[Demongod86]

I'm not going to point blame. I'm stating facts. Athletes get paid far more than regular people. And no, they don't necessarily need to receive a zillion dollars because they're athletes. This is where the concept of taxation comes in. If there was an arbitrarily large tax on the absurdly rich professions such that their salaries were that of a regular worker, (re: no more than $1,000,000 net pay annually, that is, how much they actually get to pocket after their bills and all, and that's still dramatically high...a regular job might pocket maybe $20,000), then the government would probably have a ton more money as well, and quite a few problems would be solved.

Yes, I've heard the economic shpiel that athletes are far less in demand than college professors, but there are FEWER STILL that "qualify" for the job, so the few that do get paid exorbitant amounts of money, at which point I say that a tax can be instated to create deadweight loss for the athletes while funneling that money somewhere else besides buying fancy houses or planes or yachts.

Get the idea now?

BECAUSE Cory Lidle had the money to buy airplane, and BECAUSE he had the money to pay for flight lessons, he flew plane. Since every flight has a probability of crashing, heightened by flying low, heightened still by flying in an area full of HIGH RISES (WTF was he thinking?), then he got what was coming.

It's all very cause and effect. If someone has an arbitrarily expensive hobby which on top of that could get them killed, well, tough crackers.

Heck, what if you heard on the news that two random people were street racing when oh no, they ran in front of a train and died? Would that be tragic? What if it was two sports cars bought by two big-name athletes?

Come on, people...cause and effect here. If you're going to do something risky such as fly a plane around in low altitude over NYC, you better be damn good. Especially if it's an expensive hobby...

And about jealousy, yes, I sort of AM jealous because I don't understand why the heck my parents, me, everyone around me, etc... has to go and bust their ass from age 17 to 67, try and get good grades to get into a great school, to get as good of a job as they can possibly get, and then still just be some LOL relatively low-paid member of society compared to the big shots, when some guy that his whole life has just been training to swing a bat gets paid millions.

"Oh gee, look at me, I swing bat and hit ball, pay me millions!"

Hey, isn't that what we did as little kids playing wiffleball in the school playground?

This is why I'm not so hateful of people like Donald Trump or Robert Kiyosaki or Bill Gates...because they're SMART and make the GOOD DECISIONS TO GET THEIR WEALTH. If every businessman was as good as Trump or Kiyosaki, they'd ALSO be rich. Not just "oh, me swing bat and hit ball!" or "oh, me read script and look pretty!"

And also, which girls go to hollywood or get their own CDs? Not the best singers or actresses...just the ones which are found in the right place in the right time. That element of luck is what I believe makes anyone in the entertainment industry lucky, and which is why I shed no tear for anyone making an exorbitant salary for doing a glorified version of what kids do in elementary school for fun.