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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (320691)	1/15/2007 8:45:46 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576751

Communists under the old Soviet Union were not big on private contracting of economic activity outside the control of the state. You are saying its perfectly all right for rich owners to pay their players huge salaries and charge ticket prices only the well off can afford while taxpayers foot the bill for a portion of their overhead. That breaks down in to several different actions. I've already said I'm against the last part, the subsidies for stadiums. I'm against such subsidies. But the fact that my opposition has been futile doesn't mean that I think the existence of the subsidies should result in government control over the salaries. The subsidies are wrong (practically and morally), government control of the salaries would be equally wrong. The government doing one wrong thing doesn't justify it doing another. So since I don't support the subsidies the question than becomes am I "saying its perfectly all right for rich owners to pay their players huge salaries and charge ticket prices only the well off can afford"? The answer is yes. Well I guess it depends on what you mean by perfectly all right. I don't like high ticket prices, but I think that high prices are not an injustice. If I don't like the price I can choose not to pay it. Its also pretty silly that you call the players oligarchs. Oligarchs have political control and use it to their advantage. A-Rod, Jeter, Beckham, etc. aren't grabbing the wealth through their existing political power. They are providing their services for market value. The owners would be closer to oligarchs but they really aren't either. At worst they are a rent-seekers, special interests seeking government hand-outs. They don't really exercise control. The more I communicate with you the more I see that you are more concerned with protecting the wealth of the very rich rather than following sound economics. Wage and price controls, and high taxes, and the other things I've opposed are very unsound economic policies. You think its perfectly all right to subsidize A-Rod's ridiculous salary with gov't money? The government doesn't directly subsidize A-Rod in any significant way. It might subsidize his employer, but that doesn't give the government a right to control A-Rod's salary. Should the government be able to control what employees of government contractors can earn (if there is nothing in the contract about employee compensation)? Should the government be able to control every penny spent by someone on public assistance because some of his income comes from the government? Of course not. The government might be wrong to spend money on stadium subsides, but that doesn't give it the right to control that money and what it done with it downstream forever. an example of collusion between a private party and the gov't at the expense of the taxpayer. I know you don't understand but that's a form of corruption. Corruption on the part of the owner perhaps, but not the player. If the corrupt act is legal the government doesn't properly gain any control by it except the control represented by any threat to remove the subsidy. Its similar to the proposed "bridge to nowhere" (except at least in this case more people will get to enjoy a new stadium). The government paying for the bridge would be unwise, and maybe even corrupt. But the fact that the government shouldn't give out such a contract, doesn't properly give the government the right to control the company outside the limitations imposed by the contract and existing law. If the government had a right to control whatever it subsidizes, and it frequently exercised such a right, we would all be in trouble considering how common government subsidize are.