Today I heard Frank DeFord talking on NPR about public funds for sports stadia.<\/p>\n
Now, I live in a town that’s a poster child for ill-conceived sports facilities, but the ridiculousness of Miller Park and that hapless Bewers notwithstanding, the question arises: <\/p>\n
\nWhy, when we are less willing to pay for public goods like roads and education, are we more likely than ever as a nation to spend public funds sports facilities?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I think it’s been amply shown that professional sports clubs are not a useful economic development investment for a community. It’s also pretty clear that new stadia are built so owners can sell luxury boxes to to their plutocratic friends. Furthermore, I’m willing to bet that on average, prices for tickets and concessions rise, squeezing out more of the taxpayers who are subsidizing these projects.<\/p>\n
DeFord argued that the primary benefit is on the community psyche. And here we hit the nub of the issue: What is it about the present state of the American psyche that we find schools (e.g.) are too expensive, but sports aren’t? <\/p>\n
Is it that we’re letting pride in sports clubs replace civic pride? Or is there a more sinister explanation? E.g., that we’ve been duped into believing that middle class interests and values are served by an upper class whose income has been growing while the lower 80% of the American population’s income has shrunk. (For a closer look at income inquality trends, start with the Wikipedia’s entry on the Gini coefficient<\/a>; see also Ingolf Vogeler’sU.S. Income Distribution & Class Structure<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
I don’t really have an answer, but I do think it’s worth pondering why we’re so stingy about taxes in some cases, and so profiligate in others, particularly when the benefits seem to be in the completely wrong direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I heard Frank DeFord talking on NPR about public funds for sports stadia. Now, I live in a town that’s a poster child for ill-conceived sports facilities, but the ridiculousness of Miller Park and that hapless Bewers notwithstanding, the question arises: Why, when we are less willing to pay for public goods like roads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","cat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}