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We are all painfully aware of this ........... however on Cuba a doctor will earn 20 US $ a month .... but a waiter or taxidriver in the touristindustry can earn almost 200 US $ a month because of tips from the tourists ........
Damn, I want to know what schools these $17,000 a year grad students are attending because I'm definitely at the wrong one.
Thats average stipend, some departments flush with cash give upto $24,000 a year. $1200 a month [after taxes] is just rent, utilities, food and gas. It was like poverty for me. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
They should have included football players on that chart...but unfortuately my screen isn't tall enough to display it. Talk about disparity. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I wonder where school teachers fall on that chart?
Who cares? Football coaches and players earn their owners hundreds of millions of dollars annually. If anything, they're underpaid. Kadark
I really don't think the argument here has any validity. A football coach works for a company that earns a huge amount of money. What would you want here the company to make more money and the coach to get less? The tax that the football coach pays in that kind of wage will also pay for many professor's wages. I do understand that it does not seem fair (my g/f is an academic, doctor). But people pay to be entertained and this happen on a mass scale and with a vast amount of cash, that cash is then used to make more cash via a good coach.
Obviously there are free-market reasons why they are paid so much. The point is that when the people who tell other other people how to throw and catch a ball are being paid ten times as much as the people who are actually trying to improve society and give us a better future, it indicates that society's priorities are screwed up.
If people stop buying the tickets/merchandise, the salary disparity will shrink. It's people like us who make the gap as large as it is. Kadark
I realize that, I'm just pointing out that it's a pretty clear sign that our society isn't able to set priorities properly.
And the generals and other politicos will be making millions of dollars because they control every dollor that Cuba takes in.
I think I read the national average was around 42k. That is roughly comparable to postdoc salaries (not fresh ones, of course, but maybe the average).
When my father was in college, undergrad late '40s early '50s, he was earning more money working in a warehouse handling drums of chemicals for hair tonic manufacture, labor on the factory floor, than his professors were earning at their tenured faculty positions. He mentioned that to one of them, and the guy laughed -said "I wouldn't trade jobs for twice your wages".
Why, of course. You are not in the academia for money (if you are then you are too bad in math to qualify Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!).
So who gets to decide what makes for a "better future," hmm? Apparently in your view, not the people themselves who are going to populate that future, because they're voluntarily paying for a future with more exciting sports and you think that's a really bad idea. So are you going to give the power to make this decision to the government??? The people who give farm subsidies to tobacco plantations? Or do you just want the scientists and other intellectuals in places like SciForums to be given the power to direct everyone else's lives? The people who caused the world immeasurable grief by inventing Windows! Oh wait, I've got it. Let's give it to the priests! Nobody enjoys deciding the future of the whole human race more than those guys. (And they are indeed all "guys," aren't they?) And of course they are so remarkably skillful at it. How would you feel if that money were going into music and the other arts? Would that be a more worthy use of our resources? Does a vibrant community of singers, dancers, painters and sculptors make a "better future" than exceptional athletes? Of course I think so because I'm a musician and my wife is a writer. But I try not to force my values on others. Civilization derives huge benefits from sports. It encourages people to keep themselves in good physical condition. It gives them something trivial to disagree about so when the game is over they can walk out and still be friends. It gives them a controlled outlet for violence. It's especially good for children, who are getting fatter and lazier with every generation.
