Professional Athletes Make Too Much Money!

I have been a huge sports fan all my life. I have also been a defender of many aspects of sports, especially in the professional realm. However, there is one thing about which I have shifted my view in the past few years...

People often complain that athletes make soooo much money. The retort goes something like this: "There is obviously someone willing to pay them that amount of money, so there is nothing inherently wrong with it." This is the exact statement I am wont to make on a regular basis. However, there is one enormous flaw in this argument when dealing with professional sports.

Stadiums are built with tax-payer money.

This is an example of socialism. Or fascism. Depending on how you look at it. Either way, it is soooo wrong. Let us take a moment to consider what would happen if teams had to pony up the money for the stadium from which they reap huge financial benefit. Perhaps it should be a moment of silence...for the athletes who would be making somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-70% of their current salaries.

There would be other issues as well, but clearly the average salary of a MLB player, for example, would no longer be $4 million (!). Instead, that money would be redistributed to everyone within a certain geographical area in the only moral way that can happen: refraining from stealing in the first place.

I am flabbergasted that the same person would both complain that athletes make so much money compared with - wait for it - teachers, and yet support the idea that taxes should help to pay for the stadium. Do you have any idea how much these things cost? Take the recent Marlins Park in Miami. Here is an article explaining the current and eventual cost of the stadium, and the fact that the owner of the team contributed less than 20% of the cost!!!

Or consider the 49ers' $1.2 billion Levi's Stadium in San Francisco. $850,000,000 came from the "City Stadium Authority" (taxes), while the rest was paid for by a hotel tax, redevelopment funds (read: more taxes), and the NFL itself (thank goodness!).

If you really don't think athletes should make what they do, you are 100% correct. Much of the money they make is, by every truthful measure, STOLEN from everybody else.