To think the comparisons between nurses and footballers pay are bogus!

[BoysofMelody]

We have a visitor staying with us and I watching Match of the Day. After that tutting, she asked how much the players were paid? I said there was a huge range, but the average was about £40,000 a week. But the best paid earned over £250,000 a week.

Which was the cue for a moan I've heard many times before of: 'that's disgusting, do you know how many nurses that would pay for' ?

I couldn't be arsed arguing the toss and didn't want to spark a row, but it's such a bogus comparison, if footballers were paid directly from the same NHS budget as nurses they may have a point,but they aren't. If Premier League players had their salaries cut in half, it wouldn't result in a single extra nurse being employed or a single existing nurse getting a single extra penny.

Yes footballers are lavishly well paid, but they aren't paid from the public purse and are paid what the market will stand, at that very top level, those with rare skills are in demand from wealthy business across the world.

And why only footballers and nurses? No one seems to get their knickers in such a twist over the similarly lavish rewards for Formula One Drivers, Tennis and Golf players earn or pontificate on how many teachers could be employed on the basis of Rory McIlroy's earnings, or even other aspects of the entertainment industry? Why do people not get her up by how many social workers could be employed on what Daniel Craig was paid for the last Bond film?

Boysof I agree there is a very significant class aspect to this as well which doesn't get discussed. If most footballers were posh white men, I don't think the debate would be anywhere as prevalent or heated.

Footballers and entertainers are paid for their talent - which not everyone has - no matter how much we want it to be true, the reality is that we are not all created equal - some people are just good at some things. I would be a hopeless stand-up comedian, and most nurses are crap at football. They get paid because they have rare abilities - it's not fair, and it's not right, but they make money for other people - and, after all, if someone is brilliant at football, more power to them, say I - who's to say that's any 'better' than being a wonderful barrister, or politician, or surgeon - we need lots of different types of people. many footballer, for example, weren't great intellectuals at school, but they are talented in another way, entertain many - and delight us all with their 'too much money too young, spent in ways we don't approve of' magazine articles. Can't really get worked up about it :)

How much do nurses get paid? We are conditioned to think not enough, but how many people call for higher pay without actually knowing what the rates of pay are.
Last time I looked, the starting salary was about £22k pa. Not riches by any means, but there are lower-paid professions more deserving of public sympathy, I feel. For example, carers?

"What kind of fucked up society do we live in when someone who kicks a ball around for a few hours a day gets paid more than he could ever possibly need whilst someone who is literally saving lives and contributing to society in a meaningful way barely gets paid enough to support her family."

This.
When I heard how much the recent record transfer fee was (£200 million) I decided it is just an utterly fucked up world.

Out of curiosity, the poster who thought a better comparison was doctors' and nurses' pay, what would you do? Presume you would cut one to raise the other, but that's one hell of a presumption on my part.

There are hardly any footballers getting 250k a week. Maybe the top 10 or 20 in the world. They are literally the best players in the world. They are special and deserve it for their unique talent, hardwork and short career

@Boysof

I don't disagree we live in a grossly unequal society, but I do find it interesting that footballers are highlighted as the most egregious example of this, given that they by and large come from working class backgrounds and a large number from BAME backgrounds, have dedicated their childhood and youth to training, are required to keep themselves in peak physical condition and are absurdly, abundantly talented at the most popular sport in the world which millions play and have beaten almost impossible odds to make it to the top of the tree.

Also a relatively short career which could be ended with a particularly bad injury.

I follow a lower down team, one of the ex players mentioned there wage somewhere (I think it was in a newspaper article) and I was shocked that I was earning a very similar amount to him - I'm not in a hugely well paid job and he was a senior player in the team

I'm a teacher so in no way a high earner and I think football is out of control but....surely there's also the argument that the high salaries generate a lot of tax/NI and also support many smaller businesses. Where I live in London there are lots of enormous houses occupied by bankers/celebs. Outside these houses are a steady stream of decorators, gardeners, carpenters, specialist tradespeople etc etc. Just another POV!

The thing is we don't need footballers in the same way we do nurses. Nurses can also work much longer than footballers. Footballers have around 15 or so years before they're too old and retire. Nurses can work for much longer than that. That's the thing with sports - you spend so much time devoted to just one sport when most sportsmen are on the shelf by their mid 30s. Usain Bolt is retiring from the track and he's just 30.

Nobody deserves 250k a week.

The more footballers are paid, the more tax they pay, the more money available for the government to spend on the NHS (potentially).

I.e. logic could propose that high paid footballers = more / higher paid nurses.

They are just lucky that their talent is something that is often highly paid.

But they don't just play for 90 minutes, they have to train a lot and always be fit. They always have to eat right, their social life is restricted, drinking etc. They also have no choice but to give up their private lives, even the ones that do not want the fame side often have things about their girlfriends, wives, kids reported. And then their career is over at 35.

Nurses should be paid more but it's nothing to do with footballers.

Who cares, be happy with what you have.

YANBU at all it's a total non sequitur

If a club can afford 250k for a player because he wins games, trophies, brings inmarketing revenue, shirt sales etc i think it is easy to say he deserves it

Bollocks is it to do with class. People moan about "banker wankers" all the time.

I see this argument all the time but with armed forces instead of nurses. So many people can't grasp that the public don't pay for footballers. Football is big business, it makes billions upon billions of pounds.

We live in a very unequal society, paying footballers slightly less and public sector workers a bit more won't change that unfortunately.

'I don't disagree we live in a grossly unequal society, but I do find it interesting that footballers are highlighted as the most egregious example of this, '

I think it's just they have such terrible reputations, OK spreads etc and showing off. Formula one drivers don't seem to ram it down peoples throats quite as much as premier football players.

The more footballers are paid, the more tax they pay, the more money available for the government to spend on the NHS (potentially)

Haha most footballers will have their money tied up in tax saving schemes.

Furthermore there isn't an infinite amount of money in the economy. The more that goes to the rich, the less there is overall in the round.

Most of the comparisons of this kind don't really stack up. My pet peeve is the benchmarking of things against the Prime Minister's salary.

" I don't think they're generally from "poor" backgrounds"

They are certainly from 'ordinary' backgrounds, if not poor/disadvantaged.

Which I think shapes the vitriol in some cases. The difference in their beginnings when compared to their professional life, is vast and there is a resentment that they gone as far as they have,up the earnings ladder.

Whereas the people who have always had privilege, but are at the top of an unfair system, don't register. Likewise the greedy property developers and Landlords who make the lives of middle earners, such as Nurses, so much harder by pushing up the property market, get away with earning vast amounts money.

Footballers earn their money, by the effect their playing has on their supporters and that popularity makes the club money. I'm in Liverpool, so I see how people make Football their main hobby/interst.

What gets me is the people who post this stuff, often post stuff in support of the benefit cap/Bedroom tax/no CTC for more than two children.

So support the Nurses, but fuck the Cleaners, Porters, Nursing Assistants, lower admin workers etc.

I agree with somehow - they will pay a goodly chunk of that in tax

www.tsmplug.com/richlist/footballers-salaries-after-tax/

a footballer on the wages of around £200,000-a-week is annualy paying more than £6 million just in taxes

Nurses should be paid more but it's nothing to do with footballers.

Yes they should, after a decade of real-term paycuts, so should many others in the public sector. But as you say, nothing to do with footballers.

The 'short career' lifespan argument which gets trotted out as a riposte is hilarious -- let's see, which would you rather, (a) be paid obscene amounts of money in the full knowledge that you will have to retire at 30, maybe sooner with injury, but will never have to work again in your life, or (b) spend forty years on your feet dealing with the demands of A and E nursing, and earning, each year, a tiny fraction of what the top PL footballers get paid in a week?

I think some of the big footballer salary apologists also over-estimate how hard PL footballers have to work on their fitness. DH used to work for a PL club, and the squad comes in mid-morning on weekdays for training, eats lunch together, and goes home again immediately afterwards. A lot of the rest of the time they are not allowed to work out, and are supposed to be resting.

I find it more worrying that so many footballers have been convicted of assaults, drink-driving etc.

I think footballers are highlighted because a) there seem to be a lot of them compared to other sickeningly paid sportsy people and b) they seem to be, on the whole, some of the stupidest people one could ever speak to.
These people get paid obscene amounts of money for kicking a ball around, and most of them seem unable to string a coherent sentence together. Damn straight we should be wondering how the fuck we ended up with a society that values that a million times more than people who save our childrens lives.

Its not about the value that society puts on anything, what a ridiculous argument. Society does not pay for footballers, even footballing nurses (if there are any)

We are forced to pay for the NHS, we are not forced to watch football. Its the people who choose to watch that pay, and they are not society.