This post is a short thought that I’ve been trying to develop into a larger one for a while, but I was finally moved to just start typing based on a couple of things I saw the other day. One was a Daily News column questioning the amount of money that Philadelphia spends on overtime pay for police officers who are summoned to court to testify on days off or when they are working nights. The other was the number of Eagles stickers I saw on cars while walking home. Bear with me a minute.
It has long seemed to me that we underpay police officers, firefighters, and combat troops. There are ethical and practical reasons for this. On the one hand, you are asking people to possibly run into a burning building or get shot or otherwise put themselves in harm way to protect you. It is all well and good to say “Thank you, we value and honor your service and your sacrifice,” but when it comes time to put our money where our mouth is, as a society I think we collectively fall down. And from a practical standpoint, if people feel underpaid and underappreciated, that does bad things to morale and effectiveness and makes it harder to attract people who can do the job exceptionally well.
And as a point in comparison I often ask myself why someone can get paid $10 million to play first base when that job is so much less essential to our well-being. (If we had no professional sports teams, we could still have viable public safety units like the police and fire departments. If we had no police and fire departments, I doubt we’d be able to support professional sports teams for very long.) And the answer is that the sports team has the $10 million to give to the first baseman but the city or the federal government don’t have the money to give to police and firefighters and soldiers. (I grant you there are many more police officers than first basemen, but I’m not saying every officer needs $10 million either.)
But it’s not just that we are more willing to buy tickets to games than we are to pay the taxes that would fund higher salaries. Sports teams and entertainers get big bucks from the merchandise we buy to show our support, like those car decals or the Phillies t-shirts I buy or the half dozen movie posters behind me right now. I don’t have any police officer action figures or firefighter T-shirts. And maybe I should. I mean, I’m totally willing to buy into the pro-sports-as-city-unifier thing. I loved all the red T-shirts I saw as the Phillies won the World Series. I still smile when I see ’em. But let’s get real – those teams are full of part-time residents who represent our city for a while and them move on elsewhere. Police officers and firefighters (and other municipal employees whose job descriptions don’t involve lethal danger) are the city – they don’t just represent us, they make our existence as a city possible. Likewise with soldiers and other federal employees making our existence as a nation possible. And I can’t help but wonder why I don’t get the same thrill of showing loyalty and support to them as I do to a baseball team.