Is the NFL A Good Model For Thinking About Income Inequality? Does Stock Market Cap Justify the New Starbucks CEO Pay Package? Or Are Compensation Numbers for Football Players & CEO's Just Too High?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: When we think about inequality, the first images that come to mind are often of poverty, unfairness, and social injustice. But what if we’re looking at inequality all wrong? Consider another economy. In this economy, the Gini coefficient is a whopping 0.6—much higher than in the U.S. or just about any country in the world. Living in this economy must be miserable, right? Well, what if we told you that the average wage in this economy was about $3 million, the median wage close to $1 million, and the poorest 1% earned nearly $800,000 a year? The economy we are talking about is the National Football League. Is comparing inequality within countries to inequality within a sports league an unfair or irrelevant comparison? We don’t think so. NFL inequality can teach us a lot about what inequality statistics mean. This paragraph comes from an essay in Barrons. The essay is titled: "We're Looking at Inequality All Wrong. Just Ask the NFL." The essay is written by Robert Lawson & Alex Tabarrok. You can read the full essay here: https://www.barrons.com/articles/inequality-in-america-harris-nfl-sports-6f630bdf Zac & Don discuss the Gini Coefficient and its measurement of wealth inequality in the NFL and the American economy. They wonder if the NFL can work as a model to think about inequality. Or are the pay numbers just too high and hard to comprehend? They also discuss the new Starbuck's CEO pay package and whether using stock market cap is a good metric to consider. The following blog post on the CEO of Starbucks from Marginal Revolution is also discussed: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/08/why-top-ceos-earn-big-paychecks.html