Thread: Entertainment Biz Salaries

I think it's BS that celebrities and athletes make so much money when hard working individuals earn a miserable salary most of the time, the same goes with highly educated individuals. Most college professors, engineers, doctors etc. make far less than a celebrity or athlete. Pretty sad IMO.

Throughout school we were told "study hard to be a <doctor, lawyer, teacher etc.> however, in reality, those things hardly pay off when in contrasts to a celebrity or athlete. And yes, it's indeed hard to make it big, but often you can make more money doing something similar. For example, some people make some pretty good money being backup dancers or even comedians. Yes, talent should be rewarded but isn't it funny how talent that entices pure entertainment seems to pay off more than more "useful" talent. Let's say you're great at math, you could be a math professor, engineer etc. however, you also happy to be pretty funny and have done well in the gigs you've performed doing it on the side. You would think you'd be better off pursuing the academic path but if you're truly talented at comedy, you could actually do far better being a professional comedian as you could end up making a lot more money than if you decided to become a math professor etc.

Of course, you could fail in the industry and not make it anywhere BUT if you do it make it as a comedian, it seems like the payoff is much higher than if you made it as a math professor let's say, as even if you were one of the highest paid professors at one of those ivy league schools, the salary would probably still be lower than if you became the next big comedian.

However, admittedly, I do think that these talents certainly deserve rewards but I just think it's sad how in the end, more useful talents are more poorly compensated and it's no surprise that kids would rather focus on their non-academic talents when the payoff is so great that it's sort of a joke when teachers tell you that you're wasting your time pursuing that when in fact they know very well that if you do make it, the payoff is likely to surpass the other path that they're recommending. And once again, if failure ensues, it can be problematic but who's to say you will get hired as an engineer with a decent salary etc. either.

Well I'm done ranting for now. Hoping to hear some insightful views from the rest of you.

All wealth and glory to the lucky I suppose.

Hm.. Well it's because the sport/entertainment industry, there is a lot of money there compared to other industry, it's how business works. It's pretty sad.