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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Rich People Arguing About Money is Not "Winning"

I'm getting a little sick and tired of all these rich people arguing about staying rich or getting richer. Is anyone else feeling a little less sympathy towards people complaining about money when they probably already pay 6 figures in taxes?

Here are a couple of recent cases:

Charlie Sheen: If you look at his twitter account, he calls himself an "unemployed winner". Yet he lives in a very lavish estate and continues to kvetch about his lack of work. Sorry, Charlie, you get no sympathy from me. I mean, you were fired because of your own stupidity. There are few people who can show up to work intoxicated and still expect to have a job. There are even fewer that can scare a hooker into locking herself in a hotel bathroom and make it out of the situation with a paycheck.

Two of the hour-long specials have now stated his monthly child support payments. I don't care, Charlie. It's not my responsibility to help you get a job because you have 5 kids and two live-in goddesses to support. Show up to work. Do the job. And stop being a baby. If you did all that and didn't make enough, I'd still probably not feel sorry for you because there are millions of people all over the US in far worse situation with far more education and far more to contribute to society than a few catchphrases.

NFL Players and Owners: The lowest paid member of your players union and the lowest earning NFL owner still makes about 10 to 100 times more than the average person. If I got into a labor debate with my company, I certainly wouldn't expect you to care. So, why should I care that you can't decide which side has more money? I don't and neither do most fans. What we have figured out is that you all want us to love you because in the end the extra money you want to make is coming out of our pockets in the form of higher ticket prices and increased concession stand charges. And probably higher taxes when you need a new stadium.

I absolutely adore football, but I'm tired of hearing each side whine. It feels like a back and forth battle for public opinion when the public opinion is this: We want football. We pay about $9 billion to support football. Split it up however you want, but just make sure there's football.

I keep hearing that they're about a $100 million apart in negotiations. If they really want to "be there for the fans", how about taking that $100 million and giving it back in the way of discounted tickets? Don't want to play 18 full season games? Fine. Stop charging full season price for the 4 pre-season games and make the games free scrimmages for fans who can't afford to watch the NFL in person.

Oddly enough, no one wants to give back money. Weird. I think the US needs to collectively bargain. You can always vote with your dollar. For me, I'm not going to support Charlie Sheen, but that's not a big change. I didn't watch his show and the only movies of his that I've seen were Major League and Young Guns, so I'm in the clear on that one.

As for the NFL, I'm waiting to see which side offers me the best deal before I figure out where my vote is going. So far, no one is WINNING!

1 comment:

Nicole said...

Word! (PS - my captcha word is negatin... love it)

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