[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by NoOne

Using more accurate numbers from a proper source, 2014-2017 it went from 3.8M to 4.1M. (2018 being year 5 -- 4 or 5, let's not split hairs over meaningless nonsense - i'm not writing formally here)

Don't focus on the dollar amounts, focus on the percentage rate of increase.

Originally Posted by NoOne

this is what the people at the top have done forever. they use their leverage and power to get what they want when they want it at the price they want to pay. (ie our salries in general, not just mlb players).

Do you propose any solutions to this?

Originally Posted by NoOne

to deny is to deny nearly all of history -- people at teh top are morally corrupt and incredibly self-centered-- no different than any other human if they switched places.

That's one explanation. Another is that money accumulates money. Or, more generally, having more makes it much easier to acquire more. See: Pareto Principle. It holds true not just for economics, but across nature as well. It appears to be a fundamental principle as to how things in this universe operate.

Originally Posted by NoOne

btw, it is a point for my argument that payroll doubled in the previous decade and then stagnated for 4-5 years. how quickly it's risen since FA began, even... and now it's stagnated for no reason. (think i mentioned in original reply too)

Incorrect. Payrolls have not stagnated. What is happening is that payroll growth is lagging behind revenue growth. The MLBPA's own figures on average salary make it clear salaries are still increasing year-over-year.

(The MLBPA used to publish the average player salary by club. It started doing this in the early 1980s, and did so for many years. But it appears to have ceased making this data public after 2011. At least, I can't find it in my internet searches.)