Merchandising, Merchandising . . . Priorities?
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.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.
Friday, December 5th 2008 at 12:57 am |
“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…”
From an economic perspective, the relevant question is not how essential the type of job is, but rather: how essential it is that *this particular person* fill the position. Police officers are far more easily replaced than superstar athletes. So although the police force as a whole is vitally important, the value of the marginal police officer is quite a different matter! (Cf. Fair Pay and Price Signals.)
(Though I agree that there’s not really any good reason to like sports so much. If people could change their tastes so that they derived such enjoyment from more intrinsically valuable things, that would be better.)
Friday, December 5th 2008 at 12:59 am |
[Fixed name]
Friday, December 5th 2008 at 5:17 pm |
I’m not sure that ease of replacement really explains the discrepancy. Police forces and the military frequently report trouble recruiting problems, especially when their services are most in demand. So a relevant question becomes how important it is to get A person to do a particular job. Furthermore, the truth is that, perhaps because of this trouble in getting people to do the job, sometimes we do not get the kind of person that it is important to have in the job. And the result is something like an Abu Ghraib or a police corruption scandal. A sports team that does not get their first choice of superstar may in fact be able to get similar production from a less expensive player – and may in fact be making a mistake in not doing so.
If people started buying fewer tickets and suites and less merchandise, athlete salaries would go down regardless of how unique the star player’s talents are. (Or if voters threw out of office any elected official who subsidizes a profit bonanza such as a major professional sports team, likewise salaries would go down.) In the post you link to in your comments, you argue that society should create incentives for people to fill the roles that society needs filled. I don’t disagree. My major argument here is that society’s unwillingness to make the investment to do so shows that it does not recognize that it needs those roles filled and filled well.
I’m not sure if I fully agree with your comment about things being more intrinsically valuable, although I am enjoying the mental image of a group of rabid fans cheering on the sustainable farming of organic vegetables, pennants in hand.
Sunday, December 7th 2008 at 2:26 pm |
I suspect that if people limited their interests to things with “intrinsic” value, we would end up throwing out a whole lot more than sports. It isn’t obvious to me, for instance, that things like music are more intrinsically valuable than sports (and top music artists make even more money than pro athletes). When it comes to the value of cultural and recreational pursuits, I think that intellectuals tend to give sports a bad rap. You won’t find many people who give complain of Yo-Yo Ma as they do Ryan Howard.
Sunday, December 7th 2008 at 3:45 pm |
Your music/sports comparison makes me think of the mind/body divide – I think we tend to give people more credit for things like their decision-making skills or creativity over skills that are more obviously physical. Whether that makes any sense when, say, my (decent) memory would seem to depend on my physical makeup just as much as my (nonexistent) fastball is a whole new – and probably worthwhile – discussion.