no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Category Archives: Subsidize This!

55.7 Million Reasons to Reject Public Financing for Sports Arenas

November 19th, 2009

The next time someone tells you that the taxpayer residents of a city or urban area need to help some billionaire businessman finance the construction of a sports arena where he’ll sell you $5 hot dogs and $9 beers, remember the Pontiac Silverdome’s epic fail.

Vacant about 99% of the time since 2002, the ‘Dome has been maintained of late by the City of Pontiac, at an annual cost (to taxpayers) of about $1.5M.

As recently as 2005, the City refused a $20M purchase offer. This week, the City of Pontiac (MI) accepted a bid to purchase the Silverdome, nestled among 127 sprawling acres of crumbling concrete and lightpots, on the outskirts of 20.2 square miles of blight known as the “City of Pontiac”, for $583,000.

Five-hundred eighty-three thousand dollars. That’s about $8 per seat; the cost of a single domestic draft beer at most Stadiums today.

Home to the Detroit Lions of the NFL for 25 years before they built the sweet new Ford Field stadium in Downtown Detroit, the Silverdome cost $55.7 million to build, adjusted for inflation that’s something like $250-600 million, depending on how you calculate it.

Ford Field , which cost over $400M to build, like the Silverdome and most modern arenas, was financed largely by public (i.e., taxpayer) funds which were justified by spurious claims of “urban renewal”, “development”, “jobs”, “tax base” and other economic bullshit.

Should The Government Forgive Student Loans?

March 16th, 2009

My friend Brad forwarded an e-mail to me in response to an online petition that’s been making its way around Facebook (and other places), asking Papa Government to forgive billions of dollars of student loans. The e-mail was addressed as a reply to another friend who (saddled with law school debt) had earlier forwarded the petition to Brad.

In the e-mail, Brad made an excellent argument which I’ll quote:

I’m 98% sure I can’t support this…

…I understand that student loans suck and I feel lucky to not have any of them. So if you and the other 90% or so of college students that have student loans get bailed out…then what about me. My parents put away a $100 a month from the day I was born for my brother and I to be able to pay for college in full. My parents came up with real money to pay for college and not loans. Shouldn’t they get bailed out too?

For background, the chart below shows the rising cost of annual room, board and tuition expenses (I do not believe they are indexed) at Public and Private schools in the United States. [link to Excel data]

Rising cost of college tuition, 1986 to 2008

CNN Money reports that the cost of higher education has far outpaced price inflation over the last 25 years or so.  What I was really looking for (but couldn’t find given limited time) was a 40- or 50-year trend, which would go back far enough to look at the price of higher education before government began subsidizing the hell out of it.  I’ve seen these data elsewhere, and it’s pretty damning.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’d be happier than a pig in shit if student loans were forgiven. But it’s not going to happen, no matter how many Facebook signatures they collect. A Student Loan obligation, like any other sort of tax or government fee, is simply one of many means by which most people, most of their lives, are kept largely enslaved by the system.

The system, for those of you not in the know, is not set up for you to get ahead. (Thanks, dad!)

If you’ll allow me to take some license with the argument Brad sets forth, above, there are plenty of people whose parents saved up and paid for their education, there are a lot of people who worked their asses off all through college and paid for their own education, and there are plenty of other people who either didn’t go to college, went to a community college, or went to a lesser school than they qualified for academically, because they couldn’t afford a 4-year degree at a better school. The “forgive student loans” petition doesn’t help these people who were arguably injured the most by the onerous cost of higher education, which is itself a consequence of the existence of the federal student loan/grant programs.

We have arrived at this problem, of unaffordable education, precisely because the government has tried to make education affordable for the masses.

If you want to criticize all the parasites in the banking industry and in the government, that conspired or otherwise caused the affordability problem in higher education, I won’t get in your way: I don’t want to give any of them one thin dime more than I can get away with. Insofar as student loan obligations are pretty much bullshit to begin with, and that everyone whose income has derived principally from these subsidies over the past 30 or 40 years has really been stealing from the nation’s productivity, I won’t object at all if you want to personally repudiate them.  But it’s pure nonsense to try and “work within the system” to remove the chains and shackles placed upon you.  On the other hand, whenever the entire system crumbles under its own weight, you won’t have to worry about all those fraudulent obligations any longer!

Understand that an awful lot of people were genuinely harmed by this program (and others like it) in ways that you or I can barely fathom.  What you’re saying is, “I want a career that allows me to be my own boss, one which is protected by a State-sanctioned monopoly, one which allows me to bill my clients upwards of $100-200/hour, for the rest of my life. I want all of these privileges, and I don’t want to be inconvenienced in the least.”

I do not think I’m out of line to accuse this complaint of approaching the height of selfishness.

Careful What You Wish For

January 10th, 2009

Almost four years ago, I noted that a Michigan law, the effect of which was to essentially ban mail-order wine to in-state residents from out-of-state vendors, had been struck down. The special interests were, of course, Michigan’s vinyards — heaven forbid they have to compete with California, and Michigan’s alcohol distributors — heaven forbid someone challenge their brontosaur of a business model.

All was well and good, apparently, until yesterday, when in the interest of preserving “fairness”, the Governor signed House Bill 6644, which by amending Section 436.1203 of Public Act 58 of 1998

[P]prohibits stores from sending wine directly to customers.

The wine law comes after a federal court ruling saying Michigan’s old law was unfair to out-of-state stores.

The law was, as are most laws governing commerce between “free” individuals, about protecting vested special interests. In this case, Michigan’s liquor control board, and their three-tiered distribution model.

Now, if your local liquor distributor doesn’t stock that particular label from Napa that you love, you’re out of luck, without recourse. Now, if your local liquor distributor doesn’t stock that particular label from Traverse City (MI) that you love, you’re out of luck. That is, unless a road trip to Napa (CA) or Traverse City (MI) is in your future.

The Supreme Court ruling which struck down the previous law on account of it being “unfair” to out-of-state producers was only half right, and because it was only half right, it was wrong enough to be challenged. Now, the State will prevent Michigan residents from buying any liquor, from any producer, in any State via mail order.

But hey, it’s fair, right?

A correct ruling would’ve also noted that the old law was also “unfair” to consumers, because there was not then, nor is there now, a compelling reason for the government to prevent grown men and women, from purchasing a particular brand of beer or wine merely on the basis of where it happens to have been produced, distilled or bottled.

no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics