Today, I will discuss about a little controversial topic which is if Celebrities and Athletes deserved the money that they earn and since the topic was about money, I used the same image that I used on one of my previous post as the topic was about money.
My Defense on Celebrity and Athletes Pay
There was no argument on how significant the work that Doctors do which is to cure and save people's lives which was also made ore clear as we experience one of the worst pandemic in history and the role of Teachers on nurturing students in order to reach their desired professions but when we see on the news how an artist or a sports athlete earns, we feel that its just not fair how much they earned not only compared to Doctors and Teachers but also compared to most professions.
Just look on this CBR Article saying that Robert Downy Jr. has earned around $75 million on his role as Iron Man on Avengers: Endgame seems to pale in comparison to this ArticleArticle published by Business Insider that Teachers only earned an annual salary between $45k- $80k depending on the state or the Article made by Kaptest that Doctors earns around $250k- $600k annually depending on specialty and that was just in the US so other countries might have payed their Doctors and Teachers way lower. So, Does Robert Downey Jr. deserves to earn such a huge amount of money? I'll say yes because Avengers: Endgame has total Box office of $2.799 billion and as a leading cast, he played his role really well to the fact that people still refer to him as Ironman even after he retired from his role so he should clearly have a good cut from the box office earnings and given that it was the first Ironman movie that he played that started Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) which leads to the end game. Also, during the time of the first movie, Marvel was almost a dying franchise and the success of the first Ironman movie was what saved them before they was sold to Disney and now became one of the biggest franchise in Hollywood. In short, Robert Downey Jr. was a good actor and his good portrayal of his role makes the movie profit which has save a company from dying and at the same time was able to bring entertainment to millions of people all around the world.
When it comes to sports, I would not go far what we referred as "Pambansang Kamao", Manny Pacquio where on his retirement fight against Yordenis Ugas has earned him between $5- $25 million based on this Article even if he lost but still a very huge amount of money for a 12 round match with only 3 minutes per round which also seems very unfair because for a job that does not even last for an hour but lets not forget that he has to spent months of rigorous training and diet where they need to endure pain and condition their mind just to prepare for the match which means the fight has already started before the event. Also in sports, the chances of having injury is very high and a single injury can cause for an athlete's career to end but it's specially dangerous on Boxing because boxers inflict direct body damage and could sometimes even lead to death so they are also waging their lives for that 12- round match.
Indeed, not everyone was Robert Downey Jr. or Many Pacquio which also means that not all of them have this ridiculously large amount of pay as they were bound different contracts based on the audience that they can gather but all of this artist do work hard and dedicate their time to their job not to mention that this people most of the times would need to relocate on other places to shoot for the film or to do their training for a long time which means that they would be far from their family and friends but still, they are willing to endure this sacrifices so that they could provide for themselves and the people they care and at the same time, provide entertainment to many people.
Volume makes the difference
The biggest reason why there is such a huge gap between the salary of celebrities and athletes compared to Techers and Doctors is their audience or the people that will need their service. While being a teacher and doctor was a very important job, they have a very limited amount of people that would required their service over a long period of time. For teachers, they only teach around 20- 40 students per class which would last for 9 months per school year and for doctors, they probably could only cater a handful of people per day depending on the illness and the type of medical attention that they need unlike for celebrities and athletes that could be watched all over the world and while they do, there were these big company brands that would occasionally show advertisements to the people watching, particularly in sports where celebrities and athletes also earn their pay. Even when the people who watched this celebrities and athletes pays a small amount of money, their sheer volume completely outnumbers the people that requires the service of a single doctor or teacher and that was why they were able to earn such a huge amount of money. To compensate for the difference, doctors and teachers can increase their service fee but given that hospital fees are already very high, it would be nothing more than an extortion and will be against the ought that the doctors pledge which is to save people's lives while the students that teachers are teaching at least until they reach college are mostly minors that relies on their parent for everything.
At the end of the day as long as a person earns their money on clean and honest work, it does not matter if they are earning millions. It does not mean that the salaries of the doctors and teachers should just stagnate because the cost of living also increases and I believed that they deserved more but this would be entirely on to the hands of the schools and hospitals that employ them.
And that was it for this post. Thank you and see you at my next post.