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« Books Worth Reading Twice (Or More) | Main | One Down, Four to Go » November 30, 2004Baseball WhoresThe Washington Post endorses Bud Selig's plan today: they want the city of Washington to spend $600 million-plus to build a stadium for the Expos/Nationals. Their logic: if they don't agree to build the stadium, Washington might not get baseball for years. I bow to few in my love of baseball. I think it's the best game that has ever been invented, and I concur with the Post when they argue that baseball is good for a city. Both my own beloved Red Sox and the fabled Dodgers provide examples of this. While most people know that Brooklyn is a borough of the city of New York, few people today know that Brooklyn was once an independent city. It was brought into the larger city of New York in the early 20th Century, but it retained its own identity for decades. When did people stop saying they were from Brooklyn and start saying they were from New York? Around 1957, when the Brooklyn Dodgers announced that they would be pulling up stakes and moving to the west coast. Losing the Dodgers took the heart out of Brooklyn, and it has never been the same. For a more positive example, just look at what Boston enjoyed this October: as the Red Sox put together their unlikely run to their first championship in 86 years, the atmosphere in Boston was electric. As my sister-in-law attested, even people who didn't normally care about baseball or the Red Sox were caught up in the excitement, and when Boston beat the Yankees and St. Louis, everyone in Boston was as happy as they've been in years. Baseball can do great things. But that doesn't mean a city should just roll over for it. Major League Baseball has been playing this game for years. Teams move wherever they can extort the best deal from local government, even when the fans aren't interested in playing the game. My parents live outside Milwaukee, and have to pay additional taxes to finance the new Miller Park despite the fact they and a majority of their fellow citizens voted against public financing of the park. Their local politicians made a deal with Selig to fund it anyhow, and now the perenially awful Brewers get to play their games in a stadium built with taxpayer dollars. A great deal for them, but not such a good deal for the fans. There's no reason to saddle the people of Washington with a similar deal. Finally, let me address the Post's most clever move: noting that the stadium wouldn't be financed on the backs of taxpayers. Ah, they note, the tax will be on businesses. Really now. How hard is it to figure out who really pays taxes on business? Are the Post's editors really so economically illiterate that they simply believe a tax on business can be absorbed by the business without cost? Or do they not care that a business tax results in either increased prices or reduced profits? I suspect they're hoping for the latter, but reduced profits are not good for society, despite the fond dreams of many leftists. If there are fewer profits to be had in business, than fewer people will go into business. And while the left lives to hate business, they sure do love one of the important byproducts of business: jobs. Fewer profits leads to fewer jobs, but somehow proponents of taxes on business have never been able to make that connection. Here's hoping Washington's city council therefore is at least smart enough to not build the stadium on other grounds.Posted at November 30, 2004 08:23 AM
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