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To play devil's advocate: American football is a huge part of American culture. So this is merely tax payers investing in the proliferation and preservation of
by spamizbad 4y ago
To play devil's advocate: American football is a huge part of American culture. So this is merely tax payers investing in the proliferation and preservation of their culture.
(which is probably why all football teams should be publicly owned also)
- zaphod420 4y agoI hate football, and I paid over 300k in taxes last year... Edit: not sure why I'm being down voted. I was an Ethereum ICO buyer and I cashed some out last year. I hate that my tax dollars are going to football.
- bumby 4y agoI think the downvoting is in part that whether or not you like something may not be material to the discussion. If you don’t like police/schools/highways it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fund it with tax dollars. I think the central argument is whether or not a stadium is a public good and worthy of tax funds.
- bladelessninja2 4y agoHow did you get from stadium to police? The whole idea why people organize themselves in countries is to ensure internal and external safety and thus that everyone pay taxes for police, army and courts. Everything else is an addition and in my opinion even undesired to fund by whole community - you can always organize fundraiser or start a private enterprise for such things.
- bumby 4y agoI was interesting that to some people (not me, though) a stadium is a public good and this worthy of public tax dollars to support. Just like the police or schools.
- bladelessninja2 4y agoLike you said: it's the matter of opinion, public safety, though, is not.
- bumby 4y agoThen use schools as an example. Or utilities. It’s not hinged on whether or not it’s a a safety issue, it hinges on whether it’s considered a public good.
- bladelessninja2 4y agoI have suspicion you haven't read my first comment in this thread.
- bumby 4y agoPossibly not, as it’s not inline with this. But I’m not not sure it negates the point that whether or not an individual values a particular thing does not determine if it’s a public good.
- bladelessninja2 4y agoI repeat: public safety is THE reason why we organize in countries, so police, army, justice system is in COMPLETELY different category - it is something essential, the rest is disputable. That's why you cannot compare them with, e.g. schools, there are decent countries without public education, yet, there is no serious country without police/army/courts.
- bumby 4y agoThis still does not negate the fact that citizens also organize other public goods. Just because an individual deems them non-essential does not mean they aren’t public goods. As public goods, the collective citizenry has deemed them worthy of public funding. Libraries are not safety essential, yet they are still public goods. Whether or not they are ubiquitous or “essential to safety” has no bearing on whether they are public goods anymore than it matters if a singular individual disagrees with that designation.
- mattwilsonn888 4y agoPerhaps an aspect of American culture so expensive and not that old should be allowed to diminish according to its market demand.
- acdha 4y agoIt’s part of American culture but so are many other things we don’t directly give money. This seems a lot more like corruption, especially when you look at the track record of misleading economic promises. I haven’t lived in San Diego since the 2000s but I’m still bitter about the way the Chargers got a contract which guaranteed greater attendance than they had for the Super Bowl, where they got more money for an empty seat than a sold ticket. No way that would have flown in a straight up vote, which is why they carefully avoided one.
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- glasss 4y agoI think your note about public ownership is the rub for a lot of people, even fans - this ultimately goes to benefit the owners of the franchise the most.
- kevingadd 4y agoConsidering how severely pro football injures players' brains, maybe this particular bit of culture isn't necessarily worth preserving at taxpayer cost just because lots of us love it. We've given other popular things the boot in the past.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- woodruffw 4y agoI don't dispute that it's part of American culture, and I have no particular interest in denigrating others' interest in it. But I don't think this would muster taxpayer support, if actually put to a vote among taxpayers. I certainly wouldn't vote for it, nor would anybody I know, and yet my state is putting down $850m in taxpayer money for a new football stadium[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/05/buffalo-bills-new-stadium https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/05/buffalo-bills-...
- rayiner 4y ago“Nobody watches sports ball in my bubble.” Not everything needs to be put to a vote to know that it reflects what people want. Specific policies that are unpopular become campaign issues. For example despite being quite democrat leaning, Marylanders don’t like public transit, so Larry Hogan won two terms as a Republican promising to cancel transit projects and shift funding to highways. But if anyone proposed defunding the Baltimore Ravens they’d get booted out of office. Also, even if that was true, there’s lots of public funding for cultural projects that probably wouldn’t fly if put to a ballot measure. The New York State Arts council has a budget of $90 million a year. The current Bills stadium is almost 50 years old. Even if the new Bills stadium lasts only 30 years, the arts council will receive almost $3 billion over that time. Which do you think would be more likely to pass in a ballot state wide ballot measure? $850 million for a stadium of $3 billion for arts?
- oneoff786 4y agoI watch sports ball and I don’t want the team defunded but I don’t want my taxes paying for the construction of a new stadium; the revenues of which won’t be going back to the city.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adra 4y agoJust make it simple. Take the cost of the stadium as a no recourse loan against the team. All of a sudden stadiums get produced with "any" level of scrutiny. It's far too easy to ask for more handouts for luxuries when you're not paying the bill.
- rwalle 4y agoIn some sense fast food is American culture as well but I don't see much benefit in using tax money to preserve that culture. What I am trying to say is that "culture", native or not, does not necessarily have anything to do with public dollars. That totally depends on the context (history, popularity and otherwise) and can be political. e.g. In the US, performing arts organizations receive very little to no public funding. (In fact, one such funding almost got cut in 2017 in Trump's tax bill.)
- jschveibinz 4y agoBread and circuses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
- bladelessninja2 4y agoI remember times where free market and private enterprises were huge part of American culture. I miss those times, bloody socialists are going to ruin everything.