At the time I am writing this paper, Michael Phelps has just tied the Olympic record for most medals earned. This is an amazing achievement. The dedication he has to his sport and the level of fitness he has been able to maintain seems unbelievable to me, a guy you struggles to keep his own fitness level at ‘average’. I don’t want to single out Phelps for his Olympic endeavors as currently all the US Olympians are performing very well. However, the success of these Olympians is not theirs to own and as such their medals should be turned over to the people of the United States.
The majority of these athletes have been practicing their sports for their entire lives. Countless weekend meets, practices early in the morning before school, practices late at night after school; not to mention that loss of a life times worth social interaction many associate with the adolescent and young adult years.
This is only a small portion of the story. Every athlete had a coach that needed to be there for those practices and meets. All of the athletes required that parents or guardians chauffer them to these same practices and meets. The cost associated with helping your child advance to Olympic quality athleticism would bankrupt the normal family. These contributions to an Olympians career must not be overshadowed as without them the career would be nonexistence.
For all the support they receive from their immediate friends, family and coaches; it still dwarfs the widespread aid that was given to them by the citizens of the US. Every road, every stop sign, every flight controlled by the FAA, the police willing to keep the training center safe, the regulations that mandated your equipment be built to safe standards, the fire department that was on call incase your facilities caught fire and finally our national defenses that allowed for them to practice without the risk of the Russians or Chinese kidnapping them for their own Olympic squads.
So while yes, the physical development and personal dedication belongs on the shoulders of the individual Olympian, they depended on the rest of our country for that personal development to progress to Olympic standards. Thus it is only fair every medal won at the Olympics be collected and maintained by the United States. Athletes can take their experience and the training they received as their reward. However, “part of the underlying social contract is you pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”(Warren 2012) As a result of this underlying social contract I demand that these medals be collected and become property of the United States. “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”(Obama 2012)
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Is this the proper handling of the US Olympian’s medals? Please explain why success at this level is not shared equitably while success on a monetary level is expected to be redistributed for the betterment of society.
- Mitt Romney 2002
Did Romney use it to advance the idea that successful owe something to the government as Obama and Warren did? Or was Romney offering a thanks to those who worked behind the scenes? If you are intellectually honest, you know there is a stark difference between what Romney said and what was said by Obama/Warren.
This is by far the BEST campaign commercial this election season! And guess what - it features David Newman's theme from the motion picture HOFFA (1992) at the very end!!!!!!!!!!!! I love it!!!!!!!!!!!
Athletes who take home an Olympic medal are taxed on the value of said metal, and the monetary award associated with it. Yet, there is no tax deduction for lessons and coaching costs which can total hundreds of thousands of dollars over the kid's career. Something is really wrong with this US Government to do this, they will never give up a chance to tax people for anything.
Just liv'n the dream baby!
Romney never mentioned government. In the full context of both Obama and Warren they did. There different motives behind each statement. One comment made out of thankfulness on behalf the Olympians for the willing sacrifices of their friends and family and two comments made out of selfish greed designed to socialize profits as if they were granted by the government in the first place. If you have ever driven through a subdivision or industrial park, most of those roads were constructed by the general contractor and not the government. There were roads in existence before there was a US government and my assumption is there would be roads built if the US government never started. You are trying to give the US government credit for the development of everything you see around you. If you remember the Bridge to Nowhere, that is was happen when the government believes it is the catalyst for a capitalist system. Every road the government built already had capitalist system on either end and the people decided to have the government improve the transportation between the two. That makes government a slave to the people and not the engine that drives success.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/sen-rubio-dont-punish-us-olympians-with-taxes-on-medals-and-prize-money/
"Are you not benefiting from good roads, clean water and dependable power? Y'all just sound like selfish, short-sighted yahoos when you pursue this argument." And by owning a business, employing people, and paying both business and personal taxes, Hoffa also contributes to the public infrastructure - much more so than a mere non-employer individual does. Why do you, Warren, Obama, etc. choose to ignore this reality? Hoffa is one of the 'somebody else's' who made that happen! Recognize!
We ALL rely on the structure of society for our success. Without that structure, our success is simply not possible. This is not a terribly controversial statement. The only thing that seems controversial is the fact that our society's structure costs money, which society's participants must contribute to. For a political "movement" that likes to put down the 'freeloaders', it is quite hypocritical to turn around and claim that those who succeed with the help of society's structure have no responsibility to maintain that structure for the future.
Way to go Scott Brown - well done sir!