[1031] in Humor
HUMOR(?): Mike Tyson's Hourly Wage
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Tue Aug 29 10:14:20 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 10:12:02 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 20:32:50 EDT
From: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
From: "Jim Ogden" <longbean@artemis.arc.nasa.gov>
Ok, so I didn't see the fight. In fact I didn't even think about it until I
saw a newspaper proclaiming "Tyson Wins in First Round!" as I walked out of the
Safeway on Sunday morning. Now, I know that Tyson gets paid a lot for his
little trips into the ring, but I never really thought of it in my terms--the
real question is: How much does Tyson make an hour? This is a question of
importance of someone like myself, a college student working over a summer
break, or anyone else trying to "make-ends-meet" on an hourly wage.
Now, if I remember correctly, Mike Tyson got paid twenty-five million for the
fight. He won the fight in the first round, after 89 seconds. Now, if we take
into account only the amount of time between the first bell and the time that
the fight was called, and apply all of his earnings to that time, we will reach
a figure of his hourly wage.
For sake of argument, and ease of calculation, lets give that Peter McNeely guy
another second, for an even 90 seconds, which as we all know is 1.5
minutes, or 1/40th of an hour. That means that Tyson would make 40 times 25
million an hour. This is of course 1000 million dollars, or in layman's terms,
a billion dollars an hour.
Now, who could afford to hire him at these prices? Ross Perot couldn't hire
him for an honest day of work. Unfortunately, only Bill Gates could have his
services for more than one working day, and not much more than that. The
federal government on the other hand might get something out of him. If we
take the federal budget including all discretionary spending, along with Social
Security, Medicade, Medicare, etc. to be about 1600 billion dollars, we can
come to another realization.
There are about 160 working days in a year (52 weeks times 5 days per week).
There are also 8 hours in a working day. This means that Mike Tyson's yearly
salary, comes out to 1 Billion times 8 times 160 which is 1280 billion dollars
a year, or 80 percent of the federal budget. Or about 1/5 the entire Gross
Domestic Product of the entire United States of America.
And I thought you needed a college degree to be sucessful in our day and age!
Yours somewhat truly,
Jimmy Ogden
