Wow. I almost don't know where to begin. But I'll start here:
Who is to say that any of these other people involved in the production of a film/TV series/etc deserve less of a reward than those that are most visible.
The customer, that's who. While it's true that anybody can make a film, and in fact a large number of "anybodies" are needed to make a good film, it takes a special somebody to sell a film. People don't go to the movie theater to see the latest film featuring the work of Key Grip Dave, after all.
Well, maybe some people do, but not nearly enough to pay for Key Grip Dave's rent for a month, let alone pay for the entire cost of the movie with enough left over for the moviemakers to treat themselves to a nice wrap party once the work is done.
But you let it slip that Improbably Attractive Bimbo of the Week Julie is going to be starring in the movie, and the amount of wealth that flows through the economy as a result is amazing--or "obscene", if you have some sort of pathological fear of money.
And let's not forget that when that wealth flows, it gets taxed. And those taxes pay for all those things that those of us who aren't fabulously wealthy celebrity asshats know and love: schools, fire departments, national defense, the EPA... And let's also not forget that the after-tax wealth doesn't sit between Bimbo Julie's mattress and her box spring, no: she spends it on stuff. More wealth flowing, more taxes being skimmed, more income for more people who are all working hard every day to make a living...
And while we're on the topic of working hard to make a living, did somebody in this thread actually say "downright sinful the amount of money these people make for a few weeks of work that they do every year"?
Please. Do you have any idea the amount of hard work (of one kind or another--let's be honest here, and admit that even the casting couch path to success involves hard work too repugnant for most of us to contemplate) it takes to be a successful actor?
If it's only a few week's worth of work, why aren't you an actor? And don't tell me it's because you're not pretty enough: there's tons of ugly actors out there. And most of the "pretty" ones look that way simply due to clever makeup and camera work.
No, the reason we're not all actors is because it's not actually a cushy job. It takes huge amounts of raw talent, huge amounts of hard work, and huge amounts of commitment to a risky career path with an extremely low success rate. Given the choice between trying to be a successful garbage collector and trying to be the next Tom Cruise, I'd take the garbage collector career any day. Less work (yay unions!--now there's an "obscene" system of overpay for underwork, if I ever saw one), and a much higher chance of promotion and lifelong job security. Better pension plan, too.
Tom can keep his millions, and more power to him, for all I care.
Let's see... what else do we have here? Oh:
Imagine the third world. What opportunity to you have to generate wealth if you can't even eat and you suffer medical conditions brought down upon you by this malnutrition and you can't afford the medical bills that would get you well again... In this world and in these economies, too often, where you end up depends on where you begin.
What are you talking about? The primitive peoples of ancient times had no need for some fabulously wealthy precursor civilization to help them bootstrap their way out of a crap lifestyle of agricultural ignorance, constant malaria epidemics, and low-quality footwear.
Where were the U.N. aid programs when the Persians invented cuneiform? Where was the IMF when the Greeks figured out the principles of Agriculture? Where were the philanthropic Hollywood celebrities when the Europeans got over the Dark Ages?
You're laboring under the impression that the Third World is the exception. In reality, PacDragon is right: the Third World is the rule. If anything, we're the exception, but that's not quite true, either. Rather, we're what happens when people start from scratch, and advance out of primitive barbarism to modern civilization. We all began in the same exact place that the Third World is in right now. The nations of Africa have the same exact opportunities to build a better tomorrow for themselves that all our primitive ancestors had.
Actually, they have better opportunities. The cave-men of ancient times didn't have Doctors Without Borders, or the Red Cross, or the U.N., when illness and malnutrition kicked in. The Etruscans couldn't reach out to wealthy American philanthropists for financial aid every time their crops failed. The primitive Romans have access to a huge catalog of cheaply-printed and cheaply-shipped books on topics ranging from tried-and-true subsistence farming methods to basic principles of hygiene to fundamentals of a democratic system of government. They had to figure it all out for themselves.
Sure, it took them thousands of years, and it cost them a lot in human life and human suffering, but that's totally understandable--they had to make it up as they went along.
The contemporary African nations have access to copious amounts of information, and even the weakest dribblings of aid programs consist of far greater wealth than anything these other primitives had to work with. What's their excuse?
That Hollywood celebrities aren't spending enough? Give me a break.
That the U.S. won't trade fairly with them? The U.S. didn't trade fairly with the Anglo-Saxons, either, and they managed to come up with a strong economy, a stable and relatively just political system, a sound set of agricultural policies, and the Magna Carta. Just for starters. What prevents the ruler (or the people) of Kafiristan from saying, so what if the U.S. doesn't care about us? We know enough to implement subsistence farming and rule of law all on our own. Let's stop bitching and get on with it.
Nobody is entitled to what we have. We're lucky to have it. We got it through hard work and good fortune. Others may end up with less, but it'd have to be a whole hell of a lot less, before I'm convinced they got shortchanged by life in this uncertain and imperfect universe.
Mind you, I don't begrudge the wealth that flows from the wealthy to the downtrodden. But the arguments in this thread about how pathetic the aid levels are, or how much the downtrodden deserve this support, strike me as pretty weak.
