misterManager wrote:Momo wrote:Famous Mortimer wrote:No it's not. Just because the workers are rich, relatively speaking, doesn't make them less workers. Why does noone direct their criticism at the owners? It's like the okay thing to do is blame the players for being greedy. How greedy are the owners? How did the players force the owners to pay less and take more?
"Relatively speaking" is kind of underselling this.
This is the 1% trying to extract more money from the .005%.
(snip)
But I'm not shedding any tears over Jake Arrieta or Lance Lynn remaining unsigned, or any of the other vets with their insipid moaning about their pay.
You should be shedding tears for Lance Lynn.
I'm not shedding tears over a player who has all kinds of question marks around him not getting signed to an exorbitant contract that he very arguably does not merit.
There are, just guessing here but go with me, less than thirty players active in MLB who are part of the 1% you're referencing.
It's funny when people talk about the 1% and whine about the rich (usually owners and corporate entities like say, baseball clubs and their owners), but then forget that many of the people they "like" (aka athletes and entertainers) are actually part of the
same 1%.
Admission to the 1% in terms of income
starts at a household income of around $430,000 per year. Every major leaguer is part of the 1% income makers.
However, to present the argument fairly, we should note that the 1% are often not "wage-earners" in a traditional sense, making a significant amount of money from things like investment/capital gains. So if we prefer to measure the top 1% in terms of
wealth, rather than income, admission to the 1%er club
starts at a net worth of around $8.4 million. By a quick glance at the payroll, the Cardinals
alone have seven players
who will earn more than $8 million this year.
Now, obviously, being in the top tax bracket will shave a healthy amount off those $8 million+ earners so they wouldn't cross the threshold in one year, but all of them are on healthy contracts and will end up in the 1% of net worth Americans by the end of their contracts. And this is ignoring players like Wong and DeJong who are on the cheaper part of their backloaded contracts and who will eventually have a net worth well over $8.4 million (I suppose in all cases assuming they don't piss it all down the drain on stupid things).
Clearly, there are far more than 30 active players in the 1%, regardless of how we choose to define that term, be it income or net worth. A fair number of them are actually going to end up in the 0.1%.
Lance Lynn, who's made several million up to his age thirty season, is not in the 1% in America.
"Several million" is easily the most [expletive] (and disingenuous) analysis of a baseball player's earnings I've seen yet.
The man has career earnings of just over $23 million. It doesn't matter how we define the 1%, he's in it.
Sorry.
Yeah, I'm sorry that I'm having to waste my time explaining what the 1% is to someone who doesn't know what it is, and acted like they did.
The ball is only going to keep rolling down the hill as players like Lance, who for the entirety of this decade have signed contracts near 100M without too much trouble, keep getting pushed further into a corner.
They're only getting pushed into this corner because they have made some terrible decisions in their CBA negotiations that effectively overpriced themselves in terms of labor
value.
and still the Ohtanis of the world will get paid as little as possible for as long as possible.
And the only reason the Ohtanis (aka international stars) of the world will get paid as little as possible for as long as possible is that the MLBPA is greedy and doesn't want them to earn their fair share, so they'll continue to seek ways to depress the international stars' wages. Not realizing, idiotic as the MLBPA are, that by depressing the wages of those international players, they are increasing their baseball
value and cost efficiency
exponentially.
This extolment of the MLBPA as virtues or paragons of labor is just tired nonsense, and it really needs to end. It is not an organization for baseball players in some general sense. It is not a union for the callups, journeymen, league average, bench warmers or international stars and pickups. It is an organization for the vets. It is an organization for the superstars. It is an organization for the Boras clients. It is not the friendly defender of baseball laborers.