Beisbal been berry berry good to me?

When I was elected to the House in 1990, stadiums were the economic development rage.  I mean "rage" because when I went door to door, constituents were outraged that public money was being used to build stadiums.  But the  legislature decided to authorize Chase field and it had its collective eye on Florida's Spring Training industry.

It all seemed so cool.  Building new stadiums was great for economic development and although taking teams from Florida was obviously a zero sum game, Florida's loss was our gain. 

That was great in the 90s, but now the Phoenix teams are cannibalizing from...Tucson.

The Chicago White Sox, despite having a lease to play at Tucson Electric Park until 2012, wants to leave and play next year in a stadium that Glendale is building. The Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks have said they like training in Tucson, but the Rockies want significant improvements to Hi Corbett and the Diamondbacks don't want to stay at Tucson Electric Park if just two teams remain.

Now we learn that the fundamental premise of using stadiums as an economic development tool is unfounded. 

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on publicly funded stadiums.

Sports economists have long argued that publicly financed stadiums are a waste of taxpayer money. And they have the data to prove it.

Yes, stadiums do create high-paying construction jobs for a year or two. But the vast majority of long-term employment is low-wage concession jobs. A Congressional Research Service study of the Baltimore Ravens stadium found that each job created cost the state $127,000. By comparison, Maryland's Sunny Day Fund created jobs for about $6,000 each.

Then there's the regressive nature of the transfer.  I know I've hit this theme quite a bit lately and maybe I've been reading too much Noam Chomsky, but things like this are beginning to bother me...

Consider the New York Yankees, who have the highest payroll in baseball and take in more than $300 million a year just from their television network. They'll move into a new $1 billion stadium next year, about half of which was covered by the taxpayers. Seats behind home plate that cost $250 this year will be ten times that next year. The net result is that very few of the people who paid for the stadium will be able to afford a seat there.

Corporate interests are no longer looking to be left alone by goernment, they are seeking the largesse of government.  So "pro business" legislators no longer resemble Ronald Reagan, they resemble Janet Napolitano.  Moderate Republicans and Democrats are willing to raise money from the poor and give it to the rich in the name of transforming society.

 

Comments

[todd]

We are increasingly seeing the negative affect of Socialized Capitalism (privatize profit, socialize risk). Ronald Reagan may have seemed to have spoken against this, but the actions of his administration had quite different outcomes.

As far as the regressive nature of the wealth transfer some of your previous writing has focused on public spending on education and transportation which seem substantially different than public funding of a building which houses a private enterprise. What we see increasingly is the conflation of "public good" with "private gain" which justifies government subsidizing giant corporate hotels, sports arenas and the like while letting transportation and public infrastructure languish.

[Ron]

Greg, you wrote: "Corporate interests are no longer looking to be left alone by goernment, they are seeking the largesse of government."

I think this is called....

CORPORATE WELFARE

[ron]

Todd, "public infrastructure languish" as evidenced by the failure of pumps to remove water from US 60 during last week's downpour.

More evidence will be forthcoming I am sure.

[RamonGustav]

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