Our society rewards laziness and ill-gotten money.

[Deja Q]

Companies that fleece the customer base: Check

Professional sports players getting big 6, 7, or 8 digit salaries just to run around with a ball somewhere (and get away with doing crimes the rest of us would be locked in the smaller for years too!): Check

Radio DJs who do nothing but whine and complain about people being lazy and not doing real jobs for 4 hours each morning, play golf for the remainder, then the next morning talk about how great their golf game was before complaining about people being lazy...: Check

Companies that fleece their employees (such as musicians*, for despite today's economy the dullards at the RIAA still want to blame piracy over no customers being able to afford $20 CDs of manufactured digitally modified tripe): Check

Companies, peers in our society, along with the media, seem to perpetuate a standard that is now deemed entirely acceptable.

Are there other examples?

Someone once said "Innovation is 1% observation and 99% perspiration" or something to that effect... of course, that was said during the time of slavery and the dude was probably a slave owner thinking he was the 1% while watching the other 99% toil under conditions worse than criminal.

Or where am I wrong?


* Mind you, some lawyers and the ilk who listen to the radio DJ whiners might be on the phone telling their musician client to get a real job... :rofl:

[madaboutharry]

1. Culture of mediocrity

Our culture rewards mediocrity. People who have little in the way of talent or principles but are adept at kissing ass will succeed over those who are principled and do a better job. An unwillingness to step over others comes at a very dear price. I believe it is always a choice.

[Deja Q]

3. By and large true too.

:(

Mediocre will always exist, as will talent and several other factors. "Human nature" is the encompassing term, but something less than human has warped what's acceptable in society.

Mediocrity can also occur when a person's basic needs are not met. Ironically, mediocrity can also occur if there is nothing to strive for. Yet if society used people in favor of their God-given gifts, I suspect mediocrity would go the way of the dinosaur and Republicans who claim to believe in God and act as if Satan is the one they should be impressing. (Note: Satan won't be impressed either way. Everyone and everything is mediocrity to him or worse.)

[madaboutharry]

10. "Ironically, mediocrity can also occur if there

is nothing to strive for".

I agree with this 100%

[Vinca]

2. Exactly right. A school teacher should be making A-Rod dollars.

A nurse should be raking in Limbaugh bucks. The guy who plows the road in the middle of an ice storm should be making out like a bank CEO.

[Deja Q]

4. A good teacher.

Bad ones need to find a better career, but as teaching also requires the kids to do the homework, parenting is also involved.

There should be set standards for what is deemed "good teaching". Just having all 40 students in class having "A"s is grossly inadequate. If kids aren't listening, that is a separate issue. Even the best of teachers can only go so far to attract students' attention.

Given the nature of today's students and the tolerance of the moronic concept "boys will be boys", teachers already deserve a far higher pay than what they do get.

[feedatree]

18. What is really disturbing is when they bash teachers

for wanting more than whatever measly wages they get. "Oh, they get off 3 months a year?!" Like they're deadbeats or something:(

[Donnachaidh]

5. Ever see the movie "Idiocracy"?

That has elements that I've seen NOW in the US public. Sometimes I think we need to change our National Anthem to Weird Al Yankovic's "Dare To Be Stupid".

Idiocracy is where we are headed. :shrug:

[seabeyond]

6. the whole medical fielding, doctors, hospitals and insurance screwing all of us

and then many of us not paying.

[Jeep789]

7. If Rush were paid for his productive value

he'd have to pay to work and he'd be receiving food stamps.

[Deja Q]

8. Exactly. He only whines and complains. Nary a solution or idea. He does not contribute to society.

(sorry for a one-liner response, I typically put in long, dreary responses to explain point x, y, and z. Then again, Rush is obvious. Sometimes right, but the he still only complains and not once to my knowledge offer solutions. Never mind how tighty righties tend to ignore certain issues (e.g. offshoring).)

[Hello_Kitty]

16. But he sells those nifty orange Gitmo shirts!

And he lets GIs pay to subscribe to his site so he can tell them what a great American he is!

:sarcasm:

[MadHound]

9. I think that your definition of work is too narrow

What are the real purposes behind major, or even minor league sports? First, to entertain the masses and second to sell advertising. Athletes, during their playing years, sacrifice their time and their body to accomplish both. During the playing season an athlete is working a six-seven day a week job. When they're not out on the field, they're either receiving treatment for the abuse that they put their body through, training for the next game, preparing for the next game, or working their body out in order to make it a more effective tool. Off season, they may slack off a little, but they are also getting surgery to correct damage that they inflicted on their body, rehabbing from the damage they inflicted on their body, training so that they are a more effective player, or working out to make their body a more effective tool.

Furthermore, an average athlete in football has a career of four years, with a median salary of $770,000. Hmm, $3.2 million in exchange for sacrificing one's body, and believe me, professional athletes do sacrifice their body. I played soccer and basketball in high school, along with racing bikes throughout my twenties, and even though these were minimal contact sports, without the intense play of the pros, I still suffer the long term effects of participating in these sports. My knees ache, and probably need surgery, my ankles and shoulder twinges, and probably needs to be cleaned out. And that's from only a relatively minimal amount of athletic involvement.

Yet athletes do their job. They sell advertising space during the game and in the stadium. They hock goods on their own, if they are lucky and talented enough to get that sort of recognition. If not, then they are limited to their salary. And after their career is ended, they are thrown back into the pool with the rest of us, except their body has been destroyed, they suffer from chronic injuries, and could possibly die from them at a young age. And while some are lucky, or recognized enough, or were smart enough to get a career after sports, many are limited either living off their earnings, small time sports related gigs, or crap jobs.

As far as radio DJ's go, they also have a job, and that's to sell stuff. It isn't to push a particular ideological viewpoint, their job is to sell shit to the masses. The most successful do so, and as they've found, the best way to do so is to by being controversial. Hell, Rush probably gets at least a third of his audience from Dems and libs turning on just to get tittilated or outraged, but that doesn't matter, because Rush is still selling advertising to them. The same applies to Hannity, O'Reilly, and Maddow. Outrage and appealing to the base emotions of humanity sells, which is why people like Rush cover that beat, and why they get the big bucks, because they sell. Maddow, with her more cerebral approach, doesn't appeal to the base emotions so much, and thus doesn't sell quite as well. Still and all, it's a job. They aren't lazy fucks, they're doing their job.

Sorry that you don't have the talent to sell lots of advertising. Sorry that selling advertising is valued so highly in this society of consumers. Back when we weren't a society of consumers, these professions weren't paid so well, athletes were paid a pittance forty-fifty years ago(in fact many of them had off season jobs to make ends meet). However if you can figure out a way to make your particular job sell lots of advertising, I'm sure that you would get paid a lot.

Until then, you're sounding like you've eaten a bunch of sour grapes.:shrug:

[Deja Q]

11. Well, infer what you want - from my OP and from my following response:

It's not my fault if you're broadening the definition of "job" because most of these people I mentioned don't seem to, or quote little things like "hard work", in rather vague ways as well.

Instead of vomiting your sour grapes onto me for merely mentioning a topic of discussion, why not ask the people who "make their living" by bitching on the radio what THEY mean.

:shrug:



(Forgive my sour grapes. The OP was an innocent question, free of any spoiled produce. Your response changed my ambient emotional state, however.)

[MadHound]

13. Frankly from this reply I'm not sure what YOU mean

Except that you don't like it that I pointed out that both athletes and commentators actually do real work, namely entertaining people and selling advertising. What, entertainment isn't real work? So much for Hollywood then. Selling advertising isn't real work? So much for Madison Avenue eh.

As much as you dislike it, "bitching on the radio" does indeed sell. So does appealing to base emotions and being controversial. In fact it sells quite well. Olberman and Maddow are more cerebral, and in a sad statement about our society, that doesn't sell quite so well, so while I'm sure they are paid handsomely, they aren't paid the obscene amounts that Rush gets.

Meanwhile, you slam athletes for not doing real work, yet as I showed in my previous post, they do indeed do real work, day in, day out. They draw in millions of people for entertainment purposes, and they are also good at selling advertising. That is their job, and they work hard at it. What is your beef with that?

Perhaps if you don't want to see athletes or radio commentators getting so much money, then perhaps you need to set out to change our society. Change it from a consumer based economy, change our entertainment preferences. But until you do so, and frankly I doubt that you will, we're going to have people who are willing and able to do those two jobs, entertain us and sell advertising. You can say that it is a sad statement that our society values these professions so much, but you have no basis for asserting that these people don't work. They do work, quite hard, and are excellent at what they do:shrug:

[Greyhound]

12. Not wrong, but why do you (and so many others) focus on the salaries of athletes

while ignoring the much greater take of the owners, not to mention the extortion they regularly engage in?

Sports generate huge sums of money (a national deficit, but another issue entirely), most of which is taken by people that nobody would pay to watch do what they do. The athletes are the attraction, but get a comparatively small percentage of the revenue.

[Deja Q]

14. Excellent point.

And if the players make **that** much, how come the owners demand state governments give them taxpayer money to builds stadiums? If what you say is the whole truth, then they've pulled up their own bootstraps time and again to not need... welfare.

Apart from whining to governors about getting big freebies paid for by us* and otherwise threatening to leave and take the team with them, what constitutes extortion on their behalf?



* The fleeced ticket paying fools -- for which I stopped going after 1993.

[MadHound]

15. I think a major part of this attitude is that most people think that athletes get paid

For playing a game. They think that pro football, or pro baseball is the same sport as what they do for fun out on the sandlot. They really have no clue as to the work that pro athletes put in, the way they sacrifice their bodies and frankly their lives. Pro sports is an entirely game from your local kegger leagues, and it's not just that there's no keg sitting at second base.

I think that many people are also blinded by the big salaries of the stars and don't realize that for every one making tens of millions of dollars, there are a dozen who are only making tens of thousands of dollars. Also, the fact that the average career of a pro athlete is exceedingly short, and then they're tossed in the trash, left with a wrecked body and few skills, left to fend for themselves.

[Still Sensible]

17. Well the double standard is what's frustrating

When right wingers and supply siders rail against people that are receiving some public assistance and paint them as lazy and irresponsible... meanwhile, many of those who achieve even a modest level of financial security are no less lazy and often irresponsible as well.

In challenging Andrew Sullivan's conservatism, a reader's dissent of the day:

"I believe you know perfectly well that liberalism doesn't believe in punishing success/wealth-creation any more than conservatism believes in perpetuating the wealth of the rich on the backs of the poor/middle-class. These are the types of lump descriptions that just drive me wild; everyone agrees that this country would be better if more of its people were successful. So, we disagree on the manner of achieving that outcome."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/02/dissent-of-t-16.html

Absolutely, some wingers do believe and promote policies that in fact "...perpetuate the wealth of the rich on the backs of the poor/middle-class." And for the better part of the last three decades that portion of the conservative movement has successfully implemented much of that agenda.

On the other hand, the reader is wrong to assert that there is no truth to the claim that "...liberalism doesn't believe in punishing success/wealth-creation..." because there very clearly is a portion of our movement that actively seek to promote policies to do just that.