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Football is wild. Imagine countries and governments collect taxes. Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar. Then Qatar spends €262 millio
by gloosx 1y ago
Football is wild. Imagine countries and governments collect taxes.
Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar.
Then Qatar spends €262 millions on a single football player and gazillions on a European club, which is at €889 million loss over the last five years
In the end, who is paying for it all? Ordinary people ultimately foot the bill – whether through higher energy prices, taxes, or the opportunity cost of that money leaving the productive economy – while the football circus rolls on.
- philipwhiuk 1y ago> Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar. This isn't how the energy market works.
- gloosx 1y agoFair point, governments don't literally wire tax money straight to Qatar for oil. But whether it is at the pump or through subsidies, it is still ordinary people who end up carrying the cost — and that money gets recycled into football vanity projects.
- fluoridation 1y agoI mean, if you're going to consider indirect transactions too, eventually every part of the economy ends up affecting every other part. That money that goes into those projects doesn't just vanish, it gets spent and flows back out into the economy.
- bamboozled 1y agoI think you know what they mean...fuel is subsidized by the government, and Qatar winds up with the subsidized money. Need it be more complicated?
- gloosx 1y agoFrom a wider perspective it does vanish in terms of productive value: billions go into inflated transfers and club losses that generate little beyond spectacle, instead of going into things that improve lives (cheap energy, infrastructure, innovation, public goods)
- fluoridation 1y agoI honestly don't understand what you mean. >billions go into inflated transfers and club losses that generate little beyond spectacle "Club losses"? If you pay a football player 100k to play a match, even if the point of the match is nothing but spectacle, that money doesn't evaporate. The player will spend it on the economy. What else could he possibly do with it besides spending it or tossing it in a fire? If a club spends 10M on something entirely frivolous -- say, a giant concrete football -- that money also doesn't simply disappear, it's used to pay the people who will make the raw materials and the people who will design and build the thing. Only individuals and distinct entities lose money. An economy never does.
- gloosx 1y agoThe point is how it circulates. If €200M goes into a transfer fee, it is locked into a prestige loop instead of funding productive investment, it gets trapped in a cycle that reinforces inequality and produces very little outside of image-building. The recipients of this money are a tiny elite which they then spend mostly in elite consumption loops: luxury real estate, yachts, exclusive services, tax havens. Speaking capitalist language, overinflated football spending is a misallocation of capital on low-return assets which creates market distortions.
- fluoridation 1y ago>luxury real estate, yachts, exclusive services, tax havens All of that eventually has to flow back into, as you'd put it, non-elite segments of the economy. What, do you think shipyard workers eat yatchs? There's no subnetwork in the economy where money flows in and never comes back out. That just doesn't exist.
- bluecalm 1y agoSounds like a good deal for Europeans and a terrible for Qataris. Europeans get the oil, Qataris get to brand football stars and make decisions at some clubs.
- qingcharles 1y agoA lot of what Qatar does is a branding exercise, though. They are awash with cash and are trying to improve their image on the world stage through whatever means possible to them. They bought Harrod's for the lulz basically. I doubt you would find a single native Qatari that would complain, though.