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Seems Goodell ain't exactly feeling the economic pinch these days....


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Most CEOs aren't doing all of their own deals either.

 

Right but they oversee the guys who do complete the deals. In Goodell's case his bosses, the owners, handle that sort of thing. Goodell is responsible for disciplinary issues, dealing with the union outside negotiations, marketing, resolving conflicts between clubs, expanding carriage of NFLN, etc. The league is hugely popular and making record profits. But it isn't due to RG. 

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No different than any CEO of a highly succesful company...

 

Actually, it's quite a bit more, unless by "highly successful company" you are referring to the top 5 paid execs in America.  Because that's where his salary would rank him according to last year's numbers.  Of course, the NFL is not a publicly traded company...

 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/30/business/executive-compensation-tables.html

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I have no issues with someone getting as much as they can, when they can, as long as they come by it honestly.  You're worth what people think you're worth, and you have the opportunity to better yourself and move on to better paying jobs if you apply yourself.

 

 

I'm far more, let's say judging, of what they do WITH it.  Do they hoard it and live lavishly, or do they count their blessings and use some of it to make the world a better place?

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I have no issues with someone getting as much as they can, when they can, as long as they come by it honestly.  You're worth what people think you're worth, and you have the opportunity to better yourself and move on to better paying jobs if you apply yourself.

 

 

I'm far more, let's say judging, of what they do WITH it.  Do they hoard it and live lavishly, or do they count their blessings and use some of it to make the world a better place?

 

Not accusing you of this, but many people who would say such a thing will also turn around and tell you unions have too much power.

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I have no issues with someone getting as much as they can, when they can, as long as they come by it honestly.  You're worth what people think you're worth, and you have the opportunity to better yourself and move on to better paying jobs if you apply yourself.

 

I have major issues, the reason being your definition of "people."  Who are these people?  Forget the NFL for a second, but elsewhere...

 

Do the thousands of employees of a given Major Corporation have a say in what their CEO is worth? Or is it just the cabal of Board Members who are lavishing each other in wealth in their mutual little circle jerk of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" self-reward.  Wages have actually not gone up one iota in the last 40 years when adjusted for inflation, while corporate profits have ballooned.  As it turns out, these profits are nothing more than the "savings" of the "increased productivity" that has come with keeping these wages low (more specifically getting labor to work more time for less money). These profits, rather than being used to reinvest and grow the economy, have been used to enrich the executive class who drive this growing inequality. And Corporations have zero national allegiance, and will take even more away from labor (shipping jobs to say, China) at the drop of the hat if it means they can hoard a little bit more for their executive class.

 

And you may say that that's not your problem, but virtually every study shows that the wealthier someone is, the less likely they are to spend a greater proportion of that money (and instead save more). In other words,  the daily worker with a limited salary invariably spends the majority of what he makes, and would continue to do so in a proportionally much greater amount with any increase.  The wealth guy, on the other hand, ensures that, like the Monarchs of the Feudal era, he will sequester huge sums of capital from the economy so as to ensure that his progeny remains forever enshrined among the "elites."

 

As a result, the economy as whole (which in the US's case, is an economy driven by consumption) slows down, and that effects almost everyone - except the absolute richest who are far removed from the pinch - and who are responsible for it in the first place (nevermind the Jobs issue).

 

Free markets are a good idea.  But once the balance has been shifted by a bunch of collusive powers, it can become highly destructive.  The irony is that, in America, Capitalism has been defined as the opposite of Communism/Socialism, and therefore as universally good (a funny trick played by the US government in the cold war was to focus on Communism's anti-religious doctrine (Marx wisely noted that Religion could serve as "opium" to the people, numbing them to injustice and difficulty in this life for the promise of greater reward in the after-life), and so align Capitalism with, in our case, Christianity - thus forming the moral opposition that many Americans, without realizing it, have to anything that questions Capitalist doctrine (in other words, Marx nailed it).  The only greater irony than that is that the typical American worker (and in particular the less wealthy ones in Red States) feels personally threatened by any suggestion of limiting "capitalism," when in fact doing just that presents them their only hope of ever breaking the cycle and climbing out of their morass.

 

 

I'm far more, let's say judging, of what they do WITH it.  Do they hoard it and live lavishly, or do they count their blessings and use some of it to make the world a better place?

 

I'd agree, but I think you're still talking degrees of lesser evils.  Our greatest philanthropists at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century were called Robber Barons for a reason.  In fact, it's widely believed that they gave as much as they did to public institutions as acts of restitution for their prior misdeeds. And if you take into account the argument above, the accumulation of wealth has broader economic destructiveness, which, IMO, isn't rectified by providing Malaria drugs for Africans for example.

 

I do applaud the group led by Warren Buffet, and now including Bill Gates, of Billionaires who have pledged to give away most of their wealth (by most, let's understand that giving away 99% of it will still leave their descendants 400 years from now wildly wealthy), but is that what we've come to?  It all seems backwards to me.  If they want to really put their money to use, they could form a lobby of their own that would pay off congress (because that's what it is, let's face it) to amend the Constitution to in order to reverse the Supreme Court Decision of 1886 that recognized Corporations as Persons, with the same inherent rights (probably the single worst ruling in Supreme Court History, and The One which, when we look back After the Fall, we'll look back to as the beginning of the end:

 

http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/the-supreme-court-still-thinks-corporations-are-people/259995/

 

Greed, aided by unfettered and unregulated "Capitalism," has become the new Global religion.  If we don't come up with an alternative soon (like one that values quality of life over quantity of acquisition, say), we're all going to kill each other as we fight for the last few scraps at the table.

 

Pope Francis has it right - just like Marx did (Marx, by the way, was an unbelievable diagnostician; he was a terrible prescriptor). We have a moral imperative to do what we can to stop the growing concentration of wealth, unfettered capitalism, and lack of corporate regulation.

 

So yeah, Goodell policing players for their conduct off the field is hypocritical given the amount of money he pays himself.

 

QED

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