Wouldn’t it be great to make 31.3 million dollars a year and an additional 47 million dollars in endorsements simply to play a game? Michael Jordan, along with many other professional athletes thinks so. In the 1996 season, playing 3,106 minutes Michael Jordan made 170,000 dollars a day, equaling out to be 160.97 dollars a second. Even more unbelievable are Mike Tyson’s earnings in his match with Peter McNeeley. In a single second, he made 281,000 dollars (“Professional AthletesÉ”). Do these athletes really deserve all that money?
“Professional athletes are making too much money in a society where salaries and wages are traditionally based on the value of ones work” (“Professional AthletesÉ”). In today’s society, one will be paid more if their job is more economically important. However, teaching is one of the most economically important occupations because our future economy relies on the education of its youth, yet teachers are paid much less than the average professional athlete. The U.S President makes decisions that affect our economy and yet he only makes 250,000 dollars a year (Turner). Professional athletes do not play near as vital role in the economy as the president, but their salaries reflect otherwise. These games are supposed to be played for fun, not for millions of dollars.
Opponents of this view say payment is being received for a service, therefore professional sports are a business. Many people believe athletes are being paid for little work, but in fact they work harder than any one else. Not only do they work during their particular season; they also work in the off season. Most professional athletes train on their own striving to become better. They also attend miniature camps and their seasonal training camps. These athletes work year round to earn their high salaries.
Making it into the pros isn’t an easy thing to do. It takes a tremendous number of hours of hard work and dedication every day to earn a job in professional sports. These athletes sometimes go through life threatening injuries for the love of the game. Considering this, one might think that these athletes do it for the love of the game not for the money. According to Gerald Sim, “The odds are higher for someone to become a brain surgeon than a NBA player, so isn’t it more logical that the professional athlete get paid more than a brain surgeon?
Free Essay on Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia – To Live or not To Live
To Live or not To Live: The Choice Is Yours
“What do we mean when we say ‘life’? Do we mean the continued functioning of the body? Of the brain? Or do we mean the continued experience of the human being?” (Pridonoff, pg. 73). Many doctors are now performing what is known as physician-assisted suicide, which is when a doctor sets up a machine, but the patient actually kills him or herself. Whereas, euthanasia is the act of the doctor killing the patient. There are two sides to this issue. One side is whether or not a person should be allowed to end his or her own life. The other side of the question is, “who’s decision is it to end a life?” There is a difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia. The choice to have a doctor help end a terminally ill patient’s life is the patients decision to make.
Many people are opposed to physician-assisted suicide because of their religious beliefs. Traditional Christian beliefs are that assisted suicide violates one’s natural desire to live, suicide harms other people, and life is a gift from God and God should be the only one able to take a life from a human being (Robinson, pg.2). However, there are also religious organizations that believe in physician assisted suicide. One of them is the Mainline and Liberal Christian denominations. They are pro- choice for this form of assisted suicide (Robinson, pg.7). Many of these beliefs urge followers to choose life over death, unless life is sustained by a machine (Edelheit, pg.45). Physician-assisted suicide for patients who are in a great amount of pain should not be illegal. The patients live everyday wishing they could die to end their pain. Sigmund Freud was in extraordinary pain from cancer. He whispered to his physician, “This makes no more sense.” His doctor then injected him with a dose of morphine that killed him (“Assisted Suicide”). In this instance, it was best to end his life. He was in so much pain that he no longer saw any reason to live.
One the other hand, the decision to end one’s life should be a difficult decision and not easy to carry out (“Assisted Suicide”). Very few states have banned physician-assisted suicide. As a matter of fact, most states favor physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who are expected to live less than six months (Cloud and Donnelly, pg.