What is a person actually worth? Jeremy Cordeaux has asked it about bank chiefs before. On this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, he asked it again, prompted by the prediction that AFL and NRL players will soon be earning five million dollars a season.
Five Million To Kick A Football
The claim came from Peter Jess, a well-known football player manager, who argued on Tom Elliott’s 3AW program that it was only right and proper, and probably inevitable, that top footballers would soon command five million dollars per season. Jeremy put the figure to Pete and Gary and invited listeners to weigh in.
His own instinct was scepticism. Being a footballer, he acknowledged, requires real skill and athleticism. But kicking a football around, ducking and weaving on an oval, is that worth five million dollars a season? Think about it, he urged, plainly unconvinced that the talent, however genuine, justified a sum of that size.
Already Entitled And Privileged
Part of Jeremy’s unease was the culture around elite sport. Footballers, he suggested, are already entitled and privileged, and he alluded to recent allegations concerning conduct at a Melbourne hotel as a sign of what that entitlement can breed.
Piling five-million-dollar salaries on top of that existing status, in his view, risks compounding the problem, rewarding at extraordinary levels people already treated as being above the ordinary rules.
How Do You Price A Person?
But Jeremy widened the question well beyond football. How, he asked, do you put a price on anyone’s talent, education, skill or ability? He set the footballer against the brain surgeon and left the comparison hanging, because the answer is genuinely hard.
It is one of those questions, he suggested, with no clean answer. A market will pay a footballer millions and a surgeon far less, yet few would say the footballer’s work matters more. The gap between what society values in words and what it pays for in practice is, to Jeremy, one of the odd truths of modern life.
Worth Thinking About
Jeremy did not pretend to resolve it. He offered it, as he often does, as a genuine question for his audience rather than a verdict from the host. What are people worth, and who decides?
The five-million-dollar footballer, in his telling, is really just a way into a bigger reflection on value, reward and fairness, the same thread that runs through his commentary on bank profits, executive pay and the price of ordinary work. It is worth thinking about, he said, and worth talking about, ideally around the dining room table where everyone can have their say.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
