Posted by Leonard Steinberg on November 26th, 2011

So the NBA lockout seems to be coming to an end as a tentative deal was struck…..does it not amaze you that no-one finds any offence in basketball players earning MILLIONS of dollars each year for playing with a ball, when it appears OK to trash everyone in the banking industry and leaders of large corporations who earn equally large paychecks? (P.S: The average NBA coach earns over $ 3million and the average NBA player over $ 5million annually….)

Maybe its time to focus the anger, as Paul Krugman of the New Yortk Times suggested, on the 0,1%…..those earning very high, extreme incomes while their companies underperform or those who structure their incomes in such a way that they pay substantially less taxes than those earning equally high incomes? Surely a highly paid basketball player who does not perform qualifies? Generalizing that all in ‘the 1%’ are guilty of fiscal crimes against society is simply stupid: like any group, massing everyone together this way and concluding averages is almost as bad as the typical generalizations such as ‘all the Irish drink too much’….or ‘all Jews are rich’…. ‘all blondes are dumb”… We are constantly amazed how people want to average real estate: “The average apartment in New York costs about $ 1million….” Really? What is average? And what exactly qualifies?

Averaging ‘the 1%’ is much too simplistic and inaccurate….and tremendously unfair. As much as we live in a society that craves billboard-style simplistic-think conclusive analysis, maybe the time has arrived where we break complex problems down a bit more to provide more complex analysis…. and then hopefully more intelligent solutions.