In last week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, Gregg Easterbrook made a pitch for NFL cheerleaders being underpaid. Not so fast there, Gregg says Steve Czaban (Czabe):
Easterbook is brilliant 90% of the time, but this one is the equivalent of a pick-6 the other way. In fact, it sounds a lot like a deep and repressed liberal urge gurgling forth against the tide of his otherwise sensible, free market intellect.
NFL cheerleaders are paid exactly what they are worth. They may even be over-paid. How do I know this? Because the NFL has had no problem filling their cheer squads for this price. Ergo: the price is right. The market has spoken.
Trying to staff a cheer squad for a much lesser league at this price, would likely run you into personnel shortages or weight issues. The National Football League, however, carries tremendous resume value for these ladies. It carries community status, it carries secondary value that far exceeds the $100 bucks a game.
If this was not true, then you wouldn’t need tryouts. You would just take the first 12 who volunteered.
It’s quite true, despite the earnest appeal for higher pay from last week’s TMQ, cheerleaders are — on the evidence of the current market conditions — overpaid. Some jobs pay high wages because of the unpleasant working conditions or the need for extensive prior training (like garbage collectors and doctors, respectively), while others pay low wages because the job requires no unusual skills or provides non-cash benefits so that there are always more applicants than jobs.
H/T to Mises Economic Blog for the link.
