One thing middle-aged men like to complain about is the amount of money athletes make, especially athletes in team sports. Middle-aged men complain because athletes get paid millions of dollars to play a game. Some people will complain that our society's priorities are screwed up. Athletes make millions of dollars a year while people who do important work (teachers, scientists, firefighters, police officers, etc.) are underpaid.
But what these people fail to see is that athletes do important work. Imagine you're a very wealthy person, someone with a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars. With that amount of wealth, you're set financially for hundreds of years. The only thing that could destroy your financial security is a revolution that overturns the current economic system and renders your money worthless.
Who would lead such a revolution? It wouldn't be the rich and powerful because they're rich and powerful under the current economic system. They have no reason to overturn the current system. Lower and middle income people would be the people with a reason to start a revolution, but lots of people would have to be enraged by the current economic system in order for a revolution to take place.
How do you keep people happy enough so they won't revolt? One way is entertainment: television, movies, music, and sports. Good entertainment makes people forget about their problems and provides momentary pleasure. Sports has an advantage over other forms of entertainment. A movie entertains people for about 2 hours. A network television show provides 30-60 minutes of entertainment once a week, 22 times a year. But sports provides year-round entertainment. You can watch baseball almost every day from April through October, watch basketball almost every day from November through June, and watch football every weekend from September through January.
Athletes are the people who provide the year-round entertainment. Paying an athlete $5 million or $10 million a year is a good investment because they allow corporations to continue making billions of dollars without having to worry about a revolution. The next time someone complains about athletes' salaries, remember the service they provide to keep the rich and powerful in power.
