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Why do footballers get paid more than doctors??
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Original post by Ayesha.Tabassam95
Original post by Ayesha.Tabassam95
Fair enough but then how come even the rubbish players get paid more -well in most cases?
Because people pay to watch them too
The answer of course is that they do not. Doctors are paid more than footballers.
There are some footballers who earn many times what doctors do, but even in the countries with the best-paying top divisions you don't have to travel very far down the pyramid to find players earning 'only' a doctor's wage. They'd be glad of it at Lincoln or Shrewsbury, for example. You could work it out by squad numbers, perhaps basing your best guess on squads of 25, but my strong suspicion is that there are no more than 2000 footballers in England who earn more than doctors do, this where by doctor is meant a GP. There are thousands more footballers earning far less. and of course hundreds of thousands of footballers earning nothing at all and funding their own trips to Hackney Marshes.
This is only if you want to get an A, mind.
There are some footballers who earn many times what doctors do, but even in the countries with the best-paying top divisions you don't have to travel very far down the pyramid to find players earning 'only' a doctor's wage. They'd be glad of it at Lincoln or Shrewsbury, for example. You could work it out by squad numbers, perhaps basing your best guess on squads of 25, but my strong suspicion is that there are no more than 2000 footballers in England who earn more than doctors do, this where by doctor is meant a GP. There are thousands more footballers earning far less. and of course hundreds of thousands of footballers earning nothing at all and funding their own trips to Hackney Marshes.
This is only if you want to get an A, mind.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by fudgesundae
Just no.
Demand now is no higher than it was 30 years ago. Football has just become more commercialised. Seriously apart from the Premier League, you do not get many players earning more than doctors. The average in the the 2nd tier is a little over 200k per year. Not exactly astronomically more than Consultants in this country. Considering a player's career lasts 10-15 years, it isn't exactly a fantastic deal.
If the NHS was privatised, I reckon we would see a similar model. An elite of doctors raking in millions per year, with some doctors right at the bottom of the tree earning less than what they would expect to earn now. The system that the government places simply ensures that all doctors get paid roughly equal amounts. This has much more to do with private/state than supply/demand.
Just no.
Demand now is no higher than it was 30 years ago. Football has just become more commercialised. Seriously apart from the Premier League, you do not get many players earning more than doctors. The average in the the 2nd tier is a little over 200k per year. Not exactly astronomically more than Consultants in this country. Considering a player's career lasts 10-15 years, it isn't exactly a fantastic deal.
If the NHS was privatised, I reckon we would see a similar model. An elite of doctors raking in millions per year, with some doctors right at the bottom of the tree earning less than what they would expect to earn now. The system that the government places simply ensures that all doctors get paid roughly equal amounts. This has much more to do with private/state than supply/demand.
in order to pay more for football players - a club must have more money - are we agreed ?
just because the same number of people watch football , doesn't mean demand hasn't increased, people are willing and able to spend more on watching football, so clubs are more willing and able to pay more for footballers.
Original post by fudgesundae
This has much more to do with private/state than supply/demand.
+1 for you. what i was going to say, but better.
Original post by Moiraclaire
in order to pay more for football players - a club must have more money - are we agreed ?
just because the same number of people watch football , doesn't mean demand hasn't increased, people are willing and able to spend more on watching football, so clubs are more willing and able to pay more for footballers.
just because the same number of people watch football , doesn't mean demand hasn't increased, people are willing and able to spend more on watching football, so clubs are more willing and able to pay more for footballers.
Agree with your first sentence, then it all went downhill.
People would have been just as willing 20-30 years ago to pay for SkyTV etc to watch football, the technology just didn't exist/wasn't viable.
I don't completely disagree. It is partly to do with supply/demand. Obviously if no one wanted to watch them, then they wouldn't be paid this much. And there is a high demand for top top footballers. However if the footballing system were to be state owned, then just as many people would want to watch football (as the game itself wouldn't change), but the top players would not get paid as much as they are now.
So private/state plays a much larger role than supply/demand on footballer's salaries imo.
To other people:
You also need to stop looking at 1 footballer getting 250k per week then saying they are all overpaid. The salary distribution is positively skewed.
X-axis is salary, y-axis is number of players. There are a lot more players at the bottom than at the top.
For doctors it is more like this
Original post by Salu.
Nothing to do with economics. Its all business my friend.
Strangely enough, there's an amount of naive truth in this. It must be tremendously galling to be an ex-pro whose career ran out in the early 1990s. That's likely why Alan Hansen is so ungenerous toward the players of today: when he was playing for Liverpool in European Cup finals, he was earning something very like a doctor's salary. I mean, as much as a doctor would then have been earning. And of course that was terrific money for working class lads with little or no formal education. Supply of and demand for footballers hasn't really changed, or not much, though you could talk about the liberalising of transnational employement, especially within the EU, and about the Bosman ruling that has afforded players greater control of their contracts. The big changes here have come from satellite tv, expansion into global markets, and with the involvement of agents. You could spin it, then, to suggest that what informs the comparatively recent phenomenon of the mega-wage is not (classical) economics and is 'business', marking a distinction between the two.
Edit: I notice now that Fudgesundae was on page 2 making some of the arguments I've introduced on this page, in this post and my other. Oh dear, beaten again. + Rep for him, then.
(edited 12 years ago)
I think we're trying to compare apples and pears here. Footballers retire at 35ish. Doctors retire far later. Heck, for some extremely specialized fields they start their careers at 35!
Try and get a weighted salary over the life time of the two respective careers of the average earner, you will most probably find that doctors are actually paid relatively more (obviously we are not considering the very top premiership players who are on the very tail of the distribution and footballers who go on to be tv commentators or managers as the percentage is extremely low).
Try and get a weighted salary over the life time of the two respective careers of the average earner, you will most probably find that doctors are actually paid relatively more (obviously we are not considering the very top premiership players who are on the very tail of the distribution and footballers who go on to be tv commentators or managers as the percentage is extremely low).
Original post by fudgesundae
Agree with your first sentence, then it all went downhill.
People would have been just as willing 20-30 years ago to pay for SkyTV etc to watch football, the technology just didn't exist/wasn't viable.
I don't completely disagree. It is partly to do with supply/demand. Obviously if no one wanted to watch them, then they wouldn't be paid this much. And there is a high demand for top top footballers. However if the footballing system were to be state owned, then just as many people would want to watch football (as the game itself wouldn't change), but the top players would not get paid as much as they are now.
So private/state plays a much larger role than supply/demand on footballer's salaries imo.
To other people:
You also need to stop looking at 1 footballer getting 250k per week then saying they are all overpaid. The salary distribution is positively skewed.
X-axis is salary, y-axis is number of players. There are a lot more players at the bottom than at the top.
For doctors it is more like this
People would have been just as willing 20-30 years ago to pay for SkyTV etc to watch football, the technology just didn't exist/wasn't viable.
I don't completely disagree. It is partly to do with supply/demand. Obviously if no one wanted to watch them, then they wouldn't be paid this much. And there is a high demand for top top footballers. However if the footballing system were to be state owned, then just as many people would want to watch football (as the game itself wouldn't change), but the top players would not get paid as much as they are now.
So private/state plays a much larger role than supply/demand on footballer's salaries imo.
To other people:
You also need to stop looking at 1 footballer getting 250k per week then saying they are all overpaid. The salary distribution is positively skewed.
X-axis is salary, y-axis is number of players. There are a lot more players at the bottom than at the top.
For doctors it is more like this
Because we're paying for sky tv etc - we're spending more on football - i.e. demand is higher.....
But the point is it's not state owned - it's in the private sector where prices are determined by supply and demand...
I don't know what is so difficult to grasp,
you're not incorrect - you're just missing out the intermediate step between a more lucrative football industry and higher wages as a result....
Original post by Moiraclaire
Because we're paying for sky tv etc - we're spending more on football - i.e. demand is higher.....
But the point is it's not state owned - it's in the private sector where prices are determined by supply and demand...
I don't know what is so difficult to grasp,
you're not incorrect - you're just missing out the intermediate step between a more lucrative football industry and higher wages as a result....
But the point is it's not state owned - it's in the private sector where prices are determined by supply and demand...
I don't know what is so difficult to grasp,
you're not incorrect - you're just missing out the intermediate step between a more lucrative football industry and higher wages as a result....
I don't know what is so difficult to grasp either.
Supply and demand plays a role in it, but is not the major contributing factor. The fact that football is privately run means that prices are determined by supply and demand. So the determining factor in all this is that football is privately run hence wages are higher than those for doctors because it is privately owned not state run.
Original post by fudgesundae
I don't know what is so difficult to grasp either.
Supply and demand plays a role in it, but is not the major contributing factor. The fact that football is privately run means that prices are determined by supply and demand. So the determining factor in all this is that football is privately run hence wages are higher than those for doctors because it is privately owned not state run.
Supply and demand plays a role in it, but is not the major contributing factor. The fact that football is privately run means that prices are determined by supply and demand. So the determining factor in all this is that football is privately run hence wages are higher than those for doctors because it is privately owned not state run.
If football was state run wages would be lower because demand would be lower
ATM - demand is the season tickets and sky subscriptions etc that millions of people pay
If it were state run - it would be free - people wouldn't be spending on season tickets and sky subscriptions etc - the only demand would be how much government is willing and able to pay to the football industry.
- if private individuals spent as much on season tickets and sky subscriptions etc and football was owned by government - demand would be exactly the same unless government used some of that revenue to spend elsewhere in the economy. But people probably wouldn't spend as much on football if they knew that fact lols
Original post by Moiraclaire
If it were state run - it would be free
If it were state run - it would be free
would it be? Why? Royal Mail's not free, nor the leisure centre.
Original post by Ayesha.Tabassam95
Hi. Im doing an my discursive essay on the above for english. Anyone have any ideas?? I would really appreciate it 
A really interesting question:
The great majority of doctors earn similar amounts, whereas top footballers earn vastly more than those in the lower divisions. The reason is that many punters can watch the footballers, either live or on TV, so the best ones can ask a fortune, and the second rate are not needed. One doctor can only treat a few patients.
If you want to follow this up, look up Extremistan and Mediocristan - places invented by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Original post by fudgesundae
Read my above post. if the medical system were privatised, and there were little change in the supply of doctors, you would see some doctors pulling in millions with other earning pittances in comparison (just like in the US).
This has very little to do with supply/demand. The government could cut the number of places at medical schools and wages would change very little. If the government privatises the NHS, wages will change a lot.
This has very little to do with supply/demand. The government could cut the number of places at medical schools and wages would change very little. If the government privatises the NHS, wages will change a lot.
After thinking about it I agree with you. You are comparing the best footballers with the average doctor which doesn't make sense. You can use supply and demand to explain why a top footballer gets paid more than an average doctor which boils down to top footballers services being more valuable but I agree this is not comparing like with like.
Original post by cambio wechsel
would it be? Why? Royal Mail's not free, nor the leisure centre.
they're subsidised - cheaper than they would be otherwise - so this doesn't harm my point - demand would still be lower as less is spent on football than if it was solely private sector.
I really can't see what part of my point is remotely difficult to understand.
Original post by Moiraclaire
I really can't see what part of my point is remotely difficult to understand.
I really can't see what part of my point is remotely difficult to understand.
It's more than just a supply and demand issue, at least where talk of that is confined to the supply and demand of footballers.
20 years ago, 20 top division teams needed squads of 25 players = 500 players needed, and wanted the best players available. Today the same is true. There is no greater numerical demand for footballers, such that scarcity conditions have been created. But wages have over those 20 years increased vastly.
Original post by Nix-j-c
All football clubs are ran as businesses. the aim of business is to make as much money as possible . . . aims of doctors are to treat as many patients as possible to a high standard . . .
Although with these new NHS reforms coming in and privatisation, soon hospitals too will be run as businesses! And doctors may actually catch up!
Original post by thegodofgod
GCSE Economics.
High supply of doctors, low demand. Excess supply. Downward pressure on price for labour.
High demand for footballers, low supply. Excess demand. Upward pressure on price for labour.
High supply of doctors, low demand. Excess supply. Downward pressure on price for labour.
High demand for footballers, low supply. Excess demand. Upward pressure on price for labour.
How are doctors in low demand ?
Original post by TheStudent.
How are doctors in low demand ?
Well overall, their supply is higher than their demand. (Demand in terms of number of jobs available, not in terms of patients)
Original post by Moiraclaire
If football was state run wages would be lower because demand would be lower
ATM - demand is the season tickets and sky subscriptions etc that millions of people pay
If it were state run - it would be free - people wouldn't be spending on season tickets and sky subscriptions etc - the only demand would be how much government is willing and able to pay to the football industry.
- if private individuals spent as much on season tickets and sky subscriptions etc and football was owned by government - demand would be exactly the same unless government used some of that revenue to spend elsewhere in the economy. But people probably wouldn't spend as much on football if they knew that fact lols
ATM - demand is the season tickets and sky subscriptions etc that millions of people pay
If it were state run - it would be free - people wouldn't be spending on season tickets and sky subscriptions etc - the only demand would be how much government is willing and able to pay to the football industry.
- if private individuals spent as much on season tickets and sky subscriptions etc and football was owned by government - demand would be exactly the same unless government used some of that revenue to spend elsewhere in the economy. But people probably wouldn't spend as much on football if they knew that fact lols
I disagree. If the state were to get the revenues from SkyTV etc. it would not pay the players what they get paid now. Demand is the same (people paying for Sky just as much), yet the salaries would not be the same.
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