You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
International entertainers, including sports personalities, often get paid millions of dollars in one year.
In your view, with widespread poverty in the world, are these huge earnings justified?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Model answer
The salaries of many singers, dancers, and sportspeople have increased out of all proportion in recent years, while in places like Sudan people are starving to death. I do not believe that anyone should be able to earn such enormous salaries when so many people in the world are living in poverty.
One of the factors which should affect what a person can earn ought to be the benefit of a person’s work to society. It is unreasonable for a famous singer to be able to earn far more from an evening’s entertainment than, for instance, a medical scientist who develops a new drug that produces a treatment for a common disease. The pop star certainly has a value in society, but the value in no way exceeds, or even matches, the value gained from a successful medication.
Secondly. work done should be paid according to the amount of effort and skill that goes into it. Nobody would deny that a famous person works hard and is skillful, yet such people do not work any harder than thousand of other workers who have no claim to fame. Yet market forces are such that these superstars can obtain millions of dolor while other unknown people sometimes earn less than they need to survive.
Finally, it should be possible for governments to work together to ensure that the amount of money in circulation should be more equally and fairly distributed. This seems only fair given that there is so much suffering.
To conclude, it is clear that world poverty is a serious problem and yet the problem could be eased if governments and companies gave more thought to paying salaries on a more equitable basis and if they started to contribute more money to those in need.
(296 Words)
