11-23-2009, 11:54 AM
sgtcarl1 Wrote:Just a quick question...couldn't the money be spent on something more beneficial to the general population? Why spend all this money to inflate, (or deflate) some scientist's ego?
Lets put this into perspective.
Annual Payrolls based on 09-10 Salary Caps
Professional Hockey Team = $57 million per team. 30 Franchised Member clubs = $1,710,000,000
NFL Team = $128 million per team. 32 Teams = $4,096,000,000
NBA Team = $58 million per team. 30 Teams = $1,740,000,000
Baseball Team = There is no salary cap, but Yankees superstar players earn yearly salaries close to (if not greater than) the entire payroll of some other clubs, the Yankees have been the subject of six of the eleven occasions the tax has been implemented. Some of those team payrolls are $100 million plus.
Here are the top paid players through the end of 2008
1. $198,413,252 - Alex Rodriguez
2. $188,245,322 - Barry Bonds (retired)
3. $167,550,019 - Randy Johnson
4. $162,258,269 - Manny Ramírez
5. $161,230,000 - Derek Jeter
6. $154,008,550 - Gary Sheffield
7. $153,845,000 - Greg Maddux (retired)
8. $147,353,682 - Ken Griffey, Jr.
9. $146,259,585 - Pedro Martínez
10. $144,533,619 - Mike Mussina (retired)
11. $134,299,000 - Carlos Delgado
12. $130,890,502 - Kevin Brown (retired)
13. $130,095,446 - John Smoltz
14. $128,639,293 - Tom Glavine
15. $128,134,019 - Jeff Bagwell (retired)
16. $125,058,996 - Jason Giambi (retired)
17. $124,068,000 - Sammy Sosa (not retired, but was not under contract in 2008)
18. $123,961,667 - Jim Thome
19. $122,550,270 - Mike Hampton
20. $121,001,000 - Roger Clemens
21. $120,176,002 - Mike Piazza (retired)
22. $117,552,133 - Chipper Jones
23. $115,073,932 - Iván Rodríguez
24. $114,158,000 - Curt Schilling (retired)
25. $110,363,431 - Larry Walker (retired)
26. $108,082,416 - Andy Pettitte
27. $104,634,000 - Frank Thomas
28. $103,100,001 - Bernie Williams (retired)
29. $102,433,410 - Andruw Jones
30. $100,616,066 - Shawn Green (retired)
31. $100,405,001 - Mo Vaughn (retired)
I'm not even going to bother adding those up.
I think you can see where this is heading. One could argue that instead of paying these individual players such exuberant salaries that we could instead as a collective society using that money and resources to better ourselves. For example the average wage for a medical scientist doing cancer research is $81,000 USD. With probably a small minority pulling in a 6 digit salary for those who are considered the top in their field. The average annual salary for physicists employed by the US Federal Government was $111,769 in 2007; for astronomy and space scientists, it was $117,570.
For the 2009 fiscal year, the base budget of the Department of Defense rose to $518.3 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending, supplemental spending, and stimulus spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion.[1][2] Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $274 billion and $493 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $925 billion and $1.14 trillion in 2009.
Hardly a drop in the bucket when you start doing the math on where the rest of the money goes.
Now don't get me wrong I'm not some tree hugging, flower picking hippy. I like the Military, I support the Military and the idea that in this day age we certainly need the Military. Its just that when I take a look at the big picture, I see a species of beings with some sorely misplaced ideals and priorities in this world.
I don't see CERN as a waste of time or money. How exciting would it be for us to figure out the fundamental forces that created our universe, our atoms, our structure, the "glue" that hold it all together so to speak, and in a span of time so mind boggling huge that our little minds could never truly comprehend.
We can either remain ignorant about these things or just begin to scratch the surface in a feeble attempt to learn, "all that there is to know".