Washblog

the businesses on lower queen anne won't have the benefit anymore, and that sucks cuz I like lower Q.A.  BUT

the money won't be taken to a bonfire at golden gardens and then chucked into the bonfire and then it will go up in smoke -

people will blow it on other things.

maybe they won't spend it so millionaires and billionaires can kind of sort of 'support' hundreds of struggling pee-ons in hte various support jobs which don't have much in the way salary, never mind enough salary for retirement / health / etc etc.  

WHY is our choice to support zillionaires to benefit a few peee-ons, OR, all the psss-ons get screwed?

Here is an idea.

for the ... ????  500 ?? peee-ons who will be soon be unemployed cuz of a few greedy rich f$$ks

let's give them all 100 grand to transition to a new life!

that will cost us 50 million, AND

maybe 200 or 499 of them will re-invest in themselves and their families and the local economy and help grow the community.

screw the NBA.  

I'll miss the Storm, but, the NBA killed the ABL cuz the pri$$s who run the NBA ... well, are pri$$s.  

rmm

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

by rmdSeaBos on Fri Jan 19, 2007 at 07:25:32 PM PST

---

I'm with seabos here (again); I will miss the Storm.

Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue

by The Left Shue on Fri Jan 19, 2007 at 07:42:58 PM PST

---

   Build the damn facility and impose a 50% ticket tax to redeem the investment!
   By the way, I find professional sports a waste of lives and money :)

Dave Gibney Pullman

by gibney on Fri Jan 19, 2007 at 09:32:36 PM PST

---

Andrew Zimbalist, Professor of Economics at Smith College, is probably the preeminent sports economist in the country.  Here is an excerpt from his 2003 discussion with Michael J. Bandler of the US State Department, Sports and Economics (emphasis added):

Q: Talk for a moment about the impact of sports on regional and local economies. How have sports altered the social development of communities?

A: The independent economic research that's been done on the question of whether sports teams and sports facilities have an economic impact on an area has uniformly found that there is no positive impact. By having a sports team or a new stadium or arena, you don't increase the level of per capita income, and you don't increase the level of employment. There's no direct economic development benefit.

Q: And yet cities have been following the pattern, in recent years, of building new stadiums and arenas in the heart of the community, and demolishing the cookie-cutter facilities along outlying freeways. It would seem, to a layman, that there's an economic connection.

A: Well, it might strike a layman that way, but it's still not true. One can easily explain the interest in having professional sports teams as primarily social and cultural in nature. People in America and in other countries certainly enjoy and love sports. One of the wonderful things about having a sports team in your community is that it galvanizes everyone to actually experience themselves as a community. It gives them an identity. That kind of expression of enthusiasm and unity is an aspect of the community experience that you don't have often in modern society, which is so atomized and individualized because of things like the automobile and television. It provides a very special experience for people - or at least it can.

To say that it doesn't benefit an economy is different from saying it doesn't have any value. I'm certainly not arguing that. Sports, potentially, have a very important role to play, which is why people support them. Another reason is that there are economic interests, particular private interests, that do benefit from having a team or new stadium. I'm thinking, certainly, of construction companies, general contractors, architectural firms, investment bankers who float the bonds to finance new stadiums, lawyers who work for the investment bankers, maybe restaurant and hotel interests. And, of course, there's the team owner.

You know, cities build parks and opera houses - not because they think it's going to generate higher per capita income, but because it's a form of social and cultural enrichment.

That final paragraph is the crux of the argument against the highway robbery being proposed by Clay Bennett, and previously by Paul Allen and Howard Schultz and Howard Lincoln and on and on and on.  Sports teams are merely (highly profitable) hobbies for very rich men.  It's unconscionable that so many other sources of social and cultural enrichment -- theater groups, musicians, lecture series, dance troupes, and so forth -- have to scramble for their hand-to-mouth existence while cities throw wads of cash at filthy-rich hobbyists who don't need it.  Subsidize Empty Space and ACT and Pacific Northwest Ballet and Bumbershoot, and so many others, before acceding to Clay Bennett's extorsion demands.

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever -- Larry Andersen
Blogging at Peace Tree Farm

by N in Seattle on Sat Jan 20, 2007 at 07:37:13 PM PST

---

I have a previous blog post about this very topic, and not much has changed in the debate.  I can see both sides, and my personal solution is to create a way for the public, meaning the people who care about the teams and want the sport to stay in Seattle, be given a chance to take ownership of the team and get the payback.

Economic populists like me are called crazy.  We actually believe that the people have the ability to challenge the high rollers on a level playing field.  Green Bay shows us the way, but "they who will not be named" decided they didn't like that model, even though that team does more in Wisconsin to boost pride, provide revenue and give kids someone to look up to than just about any other team in any other league.

Give the people ownership of the team, and we'd be willing to put whatever money is required into the stadium.  It's not about making money, or preventing others from making money.  It's about ownership.

by chadlupkes on Sat Jan 20, 2007 at 10:00:30 PM PST

---

The other major argument is that the owners are already rich, and should have to pay for their own stadiums.  While I agree that the business itself should contribute a significant portion of the funding, the idea that they are the only ones who benefit ignores the impact on the local economy.  Since the state will benefit, the state should share in the investment to some degree.

For starters, nobody said that because they are already rich and so they should have to pay for their own stadiums. It doesn't even make sense: rich folks borrow lots of money when they start businesses. In fact what they usually do if the venture is successful is sell stock so they can get more money by selling off the company. What rich people do with their money is loan it to others: it diversifies risk.

As for the notion that because somebody other than the business the "state" will benefit then the state should invest... There are two prongs for interpreting this:

The first one is an extension of so-called corporate personhood to the State. Well I don't really subscribe to the theory of corporate personhood to begin with; I am even more firmly convinced that in a democracy the State is not a person separate from the people with whose consent it governs.

The second one recognizes "state" above as a simple conflation of the citizenry. I am under no obligation to invest in any business, and an assertion that I might benefit doesn't change that.

The next and final implication which I will shred before moving on is the one that the business is somehow being penalized if the state doesn't invest is by extension the one which says that rich people and successful corporations shouldn't be penalized for their success by being forced to pay taxes:

This argument ignores that fact that corporations are from their very legal inception fictions of law created by the State: they are a benefit provided by the State. Second, the people who are making money on successful businesses are the ones who benefit largely from the huge investments which the State does in fact make in infrastructure, education and the wellbeing of the populace (when governments forget this central mission or the taxes are squandered by mismanagement and corruption, then I am willing to allow that the people who pay the most of those taxes have at least some practical right to be heard complaining above the general opprobium).

Anyone who has ever contemplated contracting to the State knows that the State routinely cites its constitutional prohibition on lending money when it stipulates that no payment will be made until the work is completed.

As for specific subsidies to entities such as Boeing and Microsoft, as an information technology professional I have standing to assert that by subsidizing Microsoft, the State is subsidizing my competition. Furthermore it is a fact that the State does indeed have a software licensing contract with Microsoft itself... their Nevada subsidiary that is. I'd like to know what the net effect on taxes paid here in Washington is.

In summary:

This argument only makes sense to corporate fascist ideologues.

I've never been to an opera and probably won't be this year, but I'm glad to see the city and state investing in it, because it's good for the community and provides a number of people with great joy.  To take a slightly ridiculous example, I've never used a number of roads in other parts of the state, but accept the reality that my tax dollars were well-spent on building those roads because the economy benefits from them.

It is ridiculous. Maybe you don't understand why it is hopelessly flawed.

It is flawed because of its construction: it is equally valid to assert that indeed you did not pay for those roads in other parts of the state, just for the road in front of your house. In this construction we allow others the privilege to utilize roads they didn't pay for, in exchange for the privilege of using the ones they did pay for. Carrying this a step further someone who manufactures a commodity builds roads to transport their commodity to market. A commerce center builds roads to enhance its position as a center of commerce; the fact that these roads are apprehended as forming a mesh doesn't require deus ex machina, it can be recognized as an emergent phenomenon.

The history of the interstate highway system illustrates this emergent nature: small towns which were bypassed died out, while strip malls and a whole "fast food" culture grew spontaneously on the farmlands at the cloverleafs.

by m3047 on Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 12:33:28 PM PST

---

  Sean's OP was well written and has obviously gathered some attention. As someone who has little use for sports at all, I think he's some misguided, but that's just me.
  I'm willing to listen, so let's sit back and contemplate a tad :) You to Sean.

Dave Gibney Pullman

by gibney on Mon Jan 22, 2007 at 01:31:32 PM PST

---