[lbo-talk] Slavoj Žižek . The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie: The New Proletariat

[// ravi]

On Jan 25, 2012, at 4:04 PM, Eric Beck wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> 
>> It is arguable that the 5 highest paid athletes in Baseball & Football are
>> the most exploited workers in the u.s.. Exploitation is a technical not a
>> moral question.
> 
> I don't follow baseball or football, but I do follow basketball, and
> someone did a study recently that showed the really big superstars in
> the NBA, the 15 or 20 most known players, produce astronomical amounts
> of money for their franchises, merchandisers, and tv networks. I'm
> using numbers that are not precise but more or less correct, but
> LeBron James produced something like $120 million while only having a
> salary of $16 million.

I don’t want to go too far down the line of argument on whether rich athletes are exploited or not, because I don’t think it’s central to Zizek’s point, but:

Is the above true? I don’t know how they came up with the number, but Forbes says that NBA franchises made on average $8 million per year over the last five years (I suspect LeBron makes more than that) and the most successful ones (Bulls, Knicks, Pistons, …) made about $37 million. That’s not chump change but well short of $120 million. Of course it’s possible the $8 million number does not include merchandising and such. I don’t know.

At any rate, the reason I don’t want to go down this path is that if we truly believe “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”, then it seems a bit misdirected to worry about the missing millions of NBA stars (which is not the same thing as suggesting that they be demonised).

	—ravi (can’t believe I am defending Zizek! :-) And no, I am not!)