Do basketball players make too much money?
I have a prediction. Conservatives will either say no, or talk about how government pays for their stadiums and inflates their profits. Liberals will either say no, or talk about how they don't make enough because the coaches and team owners take more than their share.
Conservatives I understand, because they tend to support income inequality in principle based on supply and demand. Sometimes they recognize when the system is corrupt and are strongly against it because the system must be fair. But liberals I don't understand. Liberals are supposed to be against income inequality and yet I always get the impression from talking to liberals that they don't care about that at all and instead want to see both winners and losers, and it's usually arbitrary who they pick, based on all sorts of biases. They end up promoting even more income inequality by favoring certain groups.
I definitely think basketball players make too much money, way too much. A janitor works harder and makes $7 per hour instead of millions. I understand why this is, but think it's unfair that special people can be valued so much higher than regular people. Nature is cruel like that. As a proponent of the free market, I am automatically inclined to think about ways in which basketball players are artificially paid more money, for example as I mentioned above about government paying to build the stadiums for them. There are tons of issues for example only Nike is allowed to make a jersey with someone's name on it. Only ESPN is allowed to broadcast the game. High school players cannot sign contracts. The requirement to play man to man rather than zone, Etc... I suspect that the real free market wage for a basketball players is way lower, like low six figures, because people would simply not value NBA if there were more options, and people would simply not even value the sport as a whole if there were not so much money behind it.
I don't what options a liberal has to argue for this, other than to say everyone should make the same wage because everyone is equal, which is clearly not true. That explains to my why liberals would have a hard time with a simple question like this. In the past I have heard self proclaimed communists making arguments about how actors and artists deserve more money than factory workers because they are contributing to humanity rather than detracting from it. The question should be easy. All questions should be. Why is this difficult?