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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

In many situations, people who are identified as being at risk have somebody else placed in control of the finance, by court action. Brain injury patients for instance. Hmmm.. hang on.. whats the major risk factor in the football circuit again?

Seriously: the recruitment of minors for major league with giant cash benefits should require them to sign a consent form for arms-length management of their capital for some time period, and give them the income stream not the capital.

after all, its often how the money is being controlled that wound up being their notional capital in the first place

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Really, taking their adult autonomy away is the first step? How about education?

This might be anecdotal, but I feel like we don't hear these athlete bankruptcy stories as often about hockey players. Why? Because they're all white, not black. Putting a kid through junior hockey is expensive and hockey players tend to come from privileged homes with much better financial education than young black football players. They get just as many knocks on the head, but they get better advice from their father's accountant, and they make it to retirement with some money left.

Making them sign away control of their money sounds like a new version of the old story of infantilizing black people by removing their adult rights, "for their own good".

Could be an exception to the rule, but the highest profile athlete bankruptcy recently is from a hockey player

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/11/columbus-blue-jackets-jack-j...

That was a bit of a different story since his parents took out loans in his name.

They do exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_NHL_players

I'm curious as to how hockey is any more expensive than any other sport that has player equipment and a privileged background is more beneficial to making it to the professional level than any other sport.

Could it be that black kids as a group just isn't that interested in playing hockey?

Skates are more expensive than cleats. Hockey sticks break or are grown out of, and decent ones are a few hundred bucks.

A quick look at Google shopping disagrees with shoes vs skates and hockey sticks. Although I'm not up to speed at what qualifies as a decent hockey stick and the required cost.

There are inexpensive youth and junior skates (<$100), but these are for younger kids. As soon as you are wearing adult sized skates (10-12yrs old), the price is many times that of cleats.

https://www.purehockey.com/c/ice-hockey-skates-senior

Ah, you provided examples unlike the other comment I responded to. Thank you for that.

But if priced low-to-high the senior skates on that site start at $64.99 and go up from there. Assuming that the lower cost skates are not worth it, you get what you pay for and all that, what's wrong with the middle tier skates that are in the $100-$200 range? How long do they last once a kid's foot doesn't outgrow it every 3-to-6 months?

A decent pair of hockey skates are $300+. You also have to take them in to get sharpened every week if you are that aggressive on them. This is $60/mth.

You also have to invest in padding, helmets, gloves, socks, and so on.

What defines a "decent pair" of skates and why do they cost $300? Wouldn't a nice pair off the shelf at less than $100 or around $50 suffice for a young kid just wanting to play hockey?

I didn't consider the maintenance aspect; the need for sharpening makes sense though.

Good skates can be baked and molded to their feet.

Cheap skates are like cheap running shoes. Yeah, they get the job done until the ill-fitted skates don't offer proper fit and support. Your kid is fine for a month, then they have welts from the cheap insoles and twisted ankles from no stability.

Just wanting to skate at the rink is one thing, practicing and chasing pucks on top of learning edge control demands proper equipment.

Especially given that it's Black History month, it sounds like you might be interested in watching this movie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_on_Ice_(film)

And consider this criticism of the somewhat rosier picture portrayed in that film:

https://hockeyinsociety.com/2017/03/06/soul-on-ice-the-day-t...

That criticism seems to conflate culture with skin. The NHL has a culture where bring the spotlight on individuals is frowned upon (For a long time having a high number on you sweater was considered showboaty). The article wants to call this "white culture" that is unwelcoming to people of colour. That seems wrong to me.

Ice is more expensive than fields, but there is probably a feedback loop as well.

Just about every high school has a football team, equipment is often paid for via fundraisers/carwashes etc if it's not in the budget. Hockey is generally not a high school sport, young people have to pay to participate and do so completely on their own time outside of school.

So it's just as possible as football, but the locals decide to not offer hockey in the same way? What if predominately black high schools in large cities started demanding hockey teams?

The expenses are high and the exceptional players start very young.

Football can be played/practiced on any large grass field in any climate any time of the year. Hockey requires an indoor facility with expensive chilling and maintenance equipment if you want to play outside of a few northern cities for a few months out of the year. Inner city Houston kids will never have access to hockey facilities in any significant numbers.

Do inner city schools play basketball outside? Although, I can see maintaining a hockey rink has increased costs over a basketball court.

In most of the US you can't even practice ice skating without paying money. Compare that to the number of basketball courts out there for pickup games, or fields where football could be played. It's not solely that the equipment costs more, it's that practice directly requires money, and practice time is the biggest overall driver of excellence. Professional race driving is another example of this. Tennis another notable one.

If you want a direct non-racial example of this: white hockey player origin distribution, Canadian and Scandinavian-born versus US-born. Guess where the ice is? :)

Baseball is another sport where black participation has declined in the US and the general assumption is that it's similarly because it's harder to find places to practice baseball in modern American cities (while still much more common in Latin America). Hence http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/mlb_official_story_head...

So the problem is lack of ice and not directly related to economic status? If one goes far enough north, or south, where ice is easily found for practice then the costs decline? So it's more where people choose to live versus the cost of the sport as a whole?

http://time.com/4913284/kids-sports-cost/

Organized youth sports are expensive (in the US at least), and hockey more so than others. You need a lot of equipment which your kid will keep growing out of, and then costs for ice time. Ice time is likely less expensive in big hockey regions (I have no idea), but it's always a cost. A competitive youth league team isn't practicing on a frozen lake.

So, sticks and skates as more equipment than football.

Although, someone pointed out elsewhere that good skates can be expensive and requires maintenance. I didn't consider costs of keeping skates sharp. But I'm still curious as to why high-quality expensive equipment is required specifically for hockey when it seems to me that every other sport has a large number of kids with substandard equipment. Do hockey players not use hand-me-downs or used equipment?

> So the problem is lack of ice and not directly related to economic status? If one goes far enough north, or south, where ice is easily found for practice then the costs decline? So it's more where people choose to live versus the cost of the sport as a whole?

Minors don’t choose where their parents live. If you’re getting drafted at 19 yrs of age, you’ve probably been playing since you were a kid. If you don’t live in a region with abundant natural ice, it will cost you money to skate.

Frankly, your comments comes across as the same type of empty criticism as that which often comes up when people complain about government: “If it’s really so bad, why don’t you just move to another country?” Easier to blame someone for where they live than to consider the challenges of relocating. Both criticisms are deliberately dim.

No, I'm just asking questions trying to understand how it is that hockey is apparently the most expensive sport for kids and only the highly privileged kids get to play.

I don't understand all this negativity I'm getting by just asking questions. A person couldn't possibly propose a solution to a problem without asking questions first.

What?? What point are you even trying to make, now? "More black people would play hockey if more slaves had been imported to Canada and Scandinavia"? Sure, probably, but that's now a completely irrelevant hypothetical to the posed question of "is there a economic background connection to the likelihood of bankruptcy after exposure to extreme short-lived income streams?"

Um, I think I said nothing of the kind. I believe you need to reconsider how you approach different topics. People are free to move about these days you know.

Why in the world is someone downvoting me for asking questions?

Seems pretty anecdotal. Hockey tends to get less press in general than baseball, so I know of a lot more broke white baseball players than broke white hockey players. There's some broke white golfers out there too, that's another money-requiring sport.

Any broke Formula 1 race drivers or tennis players? That's where you'd really look for athletes coming from wealthy families, I think.

In Canada it's different - our sports press is all hockey, all the time. Granted I don't pay much attention to it, but if any sports news makes it to my news feed, it probably is going to be about atheletes going bankrupt.

Anecdotally, I majored in economics at a large public school with a (at the time) national championship caliber hockey team. All of the players on that team that made it to the NHL attended the same classes I did. Most did come from privileged backgrounds but at least one grew up in the projects of Toronto. The coach strongly encouraged his players to take at least a few classes that would give them some financial grounding.

I would consider a much less drastic step.

Mandatory contribution of 10% of their income into an investment account and that has a maximum annual withdrawal of 1% until age 55.

If they otherwise destroy their finances, they'll at least be able to afford a place to live.

In Canada we have the CPP (Canada Pension Plan) which is almost literally this, except everyone pays into it.

In the US, we have Social Security and everyone pays into that but for the most part, you can't collect anything on the benefits until you reach retirement age or become permanently disabled.

Not a bad idea. Here in Australia we call that superannuation. 9% of salary is mandatory.

That’s a unique spin. It’s not about infantilizing. Hockey players also make a lot less, with fewer big payouts and thus fewer big flameouts.

Personally, I think the unions should help guide these guys. New money leading to bankruptcy is a universal story, not unique to any race.

Athletes are particularly vulnerable to scammers, as they spend a lot of time isolated by coaches with a small group of people. Self dealing trusted advisors and that isolation makes them vulnerable.

Hockey players make more than football players.

And the average NHL career is only a few years like the NFL.

Really, taking their adult autonomy away is the first step? How about education?

When do you educate somebody about how to control millions of dollars of assets, in the moment of giving them autonomy over them? If you want to propose education, then its rational to propose the control over the money before and during education is there, no? or, do you propose letting them blow the million on drugs and sex, and then teach them how to sustainably hold onto it, when all they have is a debt hole?

To this Making them sign away control of their money sounds like a new version of the old story of infantilizing black people by removing their adult rights, "for their own good". Yes, that's certainly a dimension. And it works in Australia too, where aboriginal workers had their cash both sequestrated and then stolen.

In my defence, weak though it is, there was no moment I actually intended to refer to specifically black sportspeople. If more black people in sports in America are financially uneducated, the bias in outcome would be there. I am pretty sure immature spending behaviour is colourblind and in all seriousness I meant this across race and culture: I think huge cash incentives for young people should be constrained to last. I'm not a libertarian.

> Seriously: the recruitment of minors for major league with giant cash benefits should require them to sign a consent form for arms-length management of their capital for some time period, and give them the income stream not the capital.

So this looks great at first right? It's like a lotto winner taking the lifetime payments instead of the lump sum. The problem is you can take loans against that money very easily, or you can sign the contract over to someone else very easily. Want to invest $300,000 in your friends restaurant because you think he's a great chef, just take a loan against 10 years worth of your guaranteed income stream.

If someone is determined to screw themselves, it's impossible to stop them.

Yes. I see now that "a fool and their money are easily parted" lives on. I don't know what to do about that.

Maybe a ten percent retain and the moral of the story is you are a former millionaire who now has a small stipend to remind you how stupid you are.

No, thanks. It's their money, let them have it. If they want it to be invested on their behalf, that's fine. But it should be their choice.

How would you like it if your employer told you that instead of paying you your wages, he was instead going to contribute to an investment fund, and you'd receive the income from that fund rather than receiving the money directly?

Replace your employer with government and its real life social security. In theory I support it... if it lasted till I retired.

Unfortunately, what Cato says is very worrying (1). Primarily, they highlight court cases in which Social Security is pulled away from people, and reaffirmed by SCOTUS. This is the troubling quote:

The Court’s decision was not surprising. In an earlier case, Helvering v. Davis (1937), the Court had ruled that Social Security was not a contributory insurance program, saying, “The proceeds of both the employee and employer taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like any other internal revenue generally, and are not earmarked in any way.”

We would likely have a national riot if Social Security was just yanked at once. But if my own life is any guess, the age to qualify for "benefits" keeps going higher and higher. It's theft by attrition, and backed as not theft by courts.

I do not agree with CATO's eventual policy of "privatization" at all. The other choice, which was not posited, was to earmark the funds, keep them segregated from the general fund. Then do the right thing and set Social Security as a guarantee at the same age for everyone. And, remove that cap.

(1) https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/is-there-right-...

>Then do the right thing and set Social Security as a guarantee at the same age for everyone.

You have to take in consideration a few factors governing the original social security age limits. IE Life expectancy was significantly less. People live on average quite a bit longer now, addressing that reality isn't a bad idea.

The other thing to consider is the money we're paying in now isn't being saved for our benefit later. It's being used to pay the benefits of current retirees. Not to mention the money that current retirees paid into the system 20, 30, 40 years ago is a pittance to what they're drawing now.

I mean I like the idea of social security. A lot of people do, it's become ingrained in our national expectation. But in the same token, a lot of people don't have realistic thoughts about it. And we're going to need it to evolve with the realities of our culture. Longer lifespans, real cost of living, etc are all real issues that can't be ignored and expect Social Security to chug on perpetually.

Social Security is perfectly sustainable. The problem with is the demographic bump of the baby boom and use of it as a political football during the 60s and 70s when benefits were spun up, followed by the congress reducing funding by capping payments.

Payments have always been capped (maximum taxable earnings), your history is factually wrong. Congress spends the surplus but the only actions ever taken by Congress on the revenue side of Social Security have been to increase taxes paid into the system.

The cap didn’t increase with inflation, which impacted collections.

In effect the payroll tax was spun up in the 80s and used as government revenue via special bonds. But as the surplus as waned due to increased payments, the cap didn’t move and the government’s spending power to bridge the gap was reduced by our post-2001 perpetual war.

That is quite literally how retirement works.

But paying into a pension is optional.

And to the extent that it's not (e.g. National Insurance): it should be.

It should be so we're down the Cato institute rabbit hole? Sure. You believe one thing and I believe another.

That's what a pension plan is.

In my country, that's called superannuation.

You get some choice where its invested, but in short, you can't spend it on anything that benefits you materially here and now. 9.5% minimum is taken out of practically every non-casual working position.

In general, it's defined contribution, not defined payment (barring some of the older pension plans which are going to have some tough decisions ahead).

Flaws of the system aside, I'm generally in favor of the idea myself.

For 9% of my pay that's what happens. Australia has mandatory age savings. I have discretion over the investment fund. I don't get to spend the cash on hookers.

Choice is a hot button item. You value this specific choice above others. I value their long term welfare above choice in this matter.

First of all, these are not minors - they are over 18. Secondly who the heck are you to decide that you should be in charge of what they can and can't do with their money?

It's also very uncommon for NFL recruits to go straight from high school without passing through college. Which would put them at closer to 21 than 18.

NFL players are required to be at least three years out of high school.

Ah. I knew I hadn't heard of one recently, but did not know about this specific rule. Thanks for the info.

It's called personal responsibility. They're earning sums that many will never reach and it's on them to figure out what to do with it. Nobody is stopping them from asking for help and it's not like there aren't enough examples to learn from by now.

Someone who doesn't have responsibility can't be forced into it.

And the NFL tries to provide that help, by making rookies listen to lectures about managing their finances. But while you can make them listen to advice, you can't force them to follow it.

You can definitely raise children for more responsibility or away from it. If a lot of top sportmen can't manage finance, that would suggest that there is something about the system that raises them (they spend more time on sport then anything else) that is that way.

Which would suggest that responsible parent won't put children into such system.

So now naivety (ignorance) is a moral failing?

No, who said anything about right or wrong here? What I said is responsibility. If you're naive/ignorant/otherwise unprepared then the answer is to ask for help and learn so you can be better prepared. That would be best for your future but it's ultimately up to you and nobody else really cares what you do.

You didn't say "responsibility", you said "personal responsibility". "Personal" implies that they should take sole responsibility for their circumstances, ignoring any other agents involved.

So, yes, it does appear you're talking about right and wrong.

What a strange interpretation. Did you read the entire thread?

The comment I was originally responding to said teams "should require [athletes] to sign a consent form for arms-length management of their capital" which I absolutely don't agree with because they are adults who can choose for themselves. And yes, it's personal because it's their money and their choice to either spend it or do something else.

I don't care what or how they do it, and there's no inherent wrong or right involved. It's their paycheck and they can do whatever they want with it... but taking away their agency in the first place doesn't solve anything and certainly doesn't magically teach better decision making in the future.

The phrase "personal responsibility" has decades of rhetorical baggage, from long use as a dog whistle by the USA's political right.

Going with the principle of charity: I apologize for assuming you were using "personal responsibility" as a bludgeon.

> require them to sign a consent form for arms-length management of their capital for some time period

All 4 big professional leagues in the US have pension plans [0] that, while not making them rich, will at least provide enough money to survive in the event they blow all their earnings. It's not quite as extreme as what you propose, but there's definitely some deferred income.

[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/nfl-nhl-nba-mlb-retirement-pe...

There was actually a sports agency run by an accounting firm that did something close to this. They basically said, “We will make sure you and your family are taken care of for the rest of your life but it means there are certain things you have to let us handle with your finances so that we can say ‘no’ to people for you.”

They also had to agree not to spend on drugs, strippers, excessive houses, etc.

It seems that we, the people that read about athletes and celebrities losing their money while we commute to work feel the best course of action is less control. Arguably similar, people in technology who hunt equity at the expense of future financial stability. We consider their competence at managing money in the but not the latter.

Actually we do. Lots of online resources council new ict startup entrants not to be seduced by vesting, try to point out the huge downside potential risks. The small group of people who do hunt it, are quite distinct from the people who enter sport for huge short term up front money with inadequate skills to manage it. YC isn't combing high school and college touring cash now for brilliant ideas.

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