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Yeah. Because if they weren't, they'd get different jobs.
Apparently they think so. They have a union. They negotiate. They agree to work at that price. That's all there is to it.
You're misusing economics. Economics is not about what anyone "needs" at all. Economics is about what people are willing and able to pay for. I don't think that baseball's really important, so I don't buy tickets or bobbleheads or give web hits to ESPN.com. So my dollars don't go to baseball. But you know, enough people DO think that baseball is worth their hard-earned money that they give their money to baseball, and the value that our hypothetical player adds is enough that teams will pay him 250 million dollars. It's not your place to declare how valuable the baseball player's services are to the world. You do get to vote in the economy; your vote is in proportion, poetically enough, to how valuable the economy considers you. You choose where your dollars go...but you don't get to declare what the baseball player is worth.
Wait wait. Why the fuck should he HAVE to go get an accounting degree and work till he's 60? That's bullshit! He spent his youth working unbelievably hard to be an awesome baseball player, he took all the downsides of being a pro athlete, and now after it's over he should have to go work the same job as someone who merely did accounting during their youth? No. That's shit. He does something incredible, then the minute it's over, he has to go back to the old daily grind like everybody else? Fuck no, he deserves the retirement for all the extraordinary things that he did.
If you don't like it, don't be a writer. What do you want? I make roughly 40% of what I could make with my skill set because I program games instead of bank software. It's a trade I understand that I'm making. People have to suffer for their art? BFD. Now it's my turn to ask for a river of tears.
People are not talking in economic terms
they are saying that they feel baseball players are paid too much
they are not claiming this as some objective principle based on economic factors
chill the fuck out
My godfather was Will Smith's eighth-grade teacher, so I guess he'd be doing OK.
Except that's his only high-money student. Everyone else probably didn't do well because they were poor kids from, well, you know the Bel-Air theme song.
The problem with this proposal is that it rewards educating rich kids from the suburbs who are basically guaranteed to go to college and get high-money jobs, and doesn't reward teaching poor kids in the ghetto.
Talking about how much someone is paid is pretty inherently economic.
People who think they're overpaid don't know shit.
they could just think getting paid millions of dollars to hit a fucking ball around is a little much
You are completely, completely missing the point.
Inconceivable!
Yeah, but once again, that shows that they're stupid and/or ignorant. "Hitting a fucking ball around" is not a fair description of what they do, and if it were accurate, they wouldn't be paid millions of dollars for it.
nobody is going to deny that baseball players are paid what they are paid because people are willing to pay for them
and that, if people wanted them to not be paid so much, then they could boycott baseball or whatever and the invisible thumb of the market would jam itself up the MLB's asshole until they stopped playing them so much
but just because an imbalance is not being actively corrected doesn't mean it is justified
I
I thought that was on purpose.
It's not an imbalance. That's exactly the point.
THUNK
THUNK
How much someone gets paid IS economics. It's not your fuzzy-wuzzy feelings on whether or not some job you can't do and don't understand is worth X dollars or not.
Economically, no. But that depends whether you think economic appeasement is universally productive.
But that's a whole other shitcake to take a bite of.
More money allows grander lifestyles, and some people work harder to do better things than others, and the argument is that such people deserve those grander lifestyles. That's the goddamn argument.
That's funny because I'm completely right and it's so fucking obvious. How much someone is paid is a purely economic issue. Feelings have nothing to do with it.
Look, if I consent to pay you $500 for something and you are willing to do it for $500, then it's worth $500. I don't have to argue that it's "productive" by some arbitrary third-party's definition.
we're not arguing how something is
we're arguing about how something should be
Yes, there is often a struggle of some sort where there is disagreement over what something is worth. I used the dot-com boom as an example of when something was over-valued. There can also be examples of something being under-valued. But like 99% of the time, people get a reasonably fair price.
Man, I edit my posts way too slow. I always think of something to add right after hitting the "Submit Reply" button.
Does this make me a douche (y/n)
Yeah but you're not right about how it "should" be. You're arbitrarily complaining that someone else is paid the wrong amount, and you are demonstrably wrong 99% of the time.
You want to talk about bullshit overpaid jobs? Minimum-wage work at MacDonald's. That's fucking overpaid, and you know why? If there weren't a law about it, people would be willing to do that job for even less money. The law forces the employer to overpay the employee up to a certain minimum value.
The counterpoint, of course, is that we somewhat-democratically agreed that people should just get X amount of money per hour...but it's still true that we're paying them more than they're really earning, or we're restructuring business to work around the disadvantage of overpaying workers.
So there's an irony; it's actually the lowest-paid people who are overpaid.
EDIT: This is where we get "DEY TOOK OUR JERBS!" It's that they were willing to do the job for what it's really worth, not some inflated bullshit price.
Goddamnit.
It's bullshit that no-one believes there is any room for subjective position in determining the worth of a person's production. You can say that third-party opinions are bullshit, but they're not. You can say you don't have to argue with it, and you don't. It's subjective. No-one expects to change anything with their commentary, and though economics are a democratic process when it comes to capitalism, it is not, as you say, a universally correct system, since democracy is often wrong.
Yeah, but how I want to spend my money isn't wrong, it's inherently based on my personal tastes and preferences. Thus, it IS democratic by nature. Things which satisfy my desires are worth money based on how valuable I am to the economy.
Read the post.
Tube are you feeling alright?
I read it. I'm saying that it's correct in being democratic because it is inherently based on personal taste.
I see your point, and shall spend six sleepless nights agonizing over another one of my philosophies being torn apart before awakening and bursting into the world with a brighter and happier step
Truly, Defender, you are the healer.
I mean, I could try and explain that viewing things solely through an economic perspective is staggeringly ignorant of the Grand Scheme of Things (TM)
but what's the point
Sometimes it is better to appease than contend.
Dude it's Defender. Just let it go.
"Climb the mountain because it's there" sort of thing, huh?
OK so two things:
1) Yeah if I viewed my WHOLE LIFE in purely economic terms, sure. But "how much should this job pay?" is not my whole life, and it's not the grand scheme of things. It's a simple matter of economics and nothing more, and therefore it's entirely appropriate to look at it in economic terms.
2) Actually, a lot of things in life can be viewed in economic terms. A recent example that I used was dating; a man who wants a woman can get one, but the quality of the woman he can get is based on his own value. In this sense, "value" takes into account all factors which affect dating. Everything from income to sexual fidelity to sense of humor to physical appearance to interesting skills and so on and so forth. I don't have a formula that spits out a number, and there are always "compatibility" issues that might mitigate "value" either in favor of a couple or against them, but basically that man can get what he wants as long as it's not incompatible with him or way too good for him. I, for example, have no shot whatsoever at Jessica Alba. She's way too hot and makes way too much money. I'm not a totally shitty guy to date; I won't hit you and fuck your sister and pawn your TV for heroin money...but Alba is way out of my league.