In the wake of the cancellation of the season's first two weeks, I'm seeing a resurgence of silly arguments about greedy players (and some about owners, too). I think a lot of people are seriously kidding themselves about the issue of "Greed". Players are no more (and no less) greedy than the actors in just about any labor market.
There's been a ton of great commentary (well, great if you're into economics) this week thanks to the heated-up negotiations. David Berri's piece at The Huffington Post on how the owners have already won is worth reading. I also like Scott Carefoot's piece on the irrelevance of fairness is also good. Larry Coon has been an invaluable source of facts and his latest ESPN piece is as informative as usual. But what strikes out at me are many of the comments on these (and other such articles). Here are some examples:
Can you imagine if you and your coworkers came together and approached your boss saying: give us 57%(or 53, 50, 47, whatever) of your business' income? They would all be fired and in the unemployment line.
billionaires fighting with millionaires is silly when people are suffering worldwide
It's very simple. The majority of NBA players are horrible with money.
I am disgusted with millionaires negotiating over their millions.
Notice any themes? Lots of outrage that anyone that earns millions could possibly be upset or concerned about his/her salary, coupled with a lack of understanding of how anybody that makes millions could ever be in financial difficulty. To me, the whole thing smacks of denial, if not jealousy.
First, let's address the issue of millionaires going bankrupt, or the concept that NBA players are "horrible with money." I'm sorry, but this smells like a stereotype. The underyling implication is that if any of us smart folks ever got lucky to get millions of dollars, we wouldn't spend it or make any bad investments at all, oh no, we'd just keep living in our rented apartments in the suburbs and driving our Kias and Fords. Maybe we'd upgrade to a Honda or a Toyota or some nice sensible car, but we'd never splurge on a Lexus or, god forbid, buy a big-ass house, or worse, throw big parties for our friends. Only idiot basketball players do stuff like that with their millions. The very idea that a millionaire who signs a bad mortgage on a house he con no longer afford is any worse than the millions of Americans in financial difficulty now is ludicrous. And yes, many people struggling now are people that we'd have labelled "middle class" 5 years ago. I know it's not their fault. That's my point. People that make fun of or disparage some millionaire that has gone broke are just making an assumption that it was "their fault". Lots of people lost their life savings to the Enron scandal. Were they stupid? Why does it matter if you've lost thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions? People make mistakes sometimes, and the millionaires' mistakes are no worse (or better) than anyone elses.
It all boils down to the notion that there is some amount of money that is "enough". But the truth is that just about everyone in America is terrible at living below their means. We're all living in glass houses here. And just about everyone I know is in the same boat. When I graduated from college, I spent years in Europe doing any odd job I could, living from paycheck to paycheck. I doubt I earned more than $25000 in any year in my twenties. Just before I turned 30, I luck-boxed my way into a job at Amazon during the dot-com boom. Suddenly I was making pretty good money. You don't know much about me, but if you had to place a wager on whether I kept sharing a crappy apartment in the suburbs with a room-mate for $400/month or I moved into a flat on my own in the city, what would you bet on? And if I'd lost my job 6 months later, what would my financial state be? It starts with an "F" and ends in "ED!" And the same thing happens to millionaires. You may think a certain amount of money is "enough", but I doubt many people have actually ever walked the walk and been in a situation where they suddenly earned a large amount of money yet maintained their austere standard of living.
Which brings me to the second point. There seems to be a popular opinion that there is some point of wealth above which it is "immoral" to try to secure one's wealth. But where will this end? Why stop at millionaires? How about some guy that makes $100,000 a year? Is he an asshole when he asks for a raise? The median income in the United States is about $49,500 per year. Is everyone above that line just greedy when they negotiate contracts? Why is the line at 'millions'?
It's fine for someone to have an opinion about how much money is "enough". What's NOT fine is for that person to start slinging moral accusations around. That's akin to basically calling someone immoral because they don't give to charity. You can choose not to befriend, follow, or pay money to watch millionaires, but to say things like "they disgust me" is at best disingenuous and at worst hypocritical.
Oh, and in response to that first question:
Can you imagine if you and your coworkers came together and approached your boss saying: give us 57%(or 53, 50, 47, whatever) of your business' income?
This answer is simple. Are you and your coworkers replaceable? Can we please, PUH-LEASE, stop pretending that NBA players are as replaceable as janitors, engineeers, and salesmen? When George Lucas sold The Phentom Menace to film distributors, he went to each of them and said "Look, I know you usually take a huge percentage of film grosses, but here's the deal, you take $1 million flat. Or not. I don't care." How dare George go to those people and demand what amounts to an outrageous concession on the parts of the film distributors? Because he could. Why isn't anyone pissed at George Lucas for demanding more than his "fair" share? People are pissed at him, but that only seems to be because The Phantom Menace sucked.
Yes, I know plenty of people would love to play in the NBA and would be happy and grateful to do so for a fraction of what NBA players earn. But we've been over this before. That's economic rent for you. And if that seems unfair to you, I'd suggest that it isn't any more unfair that we can't all be [insert desired and well-paid profession] either.