Are footballers overpaid?
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And how do you propose we magically make £180k a week appear in the NHS budget?
The tax fairy will come and raise it for us.
I'm sure everyone in the thread would love to be the ones giving more to our national services, instead of those greedy footballers.
How is the tax fairy going to raise it for us, when we just killed the revenue from which the tax fairy takes from? And how do you propose that we all give more to our national services than those greedy footballers? Do we pay nurses more? How do we pay nurses? Through tax, oh yes, so we need more tax to pay them, but we just killed off the tax revenue streams. I see a problem here, don't you?
The purpose of the thread is to answer this question:
My answer to this question was, as stated before, that you could pay for twice as many nurses, or many doctors, teachers, take your pick. Thus, it is not justified.
The answer to your question, on the other hand, as much as I would like to have it, would require society as a whole to take a sharp turn to the left, and I seriously doubt that turn would start in a Football Manager forum. However, I will give you two plausible answers:
I seriously doubt footballers get to spend their whole salary. I doubt they'll ever get to spend it, actually. Although many may think otherwise, I am of the opinion that you can, in fact, have too much money. It would be utopic, but still possible, to have top-class footballers donate a large chunk of their salary to fund certain institutions. Yes, I know many footballers do charity and such, but it's not the same, in my opinion.
The second is to "simply" have the clubs have a salary cap on footballers, and donate part of the revenue from transfers, ticket sales, merchandising and the like. Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but I know of a few clubs that do. Velez (Argentina), for instance, funds a kindergarten and primary, secondary and tertiary education, which is dependent of the club. Of course, you can't compare the wages of local Argie players with the earnings of monsters like Rooney, Messi, Tevez or Ronaldo, but tell me, don't you think a lot more could be done with that money?
they are overpaid.
a doctor can work 100 times what they work and will never make as much money as Ronaldo makes in a year. unless hes a plastic surgeon, but thats not a real doctor.
most people spend years in colleges studying, hoping to one day be able to make a decent living, while footballers party at night and play football during the day...
a doctor can work 100 times what they work and will never make as much money as Ronaldo makes in a year. unless hes a plastic surgeon, but thats not a real doctor.
most people spend years in colleges studying, hoping to one day be able to make a decent living, while footballers party at night and play football during the day...
I guess I didn't make it clear in my last post (a mix of condescension and sarcasm) that I was agreeing with you.
Go to the first page and see that I've said all what you have.
Considering their worth to society as a whole, footballers are overpaid. However, preventing this is something quite apart. True top-class footballers are a scarce good - the hours of training, dedication, diet, sacrifices, sweat, money and the natural talent all put into becoming one means few people make it - and as we all know GENERALLY the scarcer a good is, the more it is worth. There are, what, maybe five to ten people in the world with comparable ability to Wayne Rooney? As such, their wages are disproportionately huge compared to what they actually do.
I think everyone here knows that in a fair world (possibly a pure communist one), footballers would recieve less money than say doctors. And I'm pretty sure that everyone here knows that they do a fairly marginal job in society. IMO, everyone who says that footballers deserve their wages for what they do as a job is either bonkers or playing devil's advocate. However, anyone who says they deserve their wages based on the supply and demand for them is probably spot on.
Are they worth the money spent on them looking purely at it economically? Probably, yes. If we're looking at it based on their worth to society, there isn't even an argument to be had. Unfortunately, it's the nature of capitalism that we lend much greater weight to economic worth than worth to society.
P.S: On the whole subject of soldiers as heroes earlier on in this thread. I'm actually inclined to agree with Timmsy. I think the reaction to what is in its bare bones a very interesting argument was rather over the top. Whilst I don't agree with him on some of his points and I think the way he put forward his argument was clumsy, I think in the essence becoming a soldier does not automatically make you a hero like some here seem to be suggesting, especially when considering the wars we are currently fighting. That's for another thread though.
I think everyone here knows that in a fair world (possibly a pure communist one), footballers would recieve less money than say doctors. And I'm pretty sure that everyone here knows that they do a fairly marginal job in society. IMO, everyone who says that footballers deserve their wages for what they do as a job is either bonkers or playing devil's advocate. However, anyone who says they deserve their wages based on the supply and demand for them is probably spot on.
Are they worth the money spent on them looking purely at it economically? Probably, yes. If we're looking at it based on their worth to society, there isn't even an argument to be had. Unfortunately, it's the nature of capitalism that we lend much greater weight to economic worth than worth to society.
P.S: On the whole subject of soldiers as heroes earlier on in this thread. I'm actually inclined to agree with Timmsy. I think the reaction to what is in its bare bones a very interesting argument was rather over the top. Whilst I don't agree with him on some of his points and I think the way he put forward his argument was clumsy, I think in the essence becoming a soldier does not automatically make you a hero like some here seem to be suggesting, especially when considering the wars we are currently fighting. That's for another thread though.
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A salary cap won't work. Do you think every league will implement one? Players will leave to where the money is, in the same way if a country has high corporation tax then business will move elsewhere. And you're assuming the flow of money around football will remain constant. Lets say you're Nike. You know that footballer's wages just got cut by say, 50%. You pay say £1m to the club in sponsorship, are you still going to pay them the same amount if you know they just cut their running costs by roughly a 1/3? This is one of the reasons why capitalism is the only system that works.
GC hit the nail on the head, a purely communist state doesn't work as proven. For those who want footballer's to be paid the same as a doctor, why don't you go look at what eastern European communist states were like, they were equal, but far from happy. The sad truth is that there must be a gulf in equality for welfare to be at it's best.
Also, just to add I've never said that footballer's deserve their salary from a social point of view, of course I disagree with that.
---------- Post added at 05:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:00 PM ----------
My bad then.
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rhhthsrthr
Guest
Firstly, it's the owners money so who gives a **** where it goes. Soliders are payed by the government and there are more soldiers than footballers. We can't have 100,000 soldiers on 600k a week since a country cannot afford that.
But then again I think the Government should heavily tax players like Messi who earn alot. Messi still gets his wage, the government can afford more doctors and the only people that lose out is the owners. But then again they are already rich enough if they can afford monster wages like 600k a week,
But then again I think the Government should heavily tax players like Messi who earn alot. Messi still gets his wage, the government can afford more doctors and the only people that lose out is the owners. But then again they are already rich enough if they can afford monster wages like 600k a week,
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I honestly cannot see why people would want to give soldiers or doctors a footballers wage? People become soldiers because they want to not because they want to become millionaires, same as doctors, I don't know about you but I'd rather have soldiers who actually want to fight for our country than having people who are just there for the money.
It's all well and good saying "but they deserve it, all footballers do is kick a ball around a pitch" well that's not the point, nobody deserves to be paid what footballers are, nobody.
Footballers do their fair share for charity, a lot more than most of us on here do, they give so much back to the community, even Diouf, the most hated man in football is actually a nice guy and he goes to local hospitals to see sick children etc. Footballers are not monsters, they are people like us, who just want to earn as much as they can, like us. We would do anything to be in their shoes so why does everybody need to attack their pay? You don't care about soldiers, or nurses or even doctors, it's just jealousy..
It's all well and good saying "but they deserve it, all footballers do is kick a ball around a pitch" well that's not the point, nobody deserves to be paid what footballers are, nobody.
Footballers do their fair share for charity, a lot more than most of us on here do, they give so much back to the community, even Diouf, the most hated man in football is actually a nice guy and he goes to local hospitals to see sick children etc. Footballers are not monsters, they are people like us, who just want to earn as much as they can, like us. We would do anything to be in their shoes so why does everybody need to attack their pay? You don't care about soldiers, or nurses or even doctors, it's just jealousy..
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rhhthsrthr
Guest
I don't think people are saying give soldiers a footballers wage, but with that wage you could afford more soliders or simply a better standard of living for them.
Well whatever people mean it doesn't make any logical sense. Footballers are not paid by the government, they contribute 50% of their earnings to tax, which does help provide a better standard of living for soldiers.. And I don't really think we need any more. Without the tax footballers generate this country would be a lot worse off.
You're assuming we can magically make the money footballer's have employ soldiers. We can't. 50% tax is a **** sight closer though? As I said, Wayne Rooney employs 234 nurses a year from his annual tax alone.
In my opinion, footballers are yes, overpaid. Like what have been stated, they get tons more than doctors when one major surgery itself could take hours which is a few times more than footballers that play in a single match. And moreover most of the times footballers only play one game a week and just earn that huge sum of money through that game + training. After training, nothing is of their concern and they could have the time of their lives spending time with the family etc. However, doctors don't get that huge sum of salary or that sort of 'freedom'. They have to be called upon whenever there is an emergency, for example someone just met with an accident and doctors are needed to conduct surgeries when the amount of doctors in the hospital is not enough. This happens for them even when they are on leave or after work hours. When they are needed they will have to help. While on the other hand footballers do not even have to report back to training/matches etc that is outside their working hours or when they are on leave. And also, footballers gets the publicity too. You don't quite see doctors on the news whenever they save a life or complete a major surgery but on the same day you can see Rooney on the headlines with his overhead kick. But.... so what? Its just an overhead kick and what impact can it do? I don't think that is anything more major than saving a life but everyone just go crazy about it. Yes. Football is a commercial sport and you might say because of that they deserved the spotlight. But sadly i don't see the importance of what can exactly happen to a world if tevez did not score a hat-trick or rooney did not scored that overhead kick. Dude, a life or an overhead kick is more important? I think that's pretty much obvious.