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Football players earning more than Doctors - is this right?

How do you feel about professional football players earning much, much more than doctors? Is this morally correct? What are your opinions?
Can this be justified?
Would love all of your opinions, thnx.

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Yes, I am a doctor, and I think it is justified due to the huge amount of revenue that professional football generates.
Football players work very hard, I don't think the majority realise how hard they work, they see them on the pitch and think that's it, that being said a doctor also works extremely hard and does what's arguably a much more beneficial job, but at the end of the day footballers are celebrities, and celebrities get the chunky dough.
Supply and demand.
People care more about football than healthcare so... yeah, it makes sense.

I mean, I personally don't really care about football and find it amazing that people actually pay to watch grown men cry and roll around on the ground, but that is what the people want so.
Reply 5
Avatar for Drewski
Drewski
19
If they were paid out of the same pot you'd have a case for it being weird.

But they're not. So it's redundant. An old, clichéd and pointless argument that's been had about 35,000 times before.
I believe in a more equitable distribution of wealth in society in general. I don't have a specific gripe about footballers earning more than doctors.

The footballers vs doctors/nurses/soldiers question really misses the point imho.

Footballers are hardly the pinaccle of mind boggling extreme wealth anyway - Jeff Bezos anyone?
Original post by TheNamesBond.
Football players work very hard,

No they don't. They run around a bit and when tackled roll around on the floor, unlike their female counterparts.

They are worth their money from a pure economics pov but their value to society as a whole is not equal to what the earn.

And on a scale of hard work, they don't really work very hard at all.
Reply 8
Avatar for Drewski
Drewski
19
Original post by ByEeek
No they don't. They run around a bit and when tackled roll around on the floor, unlike their female counterparts.

They are worth their money from a pure economics pov but their value to society as a whole is not equal to what the earn.

And on a scale of hard work, they don't really work very hard at all.


They are elite athletes, they work extremely hard. Just because it's a different kind of work that doesn't necessarily rely solely on brain power does not mean it's not work.

You go run the bleep test until the tape runs out and say that's not hard work.
Original post by Drewski
They are elite athletes, they work extremely hard. Just because it's a different kind of work that doesn't necessarily rely solely on brain power does not mean it's not work.

You go run the bleep test until the tape runs out and say that's not hard work.

Its not hard work. Shovelling coal for 16 hours a day, 6 daysca week until you die aged 30. That's hard work. Running a beep test is just fun. And in sporting terms just watch how the slow pace of a football match compares to a hockey match.
😂😂😂 the disrespect and the lack of knowledge on this thread bewilders me. Think most of you, who have probably never done a sport do not realise that footballers have worked all of their lives, day in day out to get where they want to be. That’s hard work surely? They also train and do fitness endurance 6/7 days a week, don’t get to see family / friends around Christmas and in the week, get death threats on social media, have to maintain a profile. But clearly they all “dive and cry”
Original post by ByEeek
Its not hard work. Shovelling coal for 16 hours a day, 6 daysca week until you die aged 30. That's hard work. Running a beep test is just fun. And in sporting terms just watch how the slow pace of a football match compares to a hockey match.

Then you go do it...

At the pro level it's a workout at an extreme level that requires incredible fitness and dedication. Way beyond that of an Olympic level athlete - and must be maintained for far longer.
Reply 12
Avatar for Xarao
Xarao
20
Original post by Drewski
Then you go do it...

At the pro level it's a workout at an extreme level that requires incredible fitness and dedication. Way beyond that of an Olympic level athlete - and must be maintained for far longer.

Not sure why you guys are feeding the troll.

Clearly @ByEeek is messing around. Almost anyone can shovel coal for 16 hours a day, but not everyone can be a professional athlete and remain at the top of the chain /end
Original post by Drewski
Then you go do it...

At the pro level it's a workout at an extreme level that requires incredible fitness and dedication. Way beyond that of an Olympic level athlete - and must be maintained for far longer.


If you say so - but just for a point of information - most Olympic athletes these days are no longer amateurs in the sense that they are paid to train and train full time.
When there is a mass exodus of doctors leaving the medical profession and joining the Premier League as footballers in search of higher salaries, then we might consider paying doctors more and footballers less.

Until then, what's the point? Doctors' salaries at the moment are already sufficient to attract more than enough people into applying for Medicine.
Original post by tazarooni89
Doctors' salaries at the moment are already sufficient to attract more than enough people into applying for Medicine.

At the moment the vacancy rate for doctor's jobs is >10% and rising.
Original post by nexttime
At the moment the vacancy rate for doctor's jobs is >10% and rising.


That may be true, but I don’t think we need to offer footballer-level salaries to solve that.

Salaries are already high enough to incentivise huge numbers of people to want to become doctors. Just think of the number of good candidates applying for medicine at university and failing to get in.

Lack of medical school places, higher than expected migration of doctors to foreign countries, more doctors than expected taking time off work or going part-time etc. are probably bigger limiting factors.
(edited 4 years ago)
Original post by tazarooni89
That may be true, but I don’t think we need to offer footballer-level salaries to solve that.


It would probably work though :tongue:

So do you not think that the 22% pay slash doctor's have had in the last 10 years is relevant at all?
Original post by nexttime
It would probably work though :tongue:

So do you not think that the 22% pay slash doctor's have had in the last 10 years is relevant at all?


I do think it’s relevant, especially when it comes to doctors choosing whether to work in the UK or elsewhere.

You probably could increase the number of man-hours worked by doctors by increasing their pay, but long before their salary matches that of footballers, there would come a point at which either we have all the doctors we need, or where pay is no longer the limiting factor.


Ultimately I don’t see the relevance of comparing doctors’ salaries with footballers’ salaries. They’re completely different professions, requiring completely different skill sets, attracting completely different types of people, with almost nobody ever switching from one profession to the other, and also one being private sector whilst the other is mostly public sector...

I would have thought the only relevant metrics when determining someone’s pay would be supply vs demand, and affordability.
Original post by tazarooni89
Ultimately I don’t see the relevance of comparing doctors’ salaries with footballers’ salaries. They’re completely different professions, requiring completely different skill sets, attracting completely different types of people, with almost nobody ever switching from one profession to the other, and also one being private sector whilst the other is mostly public sector...

I think its a fundamentally interesting observation about how our society works. Obviously you could pick a whole host of other, better examples - train drivers vs nurses, hedge fund managers versus full time carers, etc.

But I also agree that if you accept the free market as underlying most of our economy, then you have to accept wages may not necessarily reflect the work being done.

I would have thought the only relevant metrics when determining someone’s pay would be supply vs demand, and affordability.


Only then there's a true free market surely. The NHS is a monopoly. It can suppress wages to a far greater degree than say an individual football club could.

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