CEO Compared to Athlete Income

Hiring, firing and controlling employee wages by government bureaucracy is now an American fact of life, evidenced by the forced firing of a pharmaceutical CEO who had not been found guilty of a crime.

You must also consider how government stimulus funds affected even entertainers-such as sports stars. Government can be very uneven-handed and injudicious.

Athletes probably get far too much salary for what they do. Considerably more earnings than top-notch CEOs. But they are under the public’s radar. So the media, in its ignorance, let’s them get away with the notoriety executives must suffer.

How? Ballparks and ball clubs are subsidized by state and local taxpayers. Each time a new ballpark is built, some government body has provided long-term assistance in financing, via cash, tax abatement or bond funding.

Federal stimulus funds backed local and state entities. So funds were made available to fund ball clubs.

Remember: Money is fungible. The payment does not have to be direct. Money can be substituted from one recipient’s pocket to the other, to hide the source of funding. It all adds up to the same total outlay.

The public complains about an executive getting more than is “fair.” What about a ball player who operates no business, and hires no one, who makes up to thirty million a year? And may actually be a loser on the field? (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)