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Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

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Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#231

Post by ui-explorer12 »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #154
drugme wrote: post #152

Elected officials have been played by team owners and sports leagues. The article conveniently neglects to mention one of the more notable examples of a certain very well known official getting "played" in this fashion (for the benefit of a certain hugely unnecessary sports arena on the edge of downtown Brooklyn): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg

Not even sure it's correct to say elected officials are being played. Quite often they're sitting on the same side of the negotiating table as the team owner without no one there to represent the public. In most cases with a few notable exceptions, the elected officials are as rah-rah for a new stadium as the team owner. Which is why in so many jurisdictions they no longer allow the public to vote on stadium funding.…

Agreed - they're not stupid, it's just not their money.

If I can reap the glory of a new stadium, or hosting the Olympics (as my city just narrowly avoided) while you pay the bill for years to come, that's a winning proposition.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#232

Post by ericdykstra »

slg wrote: post #37

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…

I agree with you. Governments subsidize and pay for things with a lot less ROI than sports stadiums that can foster a sense of local community.

Seattle spent $5 million making public shelters for drug deals and prostitution[1], and I bet most residents would have preferred that money go toward a new basketball/hockey arena.

1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattles-5-million...

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#234

Post by slg »

rossjudson wrote: post #218
slg wrote: post #37

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…

Please say "false equivalence" to yourself, as many times as you can. You're going to compare a public park to a stadium? Go to a stadium without a ticket, and see for yourself just how "public" it is. Really, really large numbers of people use public parks. Small, small numbers of people (by percentage, in large metro regions) ever see the inside of a stadium. While I understand that there are many that enjoy profes…

You are missing basically the whole point of my comment. You don't have to enter a stadium or even pay a cent to a sports team to get utility from it. You can watch a game on free over-the-air TV or you can enjoy the communal aspects that other comments in this thread have mentioned. The business is generating positive externalities and therefore it might be appropriate to subsidize it.

Also, you might not want your tax dollars going to support professional sports, but many people do. That was my other point. We live in a democracy and the people generally are in favor of sports. The exact entertainment value it generates is debatable, but it is enough that these deals can be justified without requiring them to turn a profit. That was the only way I was comparing parks and stadiums. They don't need to be profitable to be a good use of money.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#235

Post by jancsika »

tylersmith wrote: post #93
adventured wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing should be subsidized There went universal healthcare in all nations that have it. If you think the yellow vests rioting in France over a gasoline tax (among other things) are bad, just wait until you see how Europe burns to the ground over that one. In the US, Social Security has no actual lockbox ("trust fund"), it's a fraud in terms of funding; without perpetual vast subsidies, Social Security would immed…

Those people wouldn't lose health coverage if they had enough value to afford it from their own labor. If they don't make enough to afford health care then who benefits from them being healthy/alive? I don't find the fact that they'll whine and burn things down a convincing reason to subsidize their lives. Eventually they'll burn out and without healthcare they'll stop being a problem.

You're advocating that sick people who cannot show value through their own labor should die. That is disgusting. And since a generous interpretation dictates that you are clearly trolling, it's also a hoot.

Your first sentence implies a universe in which

0) catastrophes don't happen

1) people are generally aware of their true value

2) value and opportunity are perfectly paired, or at least paired more often than not

3) current value perfectly predicts future value

4) almost forgot-- everyone has the ability to use rhetoric to convey their value to others

5) ooh-- nobody has such a talent for rhetoric that they can convincingly lie about their value to others

6) ooh ooh-- there isn't a class of such rhetoricians who can convincingly inflate their own value while simultaneously deflating the value of entire classes of other human beings. (Hint: there is such a class, and we as humans have known and written about this problem since at least ancient Greece.)

I think that's enough to show high likelihood of a namespace clash between the commonly understood term "people" and whatever collection of perfectly verifiable and immutable key/value pairs you seem to be describing.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#236

Post by onetimemanytime »

fmajid wrote: post #233

As long as elected officials believe sports fan voters will punish them for letting a team leave, they will be blackmailed by team owners. The day pols are punished by voters for subsidizing millionaires, that will stop.

There's a major delay between saying "yes" and seeing that it doesn't work. Probably a decade or so, plus they are many weasel words and other campaign issues: Yes, I voted for the stadium but I also support abortion /want you to carry guns in the park or whatever.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#237

Post by slg »

ken wrote: post #216
ksdale wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very underrated point. I feel like in the abstract, we should be asking how much a city should be willing to pay for a place where tens of thousands of people can gather for a common purpose tens of times a year to attend an activity that tens (or hundreds) of thousands more people really enjoy watching on TV. It seems very plausible that this should be a non zero amount. (Also plausible that it shouldn’t b…

One big difference is that artists pay to use a venue for a performance. Sports teams get the city to pay to build the stadium, and keep the profits. When I go to the theatre or the symphony or the ballet or the opera, the programs and the placards in the lobby always make it clear that most of their funding comes from donations from big companies (in Seattle: always Boeing and Microsoft) and private donors. If we're…

Do you think there is a conspiracy to keep local art off TV? Or maybe the reason that you don't see the Seattle Pops on TV more is because broadcasters can't make money since people won't watch them? Sports are popular. That always seems to be a shock to people in the type of circles that frequent HN, but it is the underlying fact that allows sports teams to get these subsidizes in the first place.

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#238

Post by onetimemanytime »

rexpop wrote: post #229
pgreenwood wrote: post #210

> 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. The article is arguing from a perspective that amenities such as stadiums should be user-p…

Very few Americans own land, and very few would benefit from such a land value rise.

He who owns a home, owns land (unless some other arrangement is made??)

Re: Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums

#240

Post by Rapzid »

slg wrote: post #234
rossjudson wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please say "false equivalence" to yourself, as many times as you can. You're going to compare a public park to a stadium? Go to a stadium without a ticket, and see for yourself just how "public" it is. Really, really large numbers of people use public parks. Small, small numbers of people (by percentage, in large metro regions) ever see the inside of a stadium. While I understand that there are many that enjoy profes…

You are missing basically the whole point of my comment. You don't have to enter a stadium or even pay a cent to a sports team to get utility from it. You can watch a game on free over-the-air TV or you can enjoy the communal aspects that other comments in this thread have mentioned. The business is generating positive externalities and therefore it might be appropriate to subsidize it. Also, you might not want your…

The game could be filmed in a comparatively cheap warehouse and you could still watch it on TV.
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