The paradox of the American Wage System
 

So was sitting around on my couch watching the Oscars and eating a bag of Cheetos when a thought struck me. "Why are movie stars bad millions of dollars a year?" I mean think about I mean sure it take talent and you have to look at least kind of good, but honestly is the ability to lie and look good really worth $10 million? It seems to me that people are willing to pay far more for things they want than they do for what they need. A police officer, who spends everyday he works with the genuine possiblity of being attacked and killed, gets payed barely enough to survive. Can anyone explain this to me because honestly I think this is my biggest problem with modern society.

Agreed. Although I don't consider this a paradox, I consider it stupidity. In my pondering of the same subject, though, I had to tackle this point: How many stars out there actually make $10 million per movie? (or even, $10 million per year?) I don't know if you could find a real accurate number, but it's not a really huge amount of people. Now how many police officers are there in the world? A LOT more? Same goes for firefighters, doctors, paramedics, and the whole shabang. Not only with actors, but also for sports stars. Some of those players make retarded amounts of cash. The silly diehard fans can claim they need to make more because a sports star life span is considerably shorter, and that is true, but those fans are also morons. They don't need hundreds of millions of dollars. Still, how many people in the sports industry make it big? Compared to the more common (and often far more difficult/deadly) jobs?

How many actors, models, and etc just barely struggle to get by?

I'm NOT saying I'm fine with the current situation, I'm just throwing some discussion points out there. I think there is a problem, and if it were up to me, there would be some bigtime salary caps on the sport and entertainment industries, while some of the more well-deserved industries could experience some salary increases. Partial equality, woo.

They make themoney because otherwise it would go to the film companies and they would get paid dick. People see the stars in the movies, not the company behind the film. When you go to a dreamworks film, do you think "Man, dreamworks rocks!" or "Wow, Kevin Spacey was excellent in that"?

Movies pull in billions of dollars every year, and movie stars just get their take ofi t. Are they worth it? No. But without the actors there wouldn't be a film industry, and if they only got paid $20/h while the studios just bathed in 100 dollar bills, when it was their own work that directly made the money for the studios (as opposed to a faceless cashier, data entry clerk, whatever) then they would put up an uproar. Completely justifiably, really.

Is it fair? No. But nobody knows about joe detective in NYC. People all over the world know about hollywood.

The less necessary a job is, the more it will pay (usually).

The farther one gets away from the basic level employee, the less necessary the position is. Or, to paraphrase what could be a long, extended, discussion: If one were to eliminate all the CEO positions in the world, how quickly would businesses fail? Quite a few never would, I suspect, but certainly none of them would fall fast. It would be a death through stagnation, if anything (but probably not even that). Conversely, how long could ANY business last without the basic employees? Most would last less than a month, if they were lucky. Consider a fastfood chain (like Taco Bell). The CEO does not affect daily business, indeed most locations could run perfectly fine without the entire overarching management system. Get rid of the basic employee, however, and business would grind to a halt that same day.

Society, stupidly enough, doesn't pay based on real worth, rather perceived worth. Same basic reason that gold is worth more than good steel (though, admitedly, gold is quite useful for electronics).

There's a simple answer to why actors get paid so much - there's a market for actors. The purpose of making films (other than art) is to make money - It's a business. If movies were not making millions of dollars, the actors also would not be making millions of dollars. Good acting will help sell a movie - that means there is competition for well known actors by production studios - thus the price of actors rise. Since people are willing to pay the prices at the theater to see films, these films make the millions of dollars to afford the paycheks for actors.

If people were fed up with movie prices, they would stop going. If enough people were to do this, it would hit the market by making actors less valuable, and their wages go down.

The only economic reason for hiring people in the public sector (like police officers and teachers) is that such services draw people into a city and will raise money for the state through many taxes. The state will spend this money on services for the people and not necessarially wages for, say, police officers. (I know this is a very VERY simplified interpretation, but for the purposes of the argument, it's accurate enough for me).

So it's not necessarially stupid - it's just economics.

But economics ARE stupid. Take the real value of money, for instance. As the money supply increases, the real value of money decreases (basic supply and demand). So if I have $10 in 2000 and can buy 10 cans of Dr. Pepper, but I just hold on to it for 10 years, then in 2010 I could only buy 5 cans of Dr. Pepper for the same 10 dollars. Why does this happen? Because of inflation. Except, the population also inflates. at the same time. So while there is a larger money supply, there is also a larger demand for money, so the real value SHOULD remain near the same. That doesn't happen.

Additionally, recessions and booms have nothing to do with anything physical, it is the result of the dillusions of the general population. That is, if people think they are in a recession then they will spend less, which will cause a depression. The money supply is limited, by the "wealth" supply is only limited by transation speed (in the modern world, this means the speed of computers) and people's paranoia. The world could happily survive on half the money supply if the speed of transactions were doubled (that is, you could get by on less money if you spent it fast, as long as in turn you got more money more often).

The only reason that economics are so complex is that the majority of humans never grew up. People desire to have things that others don't, so they are willing to pay more if that means there is a limited supply. As such, manufacturers, who also want to have things that no one else does, will make a limited amount but charge a high enough price so that only a limited number of people can afford the items in question.

Hmmm... I sound a tad like Atomik Lad's paper there...

Anywho. Economics makes sense in the same way that a 4 year old being unwilling to share toys makes sense.

Yes, the world will be a better place if everybody made the same amount of money regardless of occupation, training, expertise, skill or popularity or demand of the employee.

Movie stars make a lot of money because they generate a lot of money. If I was the lead role in a movie that made hundreds of millions of dollars, I think I'm entitled to my fair cut. My performance was seen and evaluated by every 'customer,' and it is my good performance that helped bring the money in.
If I were a grip, I wouldn't feel entitled to millions of dollars. A lot of people can be grips. Lighting isn't that hard to set up. My name wasn't in the opening credits. No one asked, "Who was the key grip?" before they saw the movie.
I'm not going to begrudge someone for making more money than I do.

But really, the actors are some of the least important people on a set. Sure, if they fail then everything fails. But at the same time, the makeup artists are the ones who make the actors presentable, the sound technicians make them audible, the lighting tecnicians make them visable, the director gets them to do what they are supposed to do, the script writing gives them the material (which, without, they could do nothing). It is paramount to praising the guy who put spray painted a car rather than the ones who built or designed it.

Edit: And just because it is harder to be a good actor than it is to be a good gopher doesn't mean that being a good actor is more important. Water is quite plentiful on Earth. One can't claim that it is less important to human life than gold.

I'm just repeating what's been said, but movie stars make more money because there is more demand for a movie star than for a fireman. Yes, the fireman risks his life. However, the skills required to risk his life are easier to come by than the skills required to act in a big budget movie.

It's economics, and they're NOT stupid. Economics are like physics...they're just the way it is, you can't change them by wishing them away.

Whether or not a police officers job is more dangerous is irrelevant. People don't get paid by how hard they work or how dangerous their job is. They get paid based on how much better they are than everyone else at any given thing. A paradox, it is not.

Edited to respond to last post:

Yes, they're less important to the production as a whole, but those people you mentioned have skills that are common or easily replaced. Sure, if the lights aren't configured correctly, the movie is ruined, but there are a lot more people who can understand and fix technical problems than there are people who can look as good and act as well as Marlon Brando or Kate Blanchett. It's all about supply and demand.

Regardless whether or not the actors are the most important people on the set, they are the ones that bring in the money. Economically, the actors and the director and the producer are the most important people in the movie business. Movie making, as an art form, is a completely different subject and has nothing to do with economics.