No Stupid Questions

The top comments seem to have a lot of people from the US seem to be ignoring the rest of the world exists and screaming Reagan (the US president from 1981-1989). I honestly don't know how accurate that is but it is obviously not nuanced and probably biased by anti-Trump sentiment

I'm not sure how accurate this article is either but it mentions the salary cap for soccer in England being removed in 1960 and that leading to a rapid increase in wages there.

https://www.salaryleaks.com/blogs/average-salary-premier-league-history

A quick scan of the internet led me to this chart that compares top soccer players to median income in (for some reason) the US

From: https://www.expensivity.com/soccer-salary-inflation/

Here's another chart from the same article for how many times a US families income a top international player makes (and like the England article the 60s look to be exponential growth, then noise in the 70s then pretty clear from the 80s):

A lot of that analysis has space for biases but I'm pretty sure that modern large sports wages predate Reagan but also that the people mentioning rich athletes in Roman times are a bit off too

This is just capitalism, isn't it?

Athletes and entertainers that make millions do so because people pay for it in large numbers. This is what capitalism wants and does.

I agree with your sentiment but I think you're just critiquing capitalism. If I had my way these people would be taxed up the wazoo. No baseball player or Hollywood actor should ever be worth 10s of millions, let alone hundreds, or billions.

I understand the skepticism on society's priorities.

Athletes are literally 1-in-a-million individuals. They bring in crazy amounts of money from people who want to watch them play.

The real problem is that there are so many people who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to watch a sports game, but not willing to see teachers properly compensates (in my opinion). Because athletes getting a big share of the pie that they're bringing in sounds fair to me. The question is why people have that much pie to give them, and not as much pie to give to schools.

You mean the social sector being chronically underpaid with no improvement in sight? I blame less and less regulated lobbyism, a.k.a. legal corruption. Because the social sector doesn't have one, usually. It would often amount to the government bribing itself. What, politicians making good decisions without looking out for a payday, you say?

I believe the standard singularity was in 1971. At least, according to wtfhappenedin1971.com

Bread and Circuses, nothing else for the filthy plebs.

I thought anthletes are basically amateurs and only a few get famous enough to have sponsorship deals?

Always leaving the mechanics out lol. My career is always under looked but yet everyone comes crawling in when their car doesn't work haha

Outside of the USA? You can still start around the 70's as a time when medical costs started increasing as the greatest generation started to retire, taking away talent from the workforce and starting to use all those retirement benefits they were entitled to. You also had an increase in quality of medicine, which usually came at a cost.

Funding these higher costs would require new taxes, which was becoming politically unpopular across First World democracies.

I say it was around 1998 when George W. Bush meet with Harambe’s mom.

puts the movie, 'Gifted Hands' ~~infront~~ ~~in-front~~ inaspacefront of you

Athletes that have spent thousands of hours training their whole lives to be the some of best in the world at their craft, generate billions of dollars doing their job. Why shouldn't they get paid well from that pool of billions?

Teachers, nurses, etc should get paid more, but their professions don't generate the same kind of revenue as the entertainment industry, so that money has to come from some other source, like the government.