The NBA players have a union, otherwise they'd get a lot less. And, even so, they are now getting squeezed as the league revenue suffers from the economic downturn.
Gene Coyle On Jan 6, 2010, at 9:28 AM, Jim Devine wrote: > you might say that star athletes and Goldman Sachs nabobs both are > parts of winner-take-all markets, where a small number of "winners" > reap millions and the rest just barely make it. These markets are > inefficient, according to neoclassicals. But at least athletes are > productive (of entertainment). G-S bucksbarons make no positive > contribution to society at all, as far as I can tell. > > On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 9:22 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: >> Ok, that's a familiar theme of self-justification among the over-paid, >> but it is still interesting to see how defensive these guys are >> getting. It is almost like they know how absurd this all is: >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/andrew-clark-on-america/2010/jan/05/goldmansachs-banks >> --------------------------------------snip >> We mere mortals need to shape up our thinking. Goldman Sachs' >> employees are so special that they ought to be viewed in the same >> category as professional athletes and movie stars, according to a >> board member of the Wall Street behemoth. >> >> Bill George, a former boss of the medical technology firm Medtronic >> who has been a Goldman Sachs director since 2002, has delivered a >> curious defence of the bank's likely payout of $22bn to its employees >> for 2009 in an interview with a video website, BigThink.com. >> >> [...] >> >> But George then goes off on another riff, saying he can't help it if >> film stars, athletes and bankers are overvalued by society en masse. >> >> "I can't justify the relationship between a trader's bonus and what a >> schoolteacher makes, for instance. I mean in our society - we have a >> much deeper societal issue," he says. "It's hard for me to justify >> what an athlete makes when he plays basketball compared to what a >> schoolteacher makes or even an engineer...I worry about these a lot >> but I haven't figured out how to solve it yet, either." >> >> George, incidentally, is a director of one other public company - >> ExxonMobil - giving him a clean sweep of the two US firms viewed with >> the greatest suspicion by people on the left. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -raghu. >> >> >> >> -- >> "I don't care who you are, Fatso. Get the reindeer off my roof!" >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > > -- > Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own > way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
