CARDINALS, PUJOLS, ANGELS AND THE OCCUPIERS

CARDINALS, PUJOLS, ANGELS AND OCCUPIERS

Recently we learned that (again) they are paying an exorbitant amount of money to a professional athlete; in this case it is Albert Pujols who is going to receive around $250 million for the next 10 years. Pujols the native from the Dominican Republic (where else), arguable the best baseball player around, was playing for the St. Louis Cardinals and now being a free agent the Los Angeles’ Angels offered him the fistful of dollars to be an “angel”, although for the St. Louis fans he is now a demon.

Immediately the voices were heard all over about the obscenity, hypocrisy and all kind of epithets against Pujols. They said that he was saying all the time while in Missouri that he was so happy being a Cardinal and that he will always be one, etc. but that as soon as the money was there he forgot everything and went where the money is; therefore he was a liar, a hypocrite and so on and so forth.

My thoughts are that he was sincere, he was happy there, etc. but at the time he was there, he was talking to the Cardinals, the Cardinals’ fans and he was content, hoping the Cardinals will offer him when the time would come enough to stay there. Now, he is talking to himself, to his family and to the Angels. He did what any sensible person would do (including his critics even if they are the more recalcitrant St. Louis fans), i.e. going to heaven with the angels, to ensure his next 10 years for him and his family. He is now 31 years old, and in 5,6, or 10 years he will be unable to play the way he is playing and those critics are not going to be there to give him and his family a portion of the $250 million. 

Of course it is obscene to receive that exorbitant amount of money for just to play baseball even if he is the best. But he is not the one to be blamed, in the same way we are not to be blamed if we receive an offer of salary 2 or 3 Dollars/hour above what we are receiving right now and move to another place (this is not a joke). Of course we all look for our better way and although it looks awful to compare $250 million with just 2-3 dollars, the point is that the obscenity is to be placed on those, first who are willing o spend that amount of money, with the hope of recover it in the years of the contract. To do this, they will increase the tickets’ prices and the hot dog’s prices to the roof. So for those people it is an investment, and with some risks, and they can take such risks, still they are to be blamed and not Pujols. And second we have to blame the “angels” who are going to attend the games and pay these overpriced commodities.

Like Pujols we have to think in all the professional athletes and people in the entertaining business who are receiving these obscene amounts of money, and all the people who are paying them (because they are doing it because they have obscene amounts of money). These people plus all the other in high places in the government and industry, compound what is call the 1%. The rest of us are the 99%. However in this 99% we should make a difference between those just below the 1% up to 52%. In this brackets exist all those who are paying to see the entertainers, because by logic one would think that the 47% below the 52% couldn’t afford the high prices, since they cannot afford to pay taxes. However I am sure that among those 47% there are if not many, some who for sure are attending professional entertaining events and paying the high prices with some money from the food stamps and other entitlements given to them by those members of our governments in the 1%. 

All those attending the overpriced events are what is called consumers, they are to be blamed for the prices in the market, and cannot go and “occupy” anything, since then they have to occupy the occupiers (themselves) to protest for the unfair treatment they are receiving form the 1%.