In Britain, where austerity is in vogue and government budget cuts affect the health system, schools and other vital services, Liverpool of the Premier League signed free-agent soccer star Joe Cole for four years at $7.4 million a year. Hardly austere.

On this side of the Atlantic, the New Jersey Devils, based in Newark, a city with an unemployment rate of more than 13 percent, happily re-signed Ilya Kovalchuk to a 17-year, $102 million contract. Even though rejected by the National Hockey League, it disturbed many citizens.

"What gets me a little upset,'' Joe Rizzo, a laborers' union organizer told John Branch of the New York Times, "is when you relate it to what's happening in the real world.''

The real world? Where's that?

On Wall Street, where CEOs get stock options worth $40 million? Or Hollywood, where studios drop $50 million before you can say Leonardo DiCaprio?

We've heard it for years: School teachers and firefighters are underpaid for what they contribute. Athletes, all entertainers, are overpaid.

That's just the way it is. And always will be.

Sports and show business are not the problem. We're the problem. If we didn't care who won, whether it was an NFL game or an Oscar, quarterbacks and actors would be like the rest of us, trying to make ends meet rather than, in the case of the QBs, trying to make an end meet up with a football.

We're looking for an escape, looking for people who can fill arenas or theaters, looking for the rare individual who can make a difference, on the field or at the box office.

It might be Joe Cole, or it might have been Nat King Cole. It could be Ilya Kovalchuk. It could have been Wayne Gretzky. Or Michael Jordan. Or Joe DiMaggio.

Texas coach Mack Brown earns $5 million a year. Nick Saban of Alabama $4 million. You might think either figure a bit much for helping young men block and tackle instead of helping them get ready for medical school. Their bosses don't. Nor do the TV networks.

The woman teaching our kids calculus eventually may have a greater impact on society, but morality and education are not the issues.

You are asked to recall the oft-quoted remark that 65,000 fans don't show up to hear a professor lecture on political science. Or Shakespeare. Or anything.

So our priorities are misplaced? You want to beat LSU or don't you?

Salaries are set by the marketplace. You can always find someone out there able to explain why the economy in all of America is in a shambles, but there are very few who can be an All-American.

The theory postulated here is that with cars, wine and ballplayers you usually get what you pay for. Usually.

A-Rod wouldn't be receiving nearly $30 million per if he were just another infielder. Restaurants wouldn't be getting some $500 for a bottle of Lafite Rothschild if it were just another Bordeaux. And there's already a waiting list for that new $600,000 Porsche 918 Spyder.

They taught us the theory in Econ 101: supply and demand. If you have what the people want, they'll pay to get it. Even when homes are being foreclosed. Even when the unemployment rate in Newark is higher than 13 percent.

A couple of nights back, Stephen Strasburg pitched for the Nationals at Cincinnati. Attendance was 37,368, nearly double the Reds' season average of 23,000. It was Strasburg they came to see, Strasburg who made money for both teams. Shouldn't he make money for himself?

Life's unfair. Kids are stricken with terrible diseases. Loyal, efficient workers at General Motors are laid off after 20 years because the company was mismanaged. If you never grow taller than 5-foot-8, forget the NBA.

A man who runs after a fly ball earns 30 times as much as a man who runs a drill press. A woman who knows how to act might earn 40 times as much as a woman who knows how to polish a floor. Of course it's wrong. It's also real.

Phil Mickelson earns more from wearing a hat with KPMG on the front than any spectator in his gallery would earn in 10 years. Let Ben Bernanke have a go at that one.

If Ilya Kovalchuk gets $102 million or $102, it has no bearing on how much a day laborer or a ribbon clerk or a math teacher is going to be paid. Or even if he or she has a job.

It would be wonderful if the three major networks paid schools and factories the $20.4 billion as they did in rights fees to the NFL, but until we start watching kids trying to pass a chemistry test instead of men trying to pass a football, it's just not going to happen.