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Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

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Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#31

Post by seanmcdirmid »

hammock wrote: post #26
ajross wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would one propose to make it illegal for an elected government to finance construction of a public building? I mean, yeah, sports stadiums are wasteful. But how would you draft that such that it wouldn't eliminate libraries and museums? I mean, I agree with you in spirit but at the end of the day the whole point of a democratic government is that it's empowered to work to better our collective lives. And that has…

>dumb-but-popular Do you have a recent example of a new football stadium that had popular support among the constituent taxpayers? My memory can only recall ones opposed by the general public.

I remember the Seattle vote back in the mid-90s, we clearly rejected it but they went ahead with it anyways.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#32

Post by [deleted] »

surfmike wrote: post #15
ajross wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would one propose to make it illegal for an elected government to finance construction of a public building? I mean, yeah, sports stadiums are wasteful. But how would you draft that such that it wouldn't eliminate libraries and museums? I mean, I agree with you in spirit but at the end of the day the whole point of a democratic government is that it's empowered to work to better our collective lives. And that has…

Might be a way to do it with a tax on private stadium construction. Allow deducting (private costs - all public subsidies). So for any local subsidies you receive, you have a commensurate increase in taxes. Similar problems exist with subsidies for factories, although at least those are producing something at the end of the day.

[deleted]

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#33

Post by dluan »

Is the author actually trying to say that taxpayers paying or stadiums is socialist?

As a Seattle sports fan, I am evidence that a lot of major American sports practice is not a democratic socialist exercise - we had a team and community anchor taken from us with zero recourse. And with what's happening in Columbus right now with the Crew has basically been a hostage situation for over a year.

It's funny that Americans love to throw around 'socialist' and 'communist' when it comes to parity and quality of play in the NFL/NBA/MLS/NHL with salary caps and strict team rules, but these clubs act like cartels. The fact that teams can at any moment be stolen or moved entirely negates any argument of social or economic return to the citizens. Now if only Bloomberg writers would wise up to the 'economic development' scams that companies like Amazon exploit, we'd actually have a better society.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#34

Post by dluan »

village-idiot wrote: post #28

A classic case of what’s popular isn’t always good policy. Although I get the feeling that financing of sports stadiums is becoming less popular now.

It has nothing to do with popularity - it's a feature, not a bug of democratic capitalism: https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-53-welfare-titans

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#35

Post by positr0n »

hammock wrote: post #26
ajross wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would one propose to make it illegal for an elected government to finance construction of a public building? I mean, yeah, sports stadiums are wasteful. But how would you draft that such that it wouldn't eliminate libraries and museums? I mean, I agree with you in spirit but at the end of the day the whole point of a democratic government is that it's empowered to work to better our collective lives. And that has…

>dumb-but-popular Do you have a recent example of a new football stadium that had popular support among the constituent taxpayers? My memory can only recall ones opposed by the general public.

Don't they vote on them? In my hometown of Arlington TX there have been two stadiums* built with part public financing in the last decade. Both were ballot issues in a normal election. I thought that's how it was done everywhere.

* Jerry Jones's $1B monstrosity for the Dallas Cowboys was narrowly approved around 2008 and the new Texas Rangers stadium was voted on this past year, not sure the margin or cost.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#36

Post by smt88 »

positr0n wrote: post #35
hammock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>dumb-but-popular Do you have a recent example of a new football stadium that had popular support among the constituent taxpayers? My memory can only recall ones opposed by the general public.

Don't they vote on them? In my hometown of Arlington TX there have been two stadiums* built with part public financing in the last decade. Both were ballot issues in a normal election. I thought that's how it was done everywhere. * Jerry Jones's $1B monstrosity for the Dallas Cowboys was narrowly approved around 2008 and the new Texas Rangers stadium was voted on this past year, not sure the margin or cost.

To my knowledge, they're not on ballots in most cities.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#37

Post by slg »

There is no question that public stadium subsidies are almost always a bad investment. However these type of articles never take into consideration that people generally like sports teams and want them to stay in the same region. It also isn't just people who attend the games or businesses around the stadium. A local sports team, unlike nearly any other private business, provides a huge but unknown amount of utility to a wide range of residents who never pay for a ticket or a piece of merchandise. Is it unreasonable for a sports team to want to benefit from that free utility?

Politicians shouldn't buy all of these stupid economic arguments for a simple fact they are often wrong. But governments aren't businesses. They don't have to make the smart economic move on every single decision. Creating a public park is rarely a smart economic move, but cities do it because that is what residents want. Politicians who let a sports franchise leave town without putting up a fight in negotiations are often quickly voted out (as well as politicians who offer too many incentives for a team to stay). So the people clearly want to keep teams when the cost is reasonable. The problem is what is "reasonable", especially when there is another city a few states over that has a slightly more generous definition of "reasonable"?

TL;DR - It is more complicated than "sports stadiums = bad" but these discussions rarely get deeper than that.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#38

Post by ademup »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #8

why do they call this socialist in the first sentence and crony capitalist in the 3rd.

See the aforism "Privatizing profits and socializing losses". I think the author is saying that the costs are being socialized by having taxes fund construction and maintenance while the owners are making it happen via the mechanism of crony capitalism.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#39

Post by rayiner »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #22

> The bottom line here is very simple: The cost of building and maintaining these facilities should be borne by the people who attend these events via their ticket purchases, and not the people of an entire state and/or metropolitan region, the vast majority of whom will never set foot inside these enormously costly structures. We shouldn’t subsidize subways and rail transit for the exact same reason. Indeed, more pe…

Except, there are lots of reasons to subsidize subways, for example to encourage ridership which in effect can then decrease public roadway congestion. Thus, even the people who don't directly ride the subway still benefit. It also can reduce pollution as well has have local economic benefits. All of which benefits others, not just the riders. Source: https://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Pages/transitstats... wh…

This is only really true in cities where the major commuting pattern is into the city. In the DC area, for example, most jobs are in Virginia or Maryland, not DC. So the subway benefits the relatively small number of (disproportionately higher income) people who take the subway or a car downtown. It doesn’t really benefit all the folks driving to jobs in Virginia and Maryland.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#40

Post by wongarsu »

ajross wrote: post #3
mlinksva wrote: post #2

Needs to be made illegal (not just stadiums) http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/on-leadership/col-eco... or at least not federally subsidized https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/134... https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/ is a good general resource on the issue.

How would one propose to make it illegal for an elected government to finance construction of a public building? I mean, yeah, sports stadiums are wasteful. But how would you draft that such that it wouldn't eliminate libraries and museums? I mean, I agree with you in spirit but at the end of the day the whole point of a democratic government is that it's empowered to work to better our collective lives. And that has…

Sure, allow the government to construct sports stadiums. The government can then make it free for any sports team to use (though preferential treatment of any one team has to be prevented), and since it's a public building any revenue generated from ticket sales goes towards operating the building, with leftovers going back to the government (just like libaries, museums etc). There's nothing really wrong with that. Naming rights also obviously stay with the government, anything else would be silly.
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