Question

B. Can we justify the huge incomes paid to corporate bosses and super star athletes and actors? Is the value they add to society worth the price we pay? Defend your views.

Answer 1

Professional athletes, particularly their health and families, sacrifice important aspects of their lives. Of example, there are games away that keep players from their families during every season of any professional sport. But, more importantly, players are putting their bodies in everyday danger. Physical injury may leave handicapped or disabled professional athletes for the rest of their lives; NFL players with multiple concussions can suffer from progressive degenerative disease that causes dementia and depression.

Therefore, while most teens and college-age students spend their free time studying, working or hanging out, all their free time training is spent by student athletes striving to qualify for the pros. Therefore, the wages of professional athletes are a fair compensation for the tremendous time and energy they put into practice and the immense health risks they take, particularly given that their careers usually end around the age of 35.

Professional sports is a company that earns money. Sports teams realize they need to win in order to remain competitive, which is why they recruit the best available players. The team's head, the on-court leaders, are professional superstars, or "franchise players." We develop their teammates, thereby strengthening the entire team. It results in more victories and, in effect, more viewers, more merchandise being sold and brand value being improved. Normally, a team has one franchise player making a huge salary, probably more than its projected value, as it pushes the competitiveness of the team's company forward.

In 2016, a US household's average annual income was $57,617, while a professional athlete's average income in the major leagues ranged from $2.1-$6.5 million. The growing disparity between America's average income and the income of a professional athlete could pose a serious threat to sports. Despite ticket prices can slowly, not to mention product price tags, sports fans can feel resentful about supporting overpaid athletes. If so, they will stop paying for watching or helping professional sports teams and will leave the industry in the lurch.

Corporate culture has infiltrated into some sport leagues in recent years. This phenomenon has a major impact on the wages of players: it lets many athletes get disproportionate contracts while increasing income inequality among the majority of athletes. In reality, low-league baseball pro athletes don't even make a minimum wage. Inside sport teams, this pay gap creates unnecessary friction and is unfair to teammates who contribute just as much but for less cash.