Dr. Evil: Mr. President, after I destroy Washington D.C. I will destroy another major city every hour on the hour. That is, unless, of course, you pay me [emphasis] one hundred billion dollars.
The President: [bursts with laughter] Dr. Evil, this is 1969! That amount of money doesn’t even exist. [laughing] That’s like saying [with changed voice] “I want a kajillion bajillion dollars.”
Thank you very much, 1980s.
Yes, there really was a time — before the ’80s — in which the amount of money in the world wasn’t so ridiculous that we often ask who will be the world’s first trillionaire.
Just three or four years ago, the richest men in the world were barely topping $100 billion in net work. Now the 26 richest men have a combined worth of $13.1 trillion. For the mathematically challenged, that’s an average worth of nearly $504 billion. It seems that Dr. Evil from the “Austin Powers” movies wouldn’t be laughed at now.
Heck, somebody could just write a check.
In 1969 it still meant something to be a millionaire. As for salaries in baseball, from 1959-70, Willie Mays was the highest-paid player in baseball, peaking at $135,000 a year in 1969.
You know what they call someone in a baseball locker room making $135,000 in 2022?
Towel boy.
Not really. Towel boys don’t make that much money and neither do the baseball writers covering the teams. But if Mays were alive today …
Uh, Mike. He is alive today.
Yes, but he’s 90 years old and isn’t dating.
Mays was the greatest player of his generation and arguably one of the two or three best players ever, and he made less than a quarter of the minimum salary major leaguers get today.
The problem was that salaries were kept artificially low by the reserve clause and the owners’ lifetime control of players. into the 1960s, the average major league ballplayer only made about three times as much money as the median American household. Ballplayers who weren’t all that well established often had to work at various jobs — sporting goods stores, selling insurance, etc. — to supplement their income in the offseason.
These days even the lowest-paid major leaguers make 10 times as much as median households, and the average major leaguer makes about 80 times as much.
Don’t forget Willie Mays and his $135,000.
Max Scherzer is signed for this season at $43.3 million to pitch for the New York Mets.
That’s more than 300 times as much as Mays, and more than 7,000 times as much as that median household.
But before you start ragging on the players, think about those billionaires. There is so much money in the world now that things that used to be possible are now beyond the wildest dreams of even upper middle class people.
I’ve written about this before, but in 2002 and 2003, when my son was in his last two years of high school, the band was having a silent auction to raise money. One of the prizes that interested me the most was four tickets to a ballgame at Dodger Stadium, box seats in the first row on the field level just past the dugout.
As Bob Uecker used to say, the front row.
Face value of the tickets at the time was $40 each, so for a little less than $200 each year, I had as good a view as it was possible to have. My son got three foul balls in the first five innings.
Two years after that, they reconfigured the seats on the field level, and the ones we had enjoyed for $40 each were now $250 each. We moved away from Los Angeles 12 years ago, and I’m sure the prices are higher now.
Of course, that doesn’t compare to the Super Bowl.
The first three games, 1967-69, had average ticket prices of $12.
Yeah, $12.
The first of those games was played in Los Angeles, which makes for an interesting comparison to last month’s game at the brand-new stadium in L.A. If you wanted to see the Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, the average ticket was nearly $8,900. Close-in parking was more than $500.
The one Super Bowl I attended — XXVII at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena — had an average price of $175.
If you want to go to a Super Bowl or all sorts of other truly elite events, figure to spend at least several months pay — if you make a pretty good salary.
Or how about this. You want to spend one night in the most expensive hotel in the world?
Well, the Lover’s Deep Luxury Submarine Hotel based at St. Lucia in the Caribbean can be yours for one night for $150,000.
To be fair, it moves around if you want it to.
Sorry to clue you in, but we live in a much lesser world than the mega-wealthy.
And it’s getting worse.