Childhood's End

I heard on ESPN radio that the Dodgers offered Matt Kemp, a free agent this year, an eight-year contract worth $160 million. Whoa! That’s a lot of money. The Florida Marlins’ entire payroll last season was $50 million. And now the Dodgers are willing to pay out to one player $20 million for one year, and then seven years thereafter. These numbers just don’t make any sense. The NBA players and owners are squabbling over $5 billion television revenues, each wanting more than half the pie, neither willing to give in to the other. I taught for thirty-three years for a total of about $800,000, and a professional basketball player sitting waaay down at the end of the bench on an NBA team, playing an average of two minutes a game, makes over a million a year. Something is out of balance. I’m not complaining, mind you. I’ve had a very good life, better than 99.9% of the people on earth. No complaints here. I just can’t understand why some people need to make hundreds of times more than they need. Why does Matt Kemp need $160 million? Why do CEO's need hundreds of millions a year just for heading large corporations? No wonder we’re having demonstrations all over the country asking the same questions. I still look forward to a time as seen in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End when money is a forgotten concept, when all needs through advanced technology are provided for, when no one has to work to sustain life, when work is a privilege and not a necessity, when each of us can use our time to pursue creative and intellectual goals. I hope we get to that point before we destroy ourselves.