TOPIC 161

TOPIC 161: Some famous athletes and entertainers earn millions of dollars every year. Do you think these people deserve such high salaries? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

Essay 1

Nowadays, there is a strange phenomena that some famous athletes and entertainers earn millions of dollars every year. For me, I totally oppose to give them so much money as salary per year, which it will be unequal to other occupations.

Firstly, there are so many occupations around the world, such as artist, teacher, accountant, worker. viewed as one of occupations , entertainer or athletes are not much different from the rest of occupations. Both of them are just two kinds of occupations, why do we give them so much priorities or let them earn big amount so easily? For instance, an entainer will receive about hundreds thousand per show, or a soccer player will be paid much more money than entainers. Although we admit that we can have a nice show to enjoy or a wonderful match to match, there is no need to give them such big amount. This is what they should do as a entainer or an athlete. This is their jobs. All occupations should have equal standard.

Secondly, unequalization is also not good to the young generation. If most young people know that they can earn more money as a athlete or an entainer, definitely they will go after. As a result, they do not want to do anything other than to be a athlete or an entainer. What's more, this phenomena has an important impact on young people about their views towards money. They will think as an entainer he is so easy to get money as much as possible, which is not good for his development in future. They will become money-goers.

Last but not least, athletes and entertainers sometimes show bad examples to their fans. It is known that fans follow whatever their idols do, even some bad habits. Recently there is a piece of news reported that one famous singer found to be carrying prohibited drugs in a KTV. Can you imagine what kind of side effect we will face after this issue? Previously, idols are always perfect in most fans' minds, but now they did such things, sometimes even more worse. As a public person, they need to be careful about what they do.
In conclusion, I think some athletes and entertainers do not deserve high salaries because athletes and entertainers are the same as the other jobs and they do whatever they should do, in addition, they sometimes show bad examples in front of the public.

(Essay ID: 235 )

Essay 2

Some athletes and entertainers earn millions of dollars annually. In contrast, an elementary school teacher, on average, probably makes less than $35,000 a year. I think the fact that this difference is commonplace is a sign of our society's misplaced values. It shows that we put more importance on entertaining our children than on educating them. It seems that the careers that are the least valued in our society often are those that are the most important.

Why is this so? The market determines who gets paid what. Teachers are paid by tax dollars. Sports teams make hundreds of millions of dollars every year. These teams earn fabulous profits from radio and television rights, as well as everything sold at the concessions stands. The same is true of movies. They are produced by studios that make huge profits annually. These enterprises can afford to pay their entertainers and sports figures huge salaries, because those athletes and film stars draw people to the entertainment.

Why are we willing to pay so much to see a ball game or a movie, but not for a good teacher? Maybe it's because we want distraction; we want to be entertained. Maybe it's because we think of education as a right, while entertainment seems like a luxury. We expect to pay for our luxuries.

It's not that I begrudge the players and entertainers their huge salaries. Most of them have very short careers. Athletes may be too old in their early 30s: Many of them gamble early in their lives on making it big in the sports or entertainment world, and deny themselves a good education. They have little chance of a stable career, so they need to earn enough, money to support them for a long time. On the other hand, most of us aren't going to earn $10 million in a lifetime of work. So it's hard to sympathize with people who do.

We have to ask ourselves: who really gives the most value to society?

(Essay ID: 39 )