Why Are Athletes Overpaid

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Coco Chanel, a french fashionista and founder of the Chanel fashion brand, said, “There are people who have money and people who are rich” (Coco Chanel). This quote symbolizes America in a lot of ways. The top 1% of America is an elitist group of people who make large gobs of money-as can be inferred from the name. The members of that clique make, at minimum, $434,682 in gross income (Kurt). That is a lot of money. But that’s pennies to the top athletes of today’s world; Lebron James, a SF on the Cavaliers, an NBA team based in Cleveland, Ohio, makes $30,963,450 a year. Yes you read that right-over 70 times the amount ‘required’ to be in the top 1%. Many people believe that these athletes are overpaid, as who should make enough money to buy over a block’s worth of nice houses? That is a very …show more content…

Jamal Carnette is a writer for the Motley Fool, and gets his articles regularly posted on Time.com and in Time magazine, a well respected website. In his article for the Motley Fool, “Are NFL Players Overpaid”, he states that the players overall make 47% of the NFL’s revenue, which, “on a comparative basis, salaries eating up 47% of revenue doesn't seem out of the ballpark, and may even seem a little light. For comparison, education and health-care salaries can average above 50% of revenue” (Carnette). The prior quote combats the belief that athletes are overpaid, as many people like to compare salaries, not percent, while this accurately portrays the amounts athletes make. This also corroborates a previous statement that, relative to percentage of earnings, athletes are underpaid compared to their counterparts. Economically, the athletes contribute a large portion to society, so it’s only fitting they get a large portion

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