Yes, and subtle changes in society have raised those false hopes which makes things even worse. For example, the move to 401k retirement packages has shifted the way people think about the stock market, making them far more anxious about it than just a decade or two ago which further benefits those few that really can take advantage of the markets as opposed to those who have their wealth tied in little chunks over vast swathes of the market. It lessens the oppositional urge or dampens the attitude to question big business as “we all” have a stake in their success in a very different way than before which has also worked with the decline of unions and the more open global marketplace to cause wages in real terms to decline, but as fancy consumer goods have gotten cheaper, people accept it even as part of the reason they are so cheap is that places like Walmart don’t pay anyone sufficiently for their time and don’t even get me started on the insurance industry or banking…
This is a terrible thread and I hope everyone feels bad for responding.
The trick is that people with money convince everyone that their interests are the same (lower taxes) and they gut social services that rich people don’t want to pay for and middle class people rely upon, at least in the United States. They’ve somehow convinced people that they shouldn’t have to pay to keep up the infrastructure that runs their businesses and they should get credits and incentives for everything they do. The funny part is that they get people to blame people who are taking a fraction of what they are from the middle class. In other words, the “welfare queen” is to blame for debt, not the fact that a country is in two wars and has yet to raise taxes to pay for it. The notion that a country would start a war and not raise money to pay for it would make previous administrations laugh their tails off. But somehow taxes have become as repulsive as pedophilia.
move to 401k retirement packages
Ironically and indirectly, you can thank liberal Republican Jacob Javits for that bit of chicanery as ERISA gave corporations the motivation to shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, shifting more risk onto the particpants.
This shit is complicated, eh?
Well the way I see it anyone who can take me out of my sad, small, pathetic life for a couple hours really deserves to make more in a day or filming that my annual salary. I mean a moment’s fleeting enjoyment for me is worth it as long as I can see my favourites wearing the latest Gucci on the red carpet. Besides I heard last week on Dancing with the Stars cancer was in decline now anyway.
I don’t understand how people can actually love actors and actress so much when they have done nothing to improve society, whereas police officers and doctors save lives, and they don’t get nearly as compensated for their hard work. Tom Hanks goes to a movie set and reads some lines and gets paid millions, while doctors go to work to pay off they’re college loans. Where is the justice in that?
What is it with comments and quotes and etc. — my comment got totally erased.
I wanted to say — what’s justice when it comes to pay?
Studios are private businesses and are not accountable to the public for their spending. Anyone who works as a member of the government and/or is a public employee IS. Tax dollars are spent on our compensation, and we are therefore subject to scrutiny for it. I very much think the public would raise their eyebrows if public employees such as police officers were making the millions that Hollywood actors are.
i know.
doctors are so underpaid.
Simple answer: supply and demand.
Movies involve millions of dollars.
There’s a very long complex answer to your question involving the star-system, and studio financing (your question has to do w/ almost exclusively of hollywood studio-financed films, where the Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts or whomevers are at the very tippy-top of the food chain) but I don’t have the energy to type it all out. I agree that a doctor who saves your life has more apparent value than a movie star but it is misleading to think that the profession of acting is necessarily lucrative. Most people in SAG aren’t earning enough to pay the rent if they’re working at all.
This is true – there are many, MANY actors who don’t earn much and worse, have a hard time working as actors at all. In this case, you can only really be talking about “stars” – not all actors.
Fuck it. I’m going the sophist route.
Doctors earn something more appreciable than money in good will. No doctor should go into the industry for the money, as their concerns should be for the welfare of the people they give a time-honored oath to take care of. Certainly the issue is not so much that they are not paid enough—but that there are not enough of them, since the doctors we have are typically overworked and overstressed.
Policepeople have the same good will income, though they should earn more than doctors because it comes at a huge psychological cost, the issues policepeople are confronted with almost daily. Doctors get to see some pretty depressing shit, but policepeople certainly have to see some of the scum of humanity on a regular basis. Nevertheless, police officers still do it for the social value of law and order, which is worth more than gold.
Thus, doctors and police officers alike who go into it for means other than the job’s own end, are corruptions of the status we hire them for.
Actors, however, do nothing positive, as the OP says. So what is the enjoyment, what is the earning of good will, what is gained by being an actor? Fame doesn’t count because it is evened out through the complete subtraction of personal space and a private lifestyle. An actor gives his or her entire life to something that has literally no philanthropic or goodwill value. Thus an actor should expect to get paid in return for an otherwise meaningless sacrifice.
—PolarisDiB
I love having a meaningless pursuit: experimental film will never be much appreciated and certainly never well-paid. It is the ultimate foolery, but I have to do it because it feeds me spiritually.
At least I’ve come to terms with that.
I refuse however, to wear bells on my toes.
high paid actors = artificial scarcity
Policepeople = artificial abundance
price=intersection of supply and demand
the answer is simple;
because art is not a basic element of life. health, security and food, such things are basicly necessary to maintain your life but art is not.
ART IS LUXURY.
so who makes art gets a high price for the job. if you do not interest in it, basicly you do not buy it.
P.S: and also art is unique. it’s not a thing that everybody can create.
This question was answered 5 posts in – why is this thread still going?
Because none of us are doctors or policemen, who have valuable work to do.
—PolarisDiB
But one of us IS a public sector employee, and therefore felt compelled to respond.
Acting isn’t something that takes years to master, its something that can easily be done by anyone, so why glorify it?
BAHAHAHAHAHA
You can’t be serious. This is starting to look more and more like a troll thread
I’m going the sophist route.
I never really cared for sophists…they remind me an early version of cynics and the nihilist copy-cats of Nietzsche.
In dark times going to the movies has saved my life more than once in fact I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Travolta for Michael, I went to this film when in deep grief and it started me crying which I did for three days then I started to come through it. So far in my life I have not had a policeman save me (although one fathered me) but I did have cancer and a surgeon assuredly did save my life on that occasion.
I thought actors got paid big bucks because they generate big bucks, the industry provides widespread employment, and it (and the actors are what makes " it" happen) brings pleasure and entertainment and all sorts of stuff to millions – sure it does seem obscenely a lot at times but no different to sportsmen, tiger woods got $30m for coming to Melbourne for a few days …but he generated a lot more for the city in tourist dollars etc.
MOST actors DON’T get paid more!
Because. just as sport stars, actors PRODUCE more money than doctors and such. They generate CAPITAL.
We live in a CAPITALIST society. Actors are paid in direct proportion to the money they generate. Thats why Crispin Glover does not get paid as much money as Reeese Whiterspoon. Your mistake is in thinking of Stars as human beings. They are not. They are ICONS. They are an ASSET in a money making machine. That is why Monroe, Bogart, The Three Stooges, Sinatra and all those dead actors keep making money long after their physical/organic death. As long as someone buys a James Dean T Shirt he is still a money making asset. Have you ever seen legal notices that say, about an actors photograph This image is protected INCLUDING ITS LIKENESS? Thats why Disney , dead actors estates, and all major media companies keep lobbying for longer and longer copyright protection for their media products. They will be making money of Mickey Mouse™ until hell frezees over.
WE do live in THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE.
PS-
As they used to say in NYC back in the 80s.
-You dont like it? Go to Russia.
“MOST actors DON’T get paid more!”
yeah but we are talking on this thread, about the ones that do I believe
This question was answered 5 posts in – why is this thread still going?
denial…
Why do fools fall in love?
Meg, we’re not talking about anything on this thread. It began with a generalization so expansive its original poster has long since removed himself from the meaningless fray.
Pharmaceutical company execs make a lot more money than actors.
The key is replaceability and the marginal difference between one applicant and the next. The difference between one doctor’s ability to save lives and the next doctor who wants his job isn’t as big as the difference between one actor’s ability to attract an audience and the next actor who wants his job.
Anyway, studies suggest that money only causes happiness up to a point. Once you get to the point where you can afford a pretty comfortable, independent living, the next dollar won’t bring you any further happiness. Actors get more money when they’re hot, but they don’t have anything resembling tenure. The only reason to make more money than a doctor makes is the competitive drive to ‘Win’.
I’m a lot more outraged by the frivolous malpractice lawsuits doctors have to put up with. No matter how well trained or careful a doctor is he’s occasionally going to make mistakes, and in that case he shouldn’t be dragged to court to have his competence questioned. Malpractice reform would cause a huge cut in medical costs, and a huge increase in quality of medical service.
As for police officers, they absolutely deserve more money. They don’t make a lot of money because they have public sector jobs.
I wonder that as well. I also wonder why athletes get millions a year, for just playing a sport.
I never really cared for sophists…they remind me an early version of cynics and the nihilist copy-cats of Nietzsche.
Yup.
—PolarisDiB
Robert W Peabody III
@ Greg X
AGREED.
The problem isn’t that a few make money, the problem is that the middle class believes that the system implies they WILL do that. Hence, they vote against their own self interest.
The problem as I see, is the lack of a redistribution based on income inequality.