I have a question for everyone here. Not sure how many of you follow sports alot, but the NFL has been going through a period of "Stadium Mania" lately. This year the Cowboys opened a $1 billion dollar palace and next year NYC will do the same. Soon another stadium will be built in LA, not to mention more "modest" stadiums in Indianapolis, Phoenix, Houston, and other places. The common thread is that tax payer money is used to finance a good chunk of their construction.
I was wondering what your opinions were on tax payer funded stadiums. On the negative side, it's hundreds of millions that could've gone to schools, roads, police, etc. However, a modern stadium can be used to lure concerts, festivals, and other events to make the city even more money.
Quote from: FSBlueApocalypse on February 23, 2010, 05:38:28 PM
I have a question for everyone here. Not sure how many of you follow sports alot, but the NFL has been going through a period of "Stadium Mania" lately. This year the Cowboys opened a $1 billion dollar palace and next year NYC will do the same. Soon another stadium will be built in LA, not to mention more "modest" stadiums in Indianapolis, Phoenix, Houston, and other places. The common thread is that tax payer money is used to finance a good chunk of their construction.
I was wondering what your opinions were on tax payer funded stadiums. On the negative side, it's hundreds of millions that could've gone to schools, roads, police, etc. However, a modern stadium can be used to lure concerts, festivals, and other events to make the city even more money.
If it was really
that economically viable, then they should have no trouble raising the money from other financial interests. The fact that they have to use taxpayer money is pretty indicative of how easily they'd be able to raise said money.
I mean, those sports teams are able to pay their athletes exorbitant salaries. You're telling me they can't raise the money for a new stadium? What the hell?
Quote from: FSBlueApocalypse on February 23, 2010, 05:38:28 PMHowever, a modern stadium can be used to lure concerts, festivals, and other events to make the city even more money.
Broken Window Fallacy. Regardless of how you might feel about welfare for the poor, what possible justification could there be for welfare for multi-billion dollar corporations?
It's extorting money from people and spending it on sports which are unlikely to be economically viable. I consider it stupid and morally evil. I don't think that there is a single justification that I would begin to consider valid.
When one wakes up to the nature of the state, things like this no longer pose an issue.
As someone living in Cincinnati, I can tell you exactly why it's a stupid idea. A while back the city was blackmailed by both our baseball and football teams into tearing down the iconic Riverfront Stadium and building two separate stadiums for each team. We were told this would be a temporary tax, and that the county would be compensated by ticket sales, and these idiots believed it. Now here we are, the stadiums have been operational for quite a while, and should be paying the state back, and we're even now talking about increasing the sales tax for the stadium fund to keep them open because having giant monstrosities on the Riverfront that are only economically viable for half a year isn't very feasible. It's costing us more money than it did at the start, the burden on the poorest taxpayers has continued to increase, especially during construction, which was given away to buddies in the city council and county commissions, and was far over budget. If we'd called the teams on their bluff, we would have been in a win-win situation. We would have either been rid of one or both of our do-nothing franchises, that apparently don't give enough of a crap about the city to stay without massive bribes, or we would have renovated Riverfront at a fraction of the cost, and been able to use the space where the new ball park sits for private commercial development, which actually would have made us money.