Football, Baseball...my Balls
I follow sports very little these days, but I like to follow sports politics because I think events within represent signs of the times. The following three teams are getting new stadiums next year: the NY Giants, the NY Jets, and the NY Yankees. These teams, like all major sports teams, offer season tickets to fans based on seniority. So if you bought nosebleed seats for the Yankees in 1978, you might be just starting to get down by the 3rd base line this year. This is how blue-collar guys who love their teams can get good seats. However, because of these new stadiums, the teams are imposing a "tax" upon individual to keep their places in the seniority ranks. The Giants and the Jets are charging something on the order of $20,000 per seat held-over. The Yankees are expected to announce a similar, or possibly more obscene number, within the coming weeks. A season ticket holder with a regular radio gig said today that he doubts 70% of the blue collar guys taking their kids to games since the 1970s have ever made $80,000 a year, let alone have the money lying around to keep their four tickets. So it's back to the nosebleeds for these die-hard fans who happen to be poor fucks--assuming the nosebleeds are affordable.
Yes, the American economy is growing, and the new stadiums prove that, but they also prove that the only people who benefit from that growth are the elite-wealthy. This is the future we're looking at, a world where the upper-class is sealed off in places of extravagance and leisure while the rest go hungry. Out of sight, out of mind I suppose. However, as always, I have to ask the question, what happens when there are no more middle-class fucks left to drain and the rich are left to feed only on each other? Who chokes next?
Yes, the American economy is growing, and the new stadiums prove that, but they also prove that the only people who benefit from that growth are the elite-wealthy. This is the future we're looking at, a world where the upper-class is sealed off in places of extravagance and leisure while the rest go hungry. Out of sight, out of mind I suppose. However, as always, I have to ask the question, what happens when there are no more middle-class fucks left to drain and the rich are left to feed only on each other? Who chokes next?