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Jewish World Review August 27, 2002 / 19 Elul, 5762

Doug Bandow

Doug Bandow
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Consumer Reports

Modern-day gladiators

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | The more government changes, the more it remains the same. The Roman Empire built the Coliseum and entertained its citizens with gladiators. Today cities entertain the masses by building stadiums for baseball and football contests.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams wants to bring professional baseball to the nation's capital by contributing as much as $200 million toward a new stadium. A group of northern Virginia businessmen are working to saddle taxpayers with $100 million to $200 million in costs for a new baseball franchise. In fact, more than 30 sports facilities have been built or planned over the last decade. Last year, 15 baseball and football franchises were asking for new stadiums.

Obviously, franchise owners prefer that someone else pay. Since Milwaukee inaugurated the modern gladiatorial era in 1953 by building a stadium to tempt the Braves to leave Boston, governments have spent more than $20 billion, in current dollars, on sports facilities. According to economist Alan Krueger, that's 2 1/2 times what the poor, impoverished sports moguls contributed.

Stadium supporters argue that such government "investments" create jobs. Fred Baranowski, president of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, even exults that the Padres ballpark project "has stimulated property values and residential and commercial development interest in a part of downtown that was dormant for decades."

It is all too good to be true. Public finance experts Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist found that "no recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment and no recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues."

Baltimore's Camden Yards may be one of the nation's best, but Johns Hopkins University economist Bruce W. Hamilton figures every city resident contributes $12 a year toward the stadium's upkeep. And that doesn't include the revenues that could have been generated from investing people's money elsewhere. Many facilities are huge financial black holes. In San Diego, the Padres convinced the city to build them a stadium -- which has been long held up in litigation -- and then promptly dismantled the team that went to the World Series. The team later reneged on its promise to build new hotel and office space, which was supposed to help generate tax revenue to pay off city bonds.

The Chargers came up with a $68 million renovation project for Qualcomm stadium. Through revenue-guarantee, city taxpayers effectively buy unsold seats, which has cost San Diego taxpayers $25 million so far. The Chargers are now threatening to move to Los Angeles -- unless San Diego builds them a new stadium, thank you very much. Obviously, stadiums generate economic activity. But there's no guarantee that they will even help their own neighborhoods. For instance, Yankee Stadium has not revitalized the Bronx. And even if they help some local property owners, there are losers. San Diego's project has boosted rents, driving out many businesses.

Moreover, enriching a few lucky individuals or companies should not be confused with benefiting the public. Making some people pay so others can profit is a misuse of government. Especially when the same argument could be made for subsidizing any business.

Why not build a new factory for General Motors? Or construct buildings for new restaurants? Even if corporate subsidies were a good thing in theory, there's no reason to believe that a stadium would be more productive than other public programs, let alone private projects.

The real economic cost of stadium construction is the "opportunity cost." That is, any "investment" has to be measured against the benefits that would accrue from spending the money elsewhere, whether creating new schools or providing credit for new entrepreneurs.

Almost every study proclaiming the economic benefits of sports facilities ignores the impact of siphoning that money out of other activities. As Hamilton puts it: "You produce jobs working at the stadium, but you reduce jobs at bars or bowling alleys or clothing stores or wherever else (fans) would spend their money." Economists Robert Baade and Allen Sanderson reviewed the experience of 10 cities since 1958 and concluded that adding a stadium had no impact on employment. Noll and Zimbalist found only "an extremely small effect on overall economic activity and employment."

The best way for government to promote development is to improve the overall investment and regulatory climate. True, politicians quail before owners' threats to move. Yet if the only way to prevent a team from leaving is to shovel corporate welfare into a billionaire's hands, the proper response, especially from cities and states in fiscal crisis, is to say no thanks. Public officials need to remember what government is supposed to be about. The Roman Empire provided bread, circuses and gladiators to anesthetize its citizens. The American Republic can and should do better.



JWR contributor Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Comment by clicking here.

Up


08/20/02: Don't start the second Gulf War
08/13/02: Declare war before going to war
08/06/02: Hostile allies
07/30/02: Protecting or persecuting citizens?
07/23/02: Shifting the risk to Uncle Sam
07/16/02: Fighting the patent wars
07/09/02: Getting that quota feeling
07/02/02: Teetering on the Democratic edge
06/25/02: Judicial litmus tests
06/18/02: Killer teeth?
06/11/02: Europeans defending whom?
05/24/02: Threatening pharmaceutical innovation
05/14/02: The war crimes fantasy
05/07/02: Paying a high price for befriending Saudi princes
04/30/02: The price of postal monopoly
04/23/02: The war on charity
04/16/02: The forgotten human right
03/27/02: Cuba's struggle to be free
03/20/02: How to defeat Cuban communism
03/12/02: Junk science, redux
03/06/02: Axis of hubris
02/27/02: Washington-style campaign reform: incumbent protection
02/20/02: The grand Enron morality play
02/12/02: Rebuilding what?
02/05/02: Succumbing to the terrorist temptation
01/29/02: Democrats for what?
01/22/02: The Iraqi question
01/14/02: Profiling frequent flyers
01/08/02: Trade, not aid
01/02/02: Treason by any other name
12/26/01: Preserving freedom in an unfree world
12/17/01: Dealing with terrorism's aftermath
12/10/01: Emerging friendships?
12/04/01: Uncle Sam: Insurer of last resort
11/28/01: Expanding the circle of trade
11/20/01: Free to be stupid
11/13/01: The meaning of compassion
11/07/01: Patriotic scoundrels
10/30/01: The coming postal raid
10/16/01: First, do no harm
10/12/01: Good news from a suffering land
10/04/01: Defending whom?
09/25/01: The wrong solution to the wrong problem
09/21/01: The price of terrorism
08/28/01: Uncle Sam's retirement scam
08/21/01: Canberra's quaint naivete
08/14/01: Uncle Sam's false fuel economy
08/08/01: The Clinton administration in drag
07/31/01: The high cost of government
07/24/01: Kill the campaign reform illusion
07/17/01: Do as I say, not as I do
07/11/01: Lawyers at play
07/05/01: Western blundering, Macedonian disaster
06/26/01: How best to honor Bill Clinton?
06/19/01: A maturing Europe?
06/15/01: Tell Beijing to mind its own business
06/06/01: Ukraine's boiling cauldron
05/31/01: Protecting privacy from Uncle Sam
05/22/01: America's Balkan quagmire
05/09/01: The Taiwanese flash point
05/01/01: Globalization serves the world's poor
04/24/01: Who's cheating whom?
04/10/01: The NCAA scam
04/03/01: Balkan stupidities
03/27/01: McCain doesn't want a 'risk for our country'
03/20/01: Dubious Korean alliances
03/06/01: Coercive patriotism
02/27/01: Bombing without end
02/20/01: A dose of misplaced outrage
02/13/01: Psst: Tax cuts for taxpayers. Pass-it-on
02/06/01: Bridging the unbridgeable gap
01/23/01: Left-wing demagoguery
01/16/01: The drug war problem
01/10/01: Politics and trade
01/03/01: Hope for liberty?
12/27/00: The debris of war
12/19/00: What's the rule of law for?
12/15/00: Ending silicone breast implant saga
12/05/00: Election may yield victor, but there are no winners
11/21/00: A Bush presidential mandate?
11/07/00: Exprienced Gore? Yeah, right
11/01/00: Interventionist follies
10/17/00: America's brightening prospects in Ukraine
10/11/00: GOP budget scandals
10/03/00: How a pharmaceutical 'crisis' was created
09/27/00: Clinton's empathy has helped nobody
09/13/00: AlGore's risky budget policies
09/05/00: Military readiness and Korean commitments
08/29/00: Let sleeping hypocrites lie
08/21/00: Targeting a journalistic pariah
08/15/00: European garrison for Kosovo?
08/08/00: Journalistic cleansing at the Boston Globe
08/04/00: Junk science on trial
06/22/00: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
06/15/00: The end of U.N. peacekeeping
06/07/00: The Clinton regulatory miasma
06/01/00: Administration stupidity, congressional cowardice
05/25/00: The silence of the international community
05/18/00: Protecting the next generation

05/11/00: Freer trade with China will advance human rights

05/04/00: How not to save the Constitution

04/28/00: American tripwire in Korea long ago disappeared: Why are we still involved?

04/18/00: Clinton administration believes the IRS is too gentle, wants more auditors

© 2002, Copley News Service