but that’s beside the point.

You are right that it is probably unfair to compare the Olympics to the Super Bowl. To host the Olympics a city must invest much more capital than a city hosting the Super Bowl. But the logic is still basically the same. The paper I cited right after the sportseconomist article has all the sordid details about that if you are interested. It’s Friday night and I’m pretty well in the bag right now so I shan’t comment further on that matter lest I misrepresent what the paper said due to general drunkenness or my own personal biases that seem to come out during inebriation.

“When I was referring to the Vikings as an industry, I meant within the context of the tourism/entertainment industry; could’ve done a better job clarifying that—my bad. That would take a hit, and it would affect the city.”

One of the papers I originally cited (I believe it was either Baade or Coates and Humphreys — I’d have to double check) showed that actually very few people visit cities to watch sports teams. When I read that I was just as shocked as you probably are — but we are both sports fans and probably have visited cities for the sole purpose of watching sports and human nature makes us assume that more people are like us than they really are (see research on the Bayesian Truth Serum if that interests you; it’s really quite fascinating). So tourism may take a hit but it would be very, very slight, and certainly not worth the cost of the stadium. One estimate had $2 million per job saved. You don’t have to have a PhD in Public Finance to know that is not the most efficient way to retain income in a city.

“My claim about the left not supporting public funding for stadiums is a generalization, and you’re right that there is opposition from all sides, but it’s the left that wants public spending, for the most part, just not stadiums. Which is ironic in this case, considering the hundreds of billions earmarked for the TARP and the stimulus, the latter who’s intent is supposed to spur job creation, which this stadium would do. I get that the stimulus is fed money and this is a state issue, but I still note the general irony of it all, which is throw billions at projects that create jobs, just not this project.”

If what you say is true about the left not wanting to fund stadiums, then I agree that their position is strongly ironic, especially considering the left has historically been more than willing to put people to work temporarily (like the public projects of the New Deal). Since I don’t pay attention to these things I can only comment very weakly on the matter. I hardly have any political positions myself other than basic “wasting money is bad” which everyone agrees with — the question is WHAT is a waste of money, which both parties tend to get wrong remarkably well. At any rate, you may be right, but I don’t know if that shows a systematic bias within academic research in this area — especially because this is economic research and professional economists are generally split pretty well in the left-right political divide. Much more so than other social scientists which, I agree, are largely left-wing.

Sure, but to say that there would be no impact, especially short term, when a business leaves town, just seems to fly in the face of logic to me/strong>

In the short run there would be a slightly negative reaction. In the long run it might be good for the urban economy (and almost certainly not bad). But, as I said, a $1 billion stadium, of which the state could theoretically pay up to 75% of, if the Twins stadium is any indicator, is hardly worth the slight negative bump the city would have.

As I understand this Racino proposal, there’s no state money involved, correct? It’s just revenue realized from expanded gambling?/strong>

That is ignoring the opportunity cost of the money. We could use the racino money to do other things that would help job creation more than the Vikings stadium. If there is no political will to do that and the racino option is only on the table FOR the Vikings and the Vikings only, and it is not just a general proposal to boost state revenue, then sure. I guess I wouldn’t care too much. I actually support adding gambling institutions in general to states, but that’s because I really like playing poker :P

The Republican party, the ‘morality guys’, are the ones in favor of this expansion of gambling, for the most part.

I don’t think it is much of a surprise that the party that is so adamantly against personal sexual freedom and has the most closeted homosexuals in their ranks is two-faced on other issues. Seems like pretty standard fare to me :P