Football stadiums create jobs (on eight Sundays a year)

Travis Waldron of Think Progress reports on five cities considering public funding for new sports stadiums.

I’m all in favor of public funding for sports stadiums, but only when the public owns a stake in the team. Otherwise it’s a taxpayer subsidy of a private company that doesn’t need taxpayers’ help.

The worst offenders in Waldron’s article are Miami and Charlotte, who are considering funding for football stadiums.

The NFL has a 16-game regular season. That means eight home games. Eight. So yes, it’s true that public funding for a new football stadium helps to create jobs, but it helps to create jobs for eight days out of the year.

The job-creation argument is at least semi-plausible for a baseball stadium, which promises 81 or so home games every year. But eight days of job creation isn’t enough to justify public investment.

For the price of a football stadium you can build two libraries, each of which will employ people year-round and not just on eight Sundays.

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Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee says there’s no need for an increase in the minimum wage, since she never struggled back when she was earning a minimum wage of only $2.15 an hour.

Trouble is, she forgot about that old debbil inflation, and didn’t seem to realize the $2.15 an hour she was getting paid in that worker’s paradise of Mississippi would in today’s dollars be worth significantly more than the wage Obama is calling for now. Even the minimum wage of $1.60 in 1968-70 was the equivalent of $10.56 today. So Blackburn was inadvertently making Obama’s point for him.

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John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, is pushing a tax plan that would cut taxes for the wealthy while raising them for the poor.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because the same idea is being pushed by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Republican legislators in North Carolina, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

This is the redistribution of wealth. But these folks are perfectly fine with redistribution, as long as the Sheriff of Nottingham is in charge of it.

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“Wow, this guy buys right into the deficit-scold mentality without really doing his homework: another leader who should know better is taking his cues straight from the GOP playbook.”

It is, indeed, perplexing to see someone obtusely complaining that insurance benefits the sick more than the healthy.

But in a sense he has done his homework. He has asked what it is that he must say in order to be initiated into the Sacred Order of Very Serious Persons. And then, as instructed, he has said it.

Disappointing.