Professional Athletes Make so Much Money - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 9 Words: 2594 Downloads: 10 Date added: 2017/09/15 Category Advertising Essay Did you like this example? Professional athletes make so much money Alex Rodriguez is a 32 year old Miami native, and, having entered the workforce directly out of high school, currently holds down a job in New York City. Normally, at least for those entering the workforce right out of high school, attaining a good career is rather difficult. This is especially true considering that more and more employers are requiring prospective employees to attain at least a bachelor’s degree just to get into an interview room. However, Rodriguez, since the age of 18, has lived a rather comfortable lifestyle he never has had to worry about where is next meal is coming from, where to find shelter for himself and his family, nor has he had to rely on his monthly paycheck to sustain his family. What makes these facts even more interesting is Rodriguez’ work schedule he works only 7 months per year. This is because, in 2000, at the tender young age of 25, he signed a contract with his employer for 10 years and 252 million dollars all guaranteed salary. What is Mr. Rodriguez’ profession? Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Professional Athletes Make so Much Money" essay for you Create order He plays 3rd base for the New York Yankees. Rodriguez, all in the time it took to sign his name on a contract, quickly became the main scapegoat for a widely growing resentment in American society. This resentment is of the professional athlete. Not the athlete, so much as the salary the athlete earns for participating in an activity that is typically ascribed to the behavior 10 year old child. Are athletes overpaid? Or are their salaries justified? To progress to any understanding on this issue, four key questions must be answered: What does the term â€Å"worth† mean, in the context of professional sports? Who ascribes this â€Å"worth†, and why do they pay athletes such a high salary? What is the difference, in terms of productivity, between the athlete and those with regular professional jobs? What is the correlation between specialization and salary, in terms of the laborer? This review will examine the various social and economic debates concerning the salaries of professional athletes. What are Athletes Worth? In the context of analyzing this issue of whether athletes are worth what they are paid, there must be a clear definition of the term â€Å"worth†. What does worth mean? Is it value in the sense of their essentiality to human nature? Is it their value to a society? Or does how much one produce remain the determining factor of worth? A common sentiment of the typical sports fan is that athletes are overpaid. That is to say, athletes are paid more than their relative â€Å"worth† as opposed to teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc. For example, a USA Today article published in November 1994 cites a survey conducted on 2000 individuals on how adequately they feel athletes are paid. 7% of those surveyed responded that they feel athletes are overpaid, compared to nurses (10%) teachers (8%), and secretaries (2%). Sentiments have not changed much in the past 13 years. Judging from these statistics, one may infer that society views an occupation’s â€Å"worth† as its value to society. After all, nurses are essential components in American health care; teachers are essential to public education; while secretaries are cruci al to various administrative tasks. Within this context of the definition, professional athletes seem to have little intrinsic value to society. They seem rather disposable. Take teachers away, and we have nobody left to teach the children. Take athletes out of the equation? We will simply have no games to watch. This is the essential misunderstanding most people have about professional sports, according to Jimmie Lee Solomon, currently the director of Minor League operations for Major League Baseball. â€Å"Professional sports are a business. Our product just happens to be putting highly paid players on the field or court† (Corbett, 1995, p. 5) Therefore, Solomon says, we must not judge athletes based on their intrinsic value to a society; rather, we must judge them as products that create revenue. When the product happens to be a human, such as is the case with athletes, actors, musicians, or writers, that human must be compensated. Economics professor William L. Anderson expounds on Solomon’s point in an article entitled, â€Å"In Praise of Athlete’s High Salaries†. Citing the Statistical Abstra cts of the United States (1996), he points out that Americans spent close to 13. 1 billion dollars in 1995 on commercial sports. That number has grown even more significant in recent years. Clearly, Anderson points out, professional sports is a very lucrative business. These sports create significant revenue from the fans that pay to see them. Naturally, he concludes, an athlete’s worth should not be examined based on intrinsic value, but rather monetary value. How much money does the athlete create? Who Ascribes this Worth? Solomon and Anderson thus conclude that fans cannot be the people who ascribe worth to professional athletes. After all, an athlete’s only concern is whether his employer thinks he is worth a high salary, not the fans. True, higher fan consumption means higher revenue which means more worth, but fans are not the people who write the checks. This responsibility falls on the owners of these professional teams. Just as any CEO of a Fortune 500 company, it is the owner of the professional sports franchise that has the most at stake when examining whether an athlete is worth the investment. Therefore, he must examine this investment carefully; for if he doesn’t, his company will lose money and he will go out of business. How does the franchise owner examine a player’s worth? In an interesting study entitled, â€Å"The NBA and the Influx of International Basketball Players†, economists Erik Eschker, Stephen Perez, and Mark Siegler examine the process by which an owner, or whoever within the organization has the responsibility of evaluating talent, determines a player’s worth on the market. They use the structure of the National Basketball Association as an example. As long as teams are able to buy or sell players, they say, NBA salaries will resemble an auction- like process (p. 1010) The authors point out that the bids from the teams are determined upon a given player’s Marginal Revenue Product (MRP). The team looks at performance and other factors like age, experience, height, etc. in order to gauge what the player’s market price is. In this environment, we should expect to see the player to be paid close to the highest expected MRP (p. 1011). This judgment is based on limited information and uncertainty, however, so bids are actually more likely to be far above or far below the actual MRP. Thus we find that the bid that is far above the actual MRP wins the player, and we find the case of a player being paid far more than he is really â€Å"worth† (p. 1012). This seems to suggest that, while some athletes may in fact be overpaid, it is in relation to other athletes, rather than to the rest of society. This explanation however, while partly justifying â€Å"how† athletes are paid so much, does not entirely explain â€Å"why†. Why don’t the all the owners get together and decide upon a system of worth such that overbidding doesn’t become a necessity? This is the type of question that would be raised by Adam Smith, the widely renowned â€Å"Father of Economics† and author of Wealth of Nations. There are fewer owners than there are players. Thus, they are more easily able to gather together and force the players to comply with a restructured pay system. The owners will always be able to hold out longer; they have more spare capital at their disposal. Why don’t they use this leverage? This failure has not been for a lack of trying. Collusion, as it is so called, was prevalent in Major League baseball in the mid 1980’s. As such, a rule was negotiated in the Collective Bargaining agreement prohibiting such action, whether on the part of the owners or the players. What Do Athletes Produce? It is quite safe to say that the salaries of various professional athletes are directly proportional to the revenue earned by their respective franchises. Tom Hicks, the owner of the Texas Rangers, was the man responsible for rewarding Rodriguez with the most significant contract in the history of professional sports. Twenty-five million dollars wasn’t merely an arbitrary number, however; Hicks, like other franchise owners in the MLB and other professional sports, had to estimate Rodriguez’ worth in terms of extra revenue he created. Here we come back to the MRP figure, which Eschker, Perez, and Siegler explain more in depth. In essence, this figure calculates the change in total revenue from the franchise when employing one more unit of labor (p. 1011) in Hicks’ case, this unit of labor comes in the form of Alex Rodriguez. Furthermore, the cost of employing Rodriguez, according to this theory, must not exceed the extra revenue he generates for the Rangers. Hick expects Rodriguez, with his vast array of skills (hitting for power and average, superior baserunning, defense) to help the Rangers win more games. If the Rangers win more games, fans will buy more tickets and more memorabilia, networks will pay more to broadcast their games, and the team will generate more revenue. If this revenue is less than the 25 million dollars it costs to employ Rodriguez, then the investment is seen as a failure. However, if the revenue exceeds the costs, then Rodriguez’ salary is justified. The idea that an athlete’s high salary can be â€Å"justified† is indeed absurd for some. Take for example an excerpt from this editorial in a July 2002 issue of USA Today: â€Å"Some sense of sanity has to return to the salary structure of professional sports. Its absurd that a ballplayer makes millions of dollars while research analysts at places such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention get peanuts by comparison for doing work that saves lives. And look at what a small salary a schoolteacher makes. † This is a thinly veiled adaptation of what Smith referred to as the â€Å"diamond-water paradox†. Water, which is essential to our existence, is worth far less to us than a diamond, which is of relatively little ultimate significance. Why, then, is the diamond worth more on the market than water? Anderson, referencing this paradox in his article, explains that the diamond is worth more than the water because water is far more abundant than diamonds. Because diamonds are relatively rare, the demand for them is high, and thus the price is highly elevated. Water, on the other hand, is relatively abundant; thus the demand is low and the price is low. It’s the basic economic theory of supply and demand. Professional athletes, far less abundant than teachers or research analysts, are worth far more on the open market. How many people out there can reproduce the unique skill set Alex Rodriguez has? Or Shaquille O’Neal? Or Peyton Manning? In contrast, how many people are there who can reproduce the skill set of a research analyst, or a teacher? Economist Sherwin Rosen will explain this dichotomy further in-depth. How does Specialization Lend to Salary? The interesting phenomenon of the athletes’ salaries, explained by Rosen in his article, â€Å"The Economics of Superstars†, makes the reward structure in sports differ from those in other professions. The business of sports, unlike other professions, lends itself to a more significant inequality with regards to distribution of incomes (p. 449). Moreover, Rosen finds that this reward structure is highly non-linear the salaries of athletes rise in great disproportion to natural ability (p. 451). For example, if we compare the skill set of Alex Rodriguez, against, say, his teammate Derek Jeter, we find that although their traits might be somewhat different in terms of specificity, they as players more or less have the same impact on the team. The disparity in statistics such as home runs, runs batted in, stolen bases, errors, etc. while noticeable to the ardent baseball fan, aren’t that great between the two. Yet Jeter, on average, earns 5 million dollars less than Rodriguez on an annual basis. Furthermore, when we compare the salaries of Jeter and Rodriguez to a player making the league minimum ($327,000 as of 2007), we may find a great disparity in statistics, but not so much in terms of overall skill level. Why, then, does Rodriguez earn ? more salary than Jeter, and over 75 times the salary of a player making the league minimum? And why don’t we find this salary structure in other professions? The seemingly disproportionate salary structure in sports, according to Stefan Szymanski, is not the result of conscious mechanism design, but of intense competition. Professional sports is the prime example of what Szymanski calls the â€Å"tournament theory†; even though the difference in ability may seem small, winning is the vehicle that drives salaries (p. 469). Fans are much more inclined to pay to see the absolute best players in their respective sports; not the second-tier players. Though the difference in ability may be small, winning creates a vast separation between the best and the second best. Thus, we find that relative ability, rather than absolute ability, is of supreme importance. This is not the case so much in terms of a teacher or a research analyst, or an electrician. Rosen indicates that some tasks have become so routine, so circumscribed, that any competent person will achieve the same outcome (p. 455). As such, it is much easier for one to attain the skill set necessary for such a task. For example, there is not much difference in terms of outcome when the best electrician wires a house as opposed to the second-best electrician, or even the worst electrician. (There is a widely quoted joke in the medical business: What do you call the guy who finished last in his class at medical school? Doctor. ) This is not the case is sports. The outcomes are more disparate. Because winning is at a premium, owners will go out of their way to find the superior talent, however small the difference in ability may be. According to Rosen, sports are such that poor talent is an inadequate substitution for superior talent (p. 454). In other words, athletes are far more specialized than their counterparts in other areas of professional labor increased specialization leads to increasing disparities in relative income. Rodriguez, however small the difference in ability between he and Jeter, is worth 150% Jeter’s salary because his slightly superior talent is more likely to win games and create revenue. Conclusion The economics of the market for professional athletes are a conundrum that owners of professional sports franchises face every day. If Tom Hicks is faced with signing one of two players (in 2000 the players in question were Rodriguez and outfielder Manny Ramirez), he has questions to ponder. Which player has the superior talent? Which player is more likely to help the team win games? Which player is more likely to draw fans into the ballpark and sell jerseys? (Ramirez eventually signed with the Boston Red Sox for 8 years and 160 million dollars). In the arena of professional sports, such difficulty in assessing small differences in ability can often seem overwhelming, and might lead to panic on the part of the owners (Eschker, Perez, Siegler, 2004, p. 1010). This panic, stemming from the perpetual uncertainty of talent assessment, may greatly exaggerate an athletes’ worth on the open market, or, less often, even undervalue his worth. Whatever the case may be, most every economist agrees that the common man’s animosity towards athletes’ salaries most likely stems from jealousy and envy rather than economic theory.

Voltaire s Candide And Dostoyevsky s Notes From Underground

The vital notion of moderation was first given precise archetypal denotation by Aristotle. Aristotle described moderation as the equilibrium between two extremes; for example, the person who never takes any risks is frightened, while the person who consistently takes risks is reckless (Parry). Therefore the person who is a balance of the two, not too cowardly but not too irresponsible, has attained the impeccable balance of moderation. While there have been many brilliant works created to provide emphasis to the importance of moderation, two philosophers in particular, Voltaire and Dostoyevsky, have conceivably accomplished the most exemplary job of delivering evidence in Voltaire’s Candide and Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground. Each use the two concepts of reasoning and currency in different ways to express the importance of moderation. In contemporary society, daring to ask a pertinent question on a social platform is feasibly one of the most daunting tasks one can make. Riddled with a maelstrom of potentially traumatizing consequences, giving voice to a serious enquiry over a serious subject is even more of an arduous enterprise. Still, regardless of the details of the responses themselves, the act of asking and answering a serious question shows something even more significant: the ability to think. In both Candide and Notes from Underground, thought and the impact of reason are the most important concepts discussed, though Voltaire and Dostoyevsky use different

Dulce Et Decorum Est a Critical Analysis free essay sample

Dulce et Decorum est Dulce et Decorum est   is a poem written by  poet  Wilfred Owen  in 1917, during  World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. Dulce et Decorum Est  uses gruesome imagery to narrate the horrors of a gas attack. Owens poem is known for its horrific  imagery  and condemnation of war. His poetry is characterised by powerful descriptions of the conditions faced by soldiers in the trenches. It was drafted at  Craiglockhart  in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at  Scarborough  but possibly  Ripon, between January and March 1918. The earliest surviving manuscript is dated 8 October 1917 and addressed to his mother, Susan Owen, with the message Here is a gas poem done yesterday, (which is not private, but not final). Formally, the poem can be understood as the combination of two sonnets, though the spacing of the stanzas is irregular. The text presents a vignette from the front lines of World War I; specifically, of British soldiers attacked with  chemical weapons. We will write a custom essay sample on Dulce Et Decorum Est : a Critical Analysis or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In the rush when the shell with poison gas explodes, one soldier is unable to get his mask on in time. The speaker of the poem describes the gruesome effects of the gas on the man and concludes that, if one were to see firsthand the reality of war, one might not repeat mendacious platitudes like  Horaces about the nature of war. Through the poem, and particularly strong in the last stanza, there is a running commentary, a letter to  Jessie Pope, a civilian propagandist of World War I, who encouraged—with such high zest—young men to join the battle, through her poetry, e. g. Whos for the game? The first draft of the poem, indeed, was dedicated to Pope. A later revision amended this to a certain Poetess,though this did not make it into the final publication, either, as Owen apparently decided to address his poem to the larger audience of war supporters in general such as the women who handed out  white feathers  during the conflict to men whom they regarded as cowards for not being at the front. In the last stanza, however, the original intention can still be seen in Owens bitter address. he title of this poem translates to It is sweet and right. The title and the  Latin  exhortation of the final two lines are drawn from the phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori written by the  Roman  poet  Horace  in (Ode  III. 2. 13) Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: mors et fugacem persequitur virum nec parcit inbellis iuventae poplitibus timidove tergo. How sweet and right it is to die for ones country: Death pursues the man who flees, spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs Of battle-shy youths. These words were well known and often quoted by supporters of the war near its inception and were, therefore, of particular relevance to soldiers of the era. In 1913, the first line,  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, was inscribed on the wall of the chapel of the  Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. In the final stanza of his poem, Owen refers to this as The old Lie. There is not a clearly defined structure to the poem, although Owen does make use of rhyme, mostly on alternate line endings. My subject is War, and the pity of War, Owen wrote in a draft of the preface to his intended volume of poems. The collection was intended to convey the disgusting horror of war to an ill-informed and largely complacent audience in England. Dulce et Decorum Est describes a mustard gas attack on a group of war-weary soldiers. Owens painfully direct language combines gritty realism with an aching sense of compassion. His despair at the crumbling of the moral order the worlds and perhaps his own are expressed in phrases such as froth-corrupted lungs, sores on innocent tongues and his description of the dying mans face like a devils sick of sin. Th e poem is short, just 28 lines, but its exceptionally vivid imagery packs a punch that creates a lasting and disturbing impression on the reader. The poem opens with a description of trench life and the conditions faced by the soldiers. Then comes the gas attack, and the poem offers a graphic description of the effects of such an attack. The style of Dulce et Decorum est is similar to the  French ballade  poetic form. [5]  By referencing this formal poetic form and then breaking the conventions of pattern and rhyming, Owens accentuates the disruptive and chaotic events being told. The poem separates into two parts, each of 14 lines. The first part of the poem (the first 8 line and the second 6 line stanzas) is written in the present as the action happens and everyone is reacting to the events around them. In second part (the third 2 line and the last 12 line stanzas), Owens writes as though at a distance from the horror: he refers to what is happening twice as if in a dream, as though standing back watching the events or even recalling them. The second part looks back to draw a lesson from what happened at the start. The two 14 line parts of the poem again echoes a formal poetic style, the  sonnet  and again it is a broken and unsettling version of this form.

The Practice of Death Penalty

Table of Contents Introduction Thesis Anti-thesis Synthesis Conclusion Reference List Introduction In regard to the issue of criminal justice, an area that has attracted a lot of split points of discussion is the area of death penalty. This refers to taking a person’s life following an order from the judicial system considered to be the penalty for committing an offence. Scores of masses support the death penalty sentence but there have been a lot of calls to abolish the death sentence.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Practice of Death Penalty specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More As at the present, a majority of the countries in the world have agreed to the pleas to do away with death penalty, either lawfully or in practice but there are some countries that still exercise death penalty even including it as a law. An example is the USA where the supreme law has actively retained and practiced capital pu nishment or death penalty. Thesis Ulcepo (2003) noted in his article that though capital punishment continues to be practiced today in several countries like the USA, my feeling is that pleas calling for the abolishment of the death penalty should be heard owing to a number of feelings that have continued to be expressed. Crimes that fall under the capital crimes are murder, rape and drug dealing. Sentencing a criminal who is said to have committed a capital crime to death has not shown any deterrent factor in ensuring that would-be-criminals are discouraged from committing crime. Despite criminals being sentenced to death, capital crimes such as murder and rape have been on the rise as indicated by the statistics. This therefore shows that the intended reason for the death penalty which is majorly to deter such crimes from elevating has failed which begs the question of why it is still continually practiced. The mode which death penalty is administered has been shown to be inclined towards certain race and the poor. Statistics conducted on the number of the death row inmates have shown that a majority of those awaiting prosecution draw their origin from a certain race, the minorities as well as those who hail from poor backgrounds. This shows that the method of profiling used in the judicial process is bias and therefore it is fit to say that justice is not administered fairly and hence the call for abolishment of capital punishment (Ballard, 2003).Advertising Looking for essay on ethics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More An economic consideration should be given to the costs of death penalty. The process of trial and convicting a criminal and finally executing them have been found to be much higher than the alternative to capital punishment which is life imprisonment. The process of convicting a criminal is a long one and which call for several sources of gathering facts. In the society we live in today there are high chances that the process of gathering the facts will be prone to manipulations owing to influence and interests of the involved individuals. The result is that there arise cases which an innocent person is wrongly subjected to death penalty. This is wrong since a person’s life is taken unjustly. Religion has always been a major facto in shaping our morals and the way we make the laws (Blume, 2008). Morality as well as the law teaches us that nobody has the right to take another person’s life. Executing a person therefore goes against the moral plea which shows how much we are contradicting that which guides us. Sentencing a person to death penalty in a bid to accord them a punishment that is equal to the crime they committed is not serving justice but rather a form of revenge. Revenging does not completely justify the death penalty since circumstances arises that influence innocent individuals to act in a certain manner or accidentally and offering death as a means to gain fairness shouldn’t be the solution. The person should be allowed a chance to reform and the situations that led to such circumstances mitigated. A combination of these reasons should serve fairly to convince the government to abolish death sentence. Anti-thesis Despite the numerous calls to put an end to death sentence, it is important to understand the reason why it is there in the first place which is that it serves its intended purpose and therefore should continue to be practiced. Person’s who commit capital crimes are usually a threat to the community and it is only fair that for the public to live in peace, they should be eliminated totally from the public just to be sure. Such crimes that fall under the capital crimes are murder, rape and drug dealing. According to CliffsNotes.com. (2010), when a criminal of such an offence is sentenced to death, this has a lot of impact in deterring other criminals from engaging in similar or other offences. This works to reduce the rate of crime prevalence in the society. Another purpose that death penalty serves is seen in consoling the families of the victims; the families of the victims who were offended by the criminal usually breath a sigh of relieve when they get an assurance that the offender has completely been eliminated and therefore they get a feeling of emotional compensation for the injustice done to them. This is always a fair means of ensuring that justice is served and that everyone gets what thy deserved.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Practice of Death Penalty specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The death penalty is not exactly discriminatory along the lines of race and social class as claimed. These allegations are usually based on the statistics collected on the number of the death row inmates as well as those already executed. Despite the truth in those statistics that a majority of the peop le belong to a certain race or are the poor, the amendments in the law takes care of any forms of discrimination and the judicial process has clear guidelines where a person is protected against unfair ruling. A detailed and comprehensive evaluation of those convicted to be executed and the process of the judicial ruling on their cases saw no violations in the law statutes and hence the conclusion that those who are convicted as death row inmates are lawfully in that position as opposed to claims that it was inclined towards racial social class circles (Blume et.al, 2003). The argument rose seeking to explain why death penalty should be abolished state that an alternative should be adopted in its place which is to sentence the criminals for life imprisonment without parole? The issue I have with this alternative is that it is a well known fact that it costs the taxpayer a lot more money to keep a criminal in life imprisonment as compared to when the criminal was sentenced to death. With the current looming era of economic crisis, governments from allover the world are doing all they can to cut the unnecessary costs incurred in order to survive the crisis. Killing murderers would cost less than imprisoning them for life, which is what the government needs during these difficult times (Eddlem, 2002). In the course of delivering judgment on the numerous capital offences, mistakes are bound to be committed where an innocent person is convicted to death penalty. As people argue to support this point they fail to look at the positive side of the issue which is it still serves as a deterrent factor preventing lots of crime which is of much importance in ensuring peace and tranquility which in turn fosters economic benefit in terms of productivity. Think of a person who commits murder, think of him as a person on the loose and likely to commit more murders if they continue existing. You will agree with me that it is also a feeling of the majority that such a person ha d better been eliminated first to serve them with an equal punishment and secondly to eliminate such a violent and wicked criminal (Blume, 2008). Synthesis A major position taken by those who seek to support the existence of death sentence is the claim that it deters crime from reoccurring. The argument here is that when a person who committed a capital crime is executed, this is going to make criminals who were contemplating committing crime to stop out of fear of being subjected to death too. This has not been fully been effective as evidenced by the continued prevalence of numerous cases of murders, rape, robbery with violence as well as drug trafficking.Advertising Looking for essay on ethics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More It should be understood that the deterrent effect is only felt in cases where the crime committed was premeditated and carefully planned. In the case where the criminal is able to convince themselves that upon committing the crime they won’t be caught, the deterrent effect can fail to be effective. This often the case a majority of the times and hence the death penalty fails to serve its intended purpose. According to CliffsNotes.com. (2010), there is a common tendency to support the death penalty by basing its reason on the fact that it serves the criminal with a just punishment which is equal to the crime committed. The concept they use is the one advocated in the bible by Moses in the Old Testament which is an eye for an eye. This argument is not justified as this religious concept was revised by Jesus who replaced it with the concept of loving ones enemy. This argument cannot be used to state that justice is offered since there can’t be an equivalent of justice to repay the victims of the crime. Contrary to what the penalty is said to accomplish, it is actually some form of revenge as opposed to serving justice. What they fail to understand is that some crimes are not premeditated or planned but are carried out as a result of the pressure the person is under or a circumstance that forces the person to act in a particular manner. Killing such a person is not justified as the person is subject to reform and should instead be allowed to recover and return to normalcy. Killing a person also takes away another source of labor in the society which means the persons input in the society will be lost (Hawkins, 2002). The concept of death penalty is usually discriminative in the basis of race and social class. Most of those convicted and sentenced to death penalty are from the underprivileged minorities as well as the poor. This was based on the statistics collected on the death row inmates but was later challenged by supporters of the death penalty s aying that the law amendments were not violated. A further look at the statistics indicates that the underprivileged also formed the majority of those who had been found to be falsely convicted over time. This only serves to justify why the death penalty should be abolished since it was being manipulated to and administered discriminatively (Blume, 2008). The process of convicting a criminal to the time they are executed is said to cost a lot of money. There have been attempts to support death sentence on the basic of the saving money that would have been used to keep that person in jail incase they were alternatively sentenced to life imprisonment. What these people fail to consider is that convicting a person to the point of facing a death a sentence is a long process. Such cases go through the investigation stage, trial stage and the final execution process which when combined costs a lot more than the cost of keeping that person in jail. In any case the number of those executed per year is just a small number and which incase the state was to save any money by executing them it won’t be much (Eddlem, 2002). A major fear that should be considered when thinking about the issue of death penalty is the question of the case where the convicted person was innocent, but is subjected to death penalty. This would mean that the person is denied the right to life falsely. The judicial process involves several stages which are bound to be erroneous and result in the person being served with injustice. Killing the person denies the person a chance to have his innocence proven sometime in the future. The law clearly states that every one will be judged correctly and this part s supposed to protect against being convicted wrongly. This is the same system that erroneously sentences people to death. If the death penalty continues to be practiced it means that with time there will be scores of people who will be denied the right of life wrongly (Ballard, 2003). Concl usion In conclusion, despite the numerous calls for abolishment of the death penalty by various camps, it is still continually being practiced in various countries. This is despite there being evidence to prove it hasn’t fully served its purpose and the negative sides of it. In USA for example, a majority of the population continue to continue to support the practice of the death penalty. This however doesn’t stop the fact that morality states that it is not right for a person to take another ones life, and that God only can decide when to take a person’s life. Reference List Ballard, S. (2003). Should Death Sentence be abolished? Web. Blume, John H. (2008). The Dilemma of the Criminal Defendant with a Prior Record. Lessons from the Wrongfully Convicted: Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 477(3), 12-27. Blume, John H., Eisenberg, T. Wells, M. (2004). Explaining Death Row’s Population and Racial Composition: Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 1(165-207) . CliffsNotes.com. (2010). Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?. Web. Eddlem, T. (2002). Ten Anti-Death Penalty Fallacies. New American, 13(5), 13-27. Hawkins, S. (2002). Do We Need the Death Penalty? It is Immoral and Ineffective, 12(5), 5-12. Ulcepo, D. (2003). The Death Penalty Should Continue To Be Used In The U.S. OPPapers, 14(12), 2-6. This essay on The Practice of Death Penalty was written and submitted by user Raphael Nash to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.