Have a listen to Keith Hill talk about parachute payments, the man speaks a lot of sense. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19649720 He makes a good point when he says that teams shouldn't be rewarded for failure. I see it as the premier league doing everything it can to stay the most watched league in the world. It basically says to a newly promoted team that instead of being a bit wise with their money in the first year or two that they can go out and spend the cash earned from promotion on buying the best players they can attract, but don't worry because we will take care of you if you go down again. It gives licence to premier league teams to spend everything they've got on players with no fear of being stuck with costly contracts should they go down. It's all about the premier league wanting to have the best players in their league and **** the rest.
It also gives newly relegated teams a far higher chance of 'bouncing back at the first attempt'. It's something like £48m spread over four years, and enables relegated sides to hang on to overpaid Premier calibre players, as these payments enable their inflated wages to be maintained. Scrap parachute payments and introduce goal line technology - the start of a fairer and more level playing field (This is NOT a Wum attempt, in case of any backlash)
The bit that people seem to have missed out on is when financial fair play kicks in the relegated clubs are automatically going to have the extra revenue needed to rebuild their teams. If its not worked right then promotion will go by default to the relegated teams who will be able to outbid everyone else based on parachute payments alone.