Should Professional Athletes Be Paid Essay

495 Words2 Pages

Should Professional Athletes Have a Salary Cap? How much money does the average person really need to be able to eat, have a roof over their head, and afford a few luxuries? It’s somewhere around an income of $50,000 to $60,000, but somehow along the way it was decided that a person who plays a game for a living would be paid more than might we say a doctor, or a teacher; people who actually make huge contributions to society, rather than simply entertaining the masses. Professional athletes are making way too much money, considering the fact that in today’s society people are usually paid according to their skill level. Teaching is an important occupation yet teachers are paid far less than a professional athlete. Teachers, the people who …show more content…

They dedicate the majority of their lives to helping others all while being a paid a fraction of the amount an mlb rookie is paid. Not to mention their jobs are extremely stressful, tedious, and time consuming. Doctors work long shifts, perform surgeries, and go through years of schooling just to be able to help others. Police officers and firefighters risk their lives every single day just to ensure the safety of others. These are the real heroes, and you don’t see them being paid millions of dollars a year. There are players who have 6 year, $68 million contracts. All while we are struggling to pay off the us debt. One can argue that athletes aren’t the “average person.” They simply have more athletic capability than the average person, so their payroll is completely justified since they worked hard to get where they are. It is true that athletes have amazing capabilities, but so do teachers, doctors, policemen, and firefighters. These occupations may not require one to have athletic capability, but rather a completely different skill set altogether. Pro ball players don’t need to know how to perform a heart surgery, or how to teach geometry. So yes it is true that professional athletes possess an unordinary range of athletic capability, but it is also true doctors possess extraordinary medical capabilities. An athlete is simply a person who happens to know to play a sport very well, and a doctor is simply a person who knows how to perform surgeries and