We've Got Money in All the Wrong Places

This is a topic that really gets under my skin, because it is growing into a larger and larger problem that no one seems to care about. People seem to accept this problem as just "how the world works," yet it makes absolutely no sense that our society has become this way. What I am referring to is the way some people in this world make millions of dollars to do something that society does not need and does not require that much work, and there are others whose jobs are crucial to our economy that are barely scraping by. We have become incredibly backwards in out reward system throughout the world. One of the prime examples of this is in the field of acting. I am not trying to insult actors and say that their jobs don't require work, but lets be serious here. It is not that hard of a job. A lot of time is spent having other harder working people apply make-up to your face and pamper you before a scene, and most of your job consists of memorizing script that many actors usually forget on set anyway and have to be reminded. It is true that some movies require a large amount of dedication on the actor's part to get into character or require them to learn difficult skills, but most of them are actually pretty cool talents to learn and they are getting free training from top professionals of the field. Who hasn't wanted to learn how to sword fight from a professional? Along with this they get to travel to exotic venues for filming, and once the movie is released they are treated like royalty. The script has already been written so there is little creative genius needed (that is mostly on the director's part) and most characters consist of getting a chance to wear cool clothes and do things most people would never be allowed to do. I can't speak for everyone, but I personally do not find this to be an incredibly difficult or strenuous job. On top of all that there is no NEED for their role in society. They are a "want" and we would easily survive if that career disappeared (it just wouldn't be as fun). In other words, they are not incredibly important to the success of a culture, and in spite of all of these things they are still paid millions of dollars. Some make more in a year than what millions of others will make their entire life. Not only do they get the experience of a lifetime during filming, but then they get paid fortunes just to do it. While all this is going on we have construction workers who work their butts off doing things that are crucial to society, and they are barely paid enough to pay the bills. Get rid of all the actors and athletes in society and what happens? Honestly not much besides the fact that people would have to start talking to each other more often, and maybe read more books. It honestly would possibly even help society, and force us to be more creative for entertainment. Society has survived thousands of years without television or movies, so I think we would be okay. On the other side, try to remove all the construction workers, teachers, and public maintenance workers and see what happens. After even a small amount of time things would start changing drastically and not for the better. No knew buildings or roads would be created which isn't a big deal, but this also means that the current roads and buildings will need to last forever. There will be no more maintenance crews so all the natural decay and human-created filth would start adding up exponentially. Our society would be incredibly ignorant with no one around to give us professional educations, so the only lessons learned were from experience or family teaching. Everyone should agree that this would be a bad idea to have our youth raised merely by the knowledge their parents have, and this is why we have produced trained professionals who devote their lives to teaching people. Oh wait....a bunch of people already make this mistake? Homeschooling is real? Oh my apologies, I guess that last point wouldn't be a huge difference. So it should be pretty clear that these jobs are far more crucial to society's success, yet most of these positions are held by people in the lower and lower-middle class. Things just don't add up when we will pay an athlete who is only there to entertain us almost 90 times more money yearly (average professional athlete salary is $3.19 million a year and average teacher salary is $35,672). This means that for every football player or baseball player there could be 90 more teachers in the workforce or 45 more teachers making far better pay that they deserve. NBA players are at the highest end of the spectrum averaging $5.15 million yearly which is 144 times more than the average teacher in the US. For all the teachers reading this, or anyone making around the $30,000 to $40,000 a year range, what would it be like if your salary was doubled? This could be a reality for 144 people if we would get rid of one NBA player, or even just lowered their salary to something far more logical. I won't do this with the acting profession, because I am aware that there is a large majority in the acting field that make very little money if they can find work at all. When I speak of "actors" and getting paid too much I am referring to the Hollywood Actors and Actresses that are paid millions each year, and the ones that the public immortalizes. For an average movie Will Smith will make between $20 million and $35 million dollars. Lets say that that movie took three years of his time to make and it was a very rare case where he only did one movie at a time (most actors work on several movies at once and some take less time than three years while others take even longer). Even with these restrictions he makes between $6.67 million and $11.67 million a year. At the high end this is over two times more than the average NBA player and over 288 times more than the average teacher. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Will Smith and he ranks in my top three favorites for actors, but I do believe that he and many others are paid far too much. Most Americans are happy to even break the six figure mark and consider this a huge achievement while athletes go on strike when they are only paid a few million dollars instead of the six million they want. On top of this I see far too many screw ups in sports to think for a second that these athletes deserve that kind of pay. I have seen just as good of playing being done by high school athletes who don't get paid a dime to do it. We need to pay more to the people who deserve the money and start basing salaries off of importance and level of difficulty of the job.