Most of them is in direct response to the question that I read incorrectly. "How many business people would allow to be so underpayed vs. the amount of revenue that they bring in?" I had read it as "How many businesses would allow people to be so underpayed vs. the amount of revenue that they bring in?" It's tough to make sense when you respond to a question that wasn't asked....
Gotcha. Happens to me all the time.
Why is it not OK to me has a lot to do with how I place value on professions. I for one feel like police, teachers, firefighters, and many other professions for that matter, bring a whole lot more value to society than they are paid. So if you base things on a purely monetary system, then I'm wrong, as these roles do not bring in revenue.
Well, this is bringing in all kinds of points, and I understand what you're saying. But its also not like money saved by paying athletes or actors less is going to be pooled and given to civil servants (although firefighters/police/law enforcement in general, I think are paid pretty well if you're contrasting them against teachers). It kind of just muddies the whole thing and inflicts a personal irrational bias on it. Not that this is a bad thing in a conversation about the wages of the country's citizens in a social sense, but here in this conversation (about how much money athletes are paid vs how much they bring in) it might not be the best place for the comparison.
Most of us don't have the luxury of leaving money on the table and then complaining about it later. If I did, I certainly would not be complaining about it.
James made his bed, now he gets to lie in it. At least he can take solace as he suffers with his unfairly low salary that he gets to lie in a multi-million dollar bed.
Ah, I understand where your complaint comes from here, and I think maybe a clarification would be useful. There are two separate points:
1) LeBron James did opt to leave tens of millions of dollars (over the life of the contract) to play with both Bosh and Wade. He has never, in fact, taken max salary in a contract.
2) If LeBron James had taken the maximum allowable contract under the CBA, which would've been from Cleveland, he would still only be allowed to sign a contract that paid him less than $20 million dollars a season. He currently makes 17.5 million. He'll opt out of his contract next year, and probably sign a new deal that gets him roughly the same amount of money. But for the wins he brings you (and people have broken this down), LeBron likely is underpaid by about 50%. His real market value according to estimated wins added is roughly $30 million dollars annually, IIRC.
Here were LeBron's actual comments:
"What I do on the floor shows my value. At the end of the day, I don't think my value on the floor can really be compensated for, anyways, because of the (collective bargaining agreement)," James said Friday ahead of the Miami Heat's game against the Pacers (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) in Indianapolis.
"If you want the truth. If this was baseball, it'd be up, I mean way up there."
"I have not had a full max deal yet in my career -- that's a story untold," James said.
"I don't get (the credit) for it. That doesn't matter to me; playing the game is what matters to me. Financially, I'll sacrifice for the team. It shows for some of the top guys, it isn't all about money. That's the genuine side of this, it's about winning. I understand that."
"I think teams understand that you need three guys to do big things; the "big three" thing is pretty cool if you can get it," James said. "To keep teams like this together, you may have to take even less because of the new CBA. I guess we'll find out."
So his point is, since I can't get paid what I'm actually worth, I might as well take a little less than the max to make sure I have great teammates.
Its actually a pretty cool sentiment.