Quote:
Originally posted by AggieSigmaNu361
I'm not an economist, so i can't speak to that. I do know that a lot of times projected "revenues" to a community when trying to woo taxpayer support for proposed sports teams/arenas is often grossly inflated. If i remember my Economics of Recreation class, what should be used to measure true economic impact is money NEW to the community, brought by visitors to the area that were drawn by said arena or sports team who wouldn't have visitied w/o said attraction. At least i think that's what Crompton was trying to say.
But, i feel the US government would be doing more to help the Lakota if they ceased the 'hand-outs' and made them get a job and earn their pay.
Kitso
KS 361
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Your professor was wrong. If you want I'll tell you about sports teams arenas.
An owner goes to the mayor and says I want a new stadium. Give it to me. Why do I want a new stadium? Because I will collect most of the revenue from the luxury boxes in that stadium. For about 5 years that will provide me personally with a boost in income. You know what I will do if you don't give this to me Mr. Mayor? I will leave town and you will have a whole lot of voters hating you. A couple teams have actually even followed through with the threat and remember how other politicians would love to have me in their state...so why don't you do it?
Mr. Mayor says "Yeah why not...nobody will really know what happened". Basically the city funds the stadium and is responsible for a ton of debt from it and also the costs afterwards. The profits would never even cover the costs but regardless they go to the owner. The local economy has not improved at all. How much of a profit is there on a hat? a shirt? Not too much...regardless think about how many hats and shirts you'd have to sell to make up for that debt. Now let's take this further, the economy is suffering. People are on the highway going to the stadium and on the roads on the weekend. Local retailers lose money because people don't come out due to the traffic. The city pays for extra police to come out and monitor things. etc. etc.
If you don't believe anything else I say, believe that. I'll show you all the math if you want or I'll let you do some interesting reading. Allen Sanderson is quite possibly one of the top 3 sports economists. He breaks down all these myths in sports in an easy to understand way and is brilliant. Anyway, take that and apply it to anything that the city spends money on. All this stuff is about bragging rights. Chicago brags about the Bears and builds them an amazing stadium which has even less seats than before but more luxury boxes and NYC brags about all the financial firms that are putting it in the red because of "tax breaks".
-Rudey