total, 33 millions of euros

So, what do you think about this? Who should win more in relation to what they do and what do they provide us for our life?

[Nrsander]

Supply and demand.

There are few who have the skill to play football at a national level or sing well enough to have millions of people buy their albums.

The chance of "making it" in either of these fields is less than 0.01% (estimate). High risk, high reward.

There are many who have the ability to teach according to the low standards of the American public education system.

The chance of "making it" is 50/50 (estimate). Low risk, low (monetary) reward.

Sure, teaching is indeed a profession that rewards the populace more than entertaining or professional sport playing. However, why are you equating their livelihoods with how much money they make? Based on your question, it seems you look at their salaries as the indicator of how important they are to society.

I would recommend considering it on an entirely separate plane of thought. Income is based on supply and demand. When more people can do a job, they are easily replaceable and therefore don't have leverage to demand as much money. Professional entertainers/players are just the opposite. In most cases they are the ones that dictate their pay; if deemed unacceptable, they will refuse to offer their "service" to their label/agent anymore and move elsewhere.

However, I would think about it on a scale not of income, but of personal fulfillment. You are supposed to enjoy your job. I think it is safe to say that teachers enjoy their career more for a variety of reasons.

1) Longer career. Teachers may work for 40+ years, but football players may last 2-6 years and be done. Some entertainers disappear as quickly as they appeared.

2) Burnout is low. Actors/Players deal with paparazzi and end up on cocaine as soon as their first movie flops.

3) Rewarding experience. Teachers are providing for society, and they know it. They are proud of it. Considering your work good for the public is important to personal happiness, I believe.

Finally, let's be logical. In an ideal world, everyone would be making a bajillion dollars a year, but this is real life. It isn't feasible to live in a fantasy where the government pays every teacher even just $1m per year. There are 7,200,000 teachers in America [census]. Paying them $1m each would amount to $7,000,000,000,000.00 per year. That's 7 trillion dollars.

[Babydolleyes]

I contemplate this regularly and of course I think it sounds ridiculous, but at the end of the day we just have the accept the reality of the situation - These people usually pay a high price for their fame, they lose the majority of their personal lives and sacrifice a lot normal people take for granted, and it's not like they happen to get the salaries they do ''just because'' they get those salaries for a reason, it measures their worth and public popularity is worth an incredible amount of money. It's literally just the way the cookie crumbles, unfortunately. The entertainment industry is where the money is.

[Award Winning Boss]

Well it's us that fund them so it is fair.

Think about it like this:

10 people pay for a service like sky sports to watch a football match (voluntarily) and that amounts to x amount of money. Now sky sports has the money. Now the football club wants a share of the money because they're the only reason why that was able to air in the first place. Then the footballers demand money because they're the people that actually played the match. Looking at it like that (simplified I know) shows that they do deserve the money that they're getting unless you want to limit the liberty we have to spend our own money. If people really really wanted soldiers or nurses to earn those amounts of money then a lot more would have to be done. The government doesn't have the money to spend on salaries like that.

The money you earn nowadays isn't based on the value of your job (in regards to contribution to society). But that's an arbitrary thing value anyway.

[Award Winning Boss]

I think what is truly odd, is how business leaders have become almost like devils in the public discussion. As we now have the financial crisis, they have become the target for heavy criticism. You always see headlines about how "greedy" they are, and how they get "unreasonably" high salaries. But no one in the public discussion says even one negative word about the salaries of top athletes, musicians or actors. It is as if they were somehow immune to criticism. For example, on yesterday's paper there was an article about the "unbelievably high salaries" of some fund managers. Their salaries were under heavy criticism, they were called greedy, and the article gave the impression that they were almost like the root of all evil. In the same news paper, there was an article about a Finnish NHL player's new contract. The headline stated: "Finnish hockey star's amazing NHL deal!". It was a very positive article, not a single negative word about "unreasonably high salary" or greediness. His new deal was for 5 years and it was worth almost $30 million.

The reason why they (the banks and possibly large businesses) come under such heavy criticism now is because of the financial state the countries in question are in. They get extremely large bonuses even though they helped (and had a fairly large part) in causing the situation we have. Bonuses and things like that can be frozen or even given up. Especially since their normal rate of pay is already very high. It's the position they're in that gets draws criticism to them, the amount they earn, doesn't really help their position either.

That's what I understand anyway.

[stevens579]

The only reason that those people have such high incomes is because WE give it to them. If no one was interested in watching football, then the football players would not be making millions. Just as Nrsander said, it's supply and demand.

[mollypolly190]

Supply and demand.

There are few who have the skill to play football at a national level or sing well enough to have millions of people buy their albums.

The chance of "making it" in either of these fields is less than 0.01% (estimate). High risk, high reward.

There are many who have the ability to teach according to the low standards of the American public education system.

The chance of "making it" is 50/50 (estimate). Low risk, low (monetary) reward.

Sure, teaching is indeed a profession that rewards the populace more than entertaining or professional sport playing. However, why are you equating their livelihoods with how much money they make? Based on your question, it seems you look at their salaries as the indicator of how important they are to society.

I would recommend considering it on an entirely separate plane of thought. Income is based on supply and demand. When more people can do a job, they are easily replaceable and therefore don't have leverage to demand as much money. Professional entertainers/players are just the opposite. In most cases they are the ones that dictate their pay; if deemed unacceptable, they will refuse to offer their "service" to their label/agent anymore and move elsewhere.

However, I would think about it on a scale not of income, but of personal fulfillment. You are supposed to enjoy your job. I think it is safe to say that teachers enjoy their career more for a variety of reasons.

1) Longer career. Teachers may work for 40+ years, but football players may last 2-6 years and be done. Some entertainers disappear as quickly as they appeared.

2) Burnout is low. Actors/Players deal with paparazzi and end up on cocaine as soon as their first movie flops.

3) Rewarding experience. Teachers are providing for society, and they know it. They are proud of it. Considering your work good for the public is important to personal happiness, I believe.

Finally, let's be logical. In an ideal world, everyone would be making a bajillion dollars a year, but this is real life. It isn't feasible to live in a fantasy where the government pays every teacher even just $1m per year. There are 7,200,000 teachers in America [census]. Paying them $1m each would amount to $7,000,000,000,000.00 per year. That's 7 trillion dollars.

This is excellent, absolutely excellent I would love to see you expand more on the issue and if you ever do I would love to read it

[funny10sport]

Well, we do pay to watch them, and how many people in the world watch them on television....or pay to go to their games, or even buy their items in stores? All that money does go somewhere, in the industrial corporation's pocket and to the players themselves. Its a marketing scheme. The market they are in is highly profitable and as such need to reward their assets to maintain their efforts.

Take in Rugby compared to Football for example.

In my eyes, on one side you have athletes who run with a ball wearing no protective armor, and they are athletic in a sport more violent. On the other hand, you got these big guys who cover themselves in gear and throw once, and run with the ball. Rugby players are payed for extremely less compared to football players. The sports are very similar yet the players' pay are very different. That is because Football now has become more of an Industry, compared to a sport. Imagine being part of a huge team, (the Giants) and it gets millions of dollars each year. By being part of that team, wouldn't you, the athlete, want to get just as much as income?

Of course it does seem a bit unfair, but hey, since when was this world fair to begin with?

[Kaushalz]

Well, I would not say that it is fair that these people should recieve such salaries.

However as someone mentioned earlier, there are few people who (in the end) are able to do these things (playing football, acting on TV etc..). The reason behind this I think is the fact that you cannot be taught these skills. It must be in your blood... While something like teaching is relatively easy to learn for anyone.

[theboro76]

I think Yes

• Yes for three main reasons. Firstly, they do work hard and remember have worked hard for a long time to get to where they are now, probabaly for free. When you take into account all of the hours an average sports player put in, before reaching the big time, it is huge. Formal trainings and games (sometimes >10 hours a week) + informal practice, watching and studdying the sport and also improving skills in private. They are being componsated for this time spent.
  
• Secondly, it gives people a motivation to work hard, hence improving the sport for fans. Do you think Kenyans run so much purely because they love it? Do you think Chinese and Russian children are put into trainging for sport from the age of 3 so the parents can watch them suceede? Although these are of course part motivaitions, the main motivation is money and a way to 'break the cycle' that these people are in. This extra training allows the quality of sport to improve, as the athletes are trying harder and getting better, which means the the sport is better to watch.
  
• Finally they are in the public eye. They are being constantly watched, by fans, the media, etc. It is almost like their job never ends and always need to be on their best behavior (whether they do or not is another question). Also essentially, they make us happy, and this is priceless.
  

However, having said all this I do acknowledge this is a huge amount of money, and could argue that it could be better spent.

[Adrienne5678]

I think the salary of actors is more than fair.

As a normal working citizen, you do your job and then go home. You meld in and no one knows you.

An actor's work follows them outside the job. They have no privacy and their social life must be conducted in a lot of secrecy.

On top of that, they must work outside of direct work hours in preparation for their work.

While they're actually working they work way more than 8 hours a day.

Actors work extremely hard. Much more than the average worker. They also do not have little freedoms we all take for granted (such as going to the grocery store without being followed and harrassed).

[nycbombers23]

The salary for players an actors isn't fair, but it is understandable. You have to look at how much money those players bring in to the industry that they participate in. If you look at the amount of money, proportionally, they do not make enough money.