On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Paul Brandon went:
It's interesting that no one on this list has said anything about
athletes and other entertainers, some of whom 'earn' as much yearly
as the entire AIG bonus list!
And yes, you pay for their salaries through advertising costs passed
on to you through the products you purchase (where do you think that
the money comes from?).
I've frequently thought about that, and I don't see a problem with it.
If David Letterman gets $30 million a year and averages five million
viewers per night (on each of approximately 200 nights per year), he
can justify his income by providing a mere three pennies' worth of
entertainment to each viewer each night. I'm not being facetious
about that. A daily or weekly dose of a TV show can enhance the
quality of life of each viewer who enjoys it. So, in the aggregate, a
TV performer can provide many millions (perhaps billions) of dollars'
worth of pleasure, if the metric of pleasure is "How much would you,
the individual viewer, pay for the experience you just had?"
AIG executives provided no such service.
--David Epstein
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