The Economics of Superstars

IN RECENT years has not felt his gorge rise upon learning the staggeringly high salary of a shortstop, a movie star, an opera singer? A basketball player on a losing team earns $1.2 million; an author sells the paperback rights to his book for $800,000; a television interviewer switches networks and signs a contract calling for her to receive an annual income of just under $2 million. And the gorge continues to rise. The spectacle of people doing work that doesn't always seem overweighted with significance for annual (and, in the case of rock singers, sometimes nightly) sums of money that figure to exceed what you and I may earn in our lifetimes this, as they say nowadays, does not give off good vibes. What's…