Saturday, January 10, 2015
Unmournable Bodies - The pretension of 'free speech' in The Western World
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/unmournable-bodies
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Quitting America: Giving up citizenship to save money on taxes
There’s been a lot in the news lately about President Barack Obama’s executive action protecting undocumented immigrants who would like to become citizens of the United States. But there are thousands of Americans who are voluntarily giving up their citizenship in order to avoid paying a new tax that is part of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The critics say the FATCA has caused a threefold increase in the number of Americans surrendering their passports. From 2010 to 2013, 7,246 Americans renounced their citizenship, compared with only 1,721 from 2006 to 2009, the four years before the FATCA was enacted.
Passed in 2010 by Congress, FATCA was intended to crack down on overseas tax cheats, with the Congressional Research Service projecting that the FATCA would generate $8.7 billion over 10 years.
The FATCA was inspired by the testimony in 2007 of Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS banker turned whistleblower. He described before Congress how UBS used exotic techniques to help its American clients evade paying taxes. Largely on the basis of his testimony, UBS was fined $780 million in 2009, and the bank turned over the names of 4,500 U.S. account holders to the IRS.
The law imposes a 30 percent tax on Americans who have money in foreign banks or countries that refuse to identify and provide information on their American clients. To date, over 77,000 institutions and 112 countries have signed off on the FATCA. But that leaves 83 countries that are not FATCA compliant, including Russia, Argentina, Monaco, Bosnia, Pakistan and Vietnam.
Critics say the FATCA has gone too far, is too draconian and is imposing an undue hardship on Americans living overseas. So says Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. He says the law is “causing lots of headaches and heartaches around the world, not only for foreign financial institutions but also for overseas Americans, who are now being treated as Pyrrhus because financial institutions view them as too costly to service.”
The U.S. is one of the few countries that tax its citizen on the basis of nationality, not residency. And faced with a larger tax bill, thousands of Americans living overseas would rather give up their passports then pay a new tax to Uncle Sam. The Taxpayer Advocate’s Office of the IRS has reported that the FATCA “has the potential to be burdensome, overly broad and detrimental to taxpayer rights.”
Mitchell says, “An American living and working in some other country is required to not only pay tax to that country where they live but also file a tax return to the U.S. No other civilized country does that.”
One thing is clear: For an increasing number of American citizens, holding on to a bigger share of their money has become more important than holding on to their U.S. passports.
Saturday, December 27, 2014
FOCUS | The Empire Is Crumbling. That Is Why It Needs War
‘I am a rebel; therefore I am Russian’, to paraphrase Albert Camus
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Friday, October 24, 2014
10 REASONS TO QUIT YOUR BORING JOB & TEACH ABROAD
10 REASONS TO QUIT YOUR BORING JOB & TEACH ABROAD
1) See the world
One of the most common reasons for people to teach abroad is because they want to travel. Travel is one of the most eye-opening experiences a person can have. The problem with it, however, is that it can be expensive. Fortunately for you, by financing travel with well paying TEFL teaching jobs, you can see the most exotic places on earth. For example, Taiwan offers some of the most amazing sights and activities in Asia. But even more than that, it’s a central location to take a quick flight to China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and the rest of Southeast Asia. Teach in South America or Europe, and you could visit as many countries by train or bus!
2) Broaden your horizons while you teach abroad
Just visiting a place for a few days is cool, but try living in a different country for months or years! The truth is, the food in many of our home countries just isn’t as tasty as in the markets of Asia or the kitchens of South America or Europe. And there is nothing that makes your friends back home more jealous than talking about an amazing trip to a place they’ve never even heard of. On top of it, you’ll notice that your ideas about your home town and life back home will change. You will come to truly understand how and why cultures are different. And your tastes of everything from food to friends to fun will grow in ways you’d never imagine.
3) Learn a whole new skill set
Tired of your menial job as a server, bartender, or cubicle monkey? Drop all that and do something that makes a difference in the world. Get experience in a needed and valuable field instead. Learning to teach gives you solid teaching skills you can use later. Not only do you learn how to manage a group of people, the ins-and-outs of education theory, and mastery of the English language, but you also gain skills in organization, leadership, and time management. All of these skills obviously transfer very well to other industries. Plus, it looks way better on a resume than “server at Applebee’s”.
4) Learn a new language
One thing about teaching abroad is that you’re doing it in a country where English is not the first language. Take some of that paycheck and sign up for a language class. Speaking Chinese can’t in our globalizing economy. Picking up decent Spanish gives you access to one of the biggest and most dynamic growing regions in the world. Plus, few things impress locals more than a foreigner who can hang with the language. And remember, adding a second language is another huge resume booster.
5) Make new friends
Hanging out with the same crew since high school is lame. While you teach abroad, not only will you meet amazing people from different places and speaking different languages, but you’ll also have awesome coworkers who share a lot in common. Those who teach abroad are usually adventurous, intelligent, and social, so you won’t have any trouble fitting in with that crowd. The people you meet will be more than just friends; they’ll have an impact on your decisions, beliefs, and overall outlook on life.
6) Make (and save) money
When you teach abroad, you’ll find the cost of living in many places to be lower than your home country. Paychecks will be more than enough to live comfortably and some schools will pay for housing and meals! TEFLers in East Asia frequently put away around $1,000 USD per month, and it’s not unheard of to save upwards of $1,500 with cash to spare. With that surplus, you can spend some cash on the finer things! Like more exotic vacations or nights on the town in a new city. Or even better, you could put it away to deal with those monster student loans piled up back home (you’re not alone!).
7) Become an Entrepreneur and/or get that Graduate degree
More and more expatriates start new businesses in their adopted homes. Many of these entrepreneurs are former English teachers who were ready to get creative and make those big bucks. Become a travel photographer or blogger, open up a coffee shop near the beach, or start that something you’ve always dreamed of.
It’s also common for TEFL teachers to attend graduate programs at world-class universities while teaching at the same time. Many of these programs, in fields from international relations to environmental sustainability, are much less expensive than their counterparts in your home country, and these go-getters are able to simply pay out of pocket for cutting edge degrees. Believe it or not, some countries give out scholarships to foreigners so high, that you’re paid to get a Masters!
8) Focus on your health
Forgot about your health with that busy schedule? That’s normal. Unfortunately, the western lifestyle stresses our minds and waistlines. Finally have the chance to get away and enjoy a healthier culture. While you teach abroad, you’ll often be paid a full time salary for 25 hours of work per week! With all that free time, you can take up new hobbies like Yoga in Bali, Kung Fu in China, meditate in Japanese Zen Temples, try Thai boxing classes, or even learn the ways to Enlightenment in the Indian Himalayas.
9) Full Healthcare Benefits
Health care costs in many western countries (read: the US) are out of control. Why not protect yourself while working in a country with better and cheaper health systems? For example, teaching jobs in Taiwan offer FULL healthcare AND dental in exchange for ONLY 6% reductions from your pay check each month! Got hurt climbing in the beautiful mountains on the weekend? No worries! Drop by the ER for a visit and pay less than $10 USD. Came down with a cold? Get a full week’s prescription of medicine from the clinic for $4 USD! Don’t worry, it’s not a hole in the wall neither. Hospitals there are state-of-the-art and run by some of the best (English-speaking) physicians in the world. Think about it…
10) Grow Independence
Teaching abroad will change you. You’ll see yourself differently after even a few months. Being far away from everything familiar forces you to reach, grow, and bend in ways you didn’t think you could. You will learn to approach strangers who don’t speak a lick of English and somehow communicate your ideas. You’ll try new activities and learn about things you didn’t even know existed. You’ll have to find an apartment, open a bank account, and work with people from all over the world. You’ll learn to navigate different languages, cultures, and expectations. So extend yourself – dive into a new culture, inspire hungry minds, and become a better you. Teach abroad.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Increasingly, Retirees Dump Their Possessions and Hit the Road
Increasingly, Retirees Dump Their Possessions and Hit the Road
By DAVID WALLISAUG. 29, 2014
SOME call themselves “senior gypsies.” Others prefer “international nomad.” David Law, 74, a retired executive recruiter who has primarily slept in tents in several countries in the last two years, likes the ring of “American Bedouin.”
They are American retirees who have downsized to the extreme, choosing a life of travel over a life of tending to possessions. And their numbers are rising.
Mr. Law and his wife, Bonnie Carleton, 69, who are selling their house in Santa Fe, N.M., spoke recently by phone from a campground in Stoupa, Greece, a village on the southern coast of the Peloponnese. He explained that they roam the world to “get the broadest and most radical experience that we can get.”
They recently decided to fold their tent. “Hey, we’re getting to be too old for this,” said Mr. Law about camping out. But they intend to continue what he termed their “endless holiday” in a more comfortable and spacious recreational vehicle.
Between 1993 and 2012, the percentage of all retirees traveling abroad rose to 13 percent from 9.7 percent, according to the Commerce Department.
About 360,000 Americans received Social Security benefits at foreign addresses in 2013, about 48 percent more than 10 years earlier. An informal survey of insurance brokers found greater demand by older clients for travel medical policies. (Medicare, with a few exceptions, does not cover expenses outside the United States). While many retirees ultimately return home or become expatriates, some live like vagabonds.
Lynne Martin, 73, a retired publicist and the author of “Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World,” is one. Three years ago, she and her husband, Tim, 68, sold their three-bedroom house in Paso Robles, Calif., gave away most of their possessions, found a home for their Jack Russell terrier, Sparky, and now live in short-term vacation rentals they usually find through HomeAway.com.
The Martins have not tapped their savings during their travels, alternating visits to expensive cities like London with more reasonable destinations like Lisbon. “We simply traded the money we were spending for overhead on a house and garden in California for a life in much smaller but comfortable HomeAway rentals in more interesting places,” Ms. Martin said by email from Paris.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Your Money: Saving for Bucket List That’s Likely to Evolve in Years Before RetirementJULY 11, 2014
ADVENTURE Meri Murphy has traveled to Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.Free From Work, and Seeing the World on a BudgetMAY 14, 2013
On her blog, Barefoot Lovey, Stacy Monday, 50, a former paralegal and mediator who lived in Knoxville, Tenn., wrote: “I used to dream about all the places I would go as soon as I was old enough to get away. But then ... life happened.” On May 1, 2010 — like many itinerant baby boomers Ms. Monday can quickly recall the date her journey started — she embarked on her dream trip. She “crisscrossed the U.S. three times” and visited Mexico, Ireland, France, Italy, Morocco, Spain and many other countries.
Continue reading the main story
Travel Tips for Vagabonds-in-Training
Make sure travel insurance covers medical evacuation to the United States. A rider or separate policy may be required.
Bring noise-canceling headphones for immediate access to peace.
Consider downloading the Point It app, a catalog of photos of items travelers need with translations in several languages.
Buy a few pairs of fast-drying microfiber underwear, which take up less space in luggage than conventional knickers.
“I sold everything I had,” Ms. Monday recalled earlier this summer from San Francisco before she headed to Las Vegas, Dallas, Memphis and Knoxville. “I paid off all of my debt. I have no bills and no money.” She estimates that she now spends $150 a month — sometimes less if she is saving up for a flight — and earns a modest income through “odds-and-ends jobs,” as well as the tip jar on her blog.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
To stick to her tight budget, Ms. Monday volunteers for nonprofits and organic farms in exchange for room and board or finds free places to stay through Couchsurfing.org. The company puts its membership of people 50 and older at about 250,000.
Ms. Monday monitors ride-share boards at Couchsurfing and Craigslist for free or inexpensive transportation, and she travels light. “I get away with a couple pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, a skirt and four or five shirts and a pair of pajamas,” she said.
When she answers the ubiquitous question, What do you do? Ms. Monday notices that most women respond with encouragement, while many men are less supportive. “They say: ‘You should be home. That’s not safe. You are old.’ I get that from a lot of the men,” she said.
Hal E. Hershfield, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles who studies the influence of time on consumer behavior, observes that many “pre-retirees” still assume retirement is a “decrepit, sitting on a porch, maybe playing golf, ice-tea type of life.”
But current retirees are “changing the way they think,” he said, “because they are still healthy and sort of young at heart.” In the last 50 years, retirement “wasn’t this period that we spent years and years in,” Mr. Hershfield continues. “It really, truly was the end of life.”
Photo
David Law and his wife, Bonnie Carleton, on the Great Wall of China.
Galit Nimrod, a research fellow at the Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Aging at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, says an extended postretirement trip can assuage a sense of loss from ending a career. Travel can “act as a neutral, transitional zone between voluntary or imposed endings and new beginnings” and “serve as a healthy coping mechanism,” Dr. Nimrod said by email.
Gary D. Norton, 69, acknowledges that he felt “afraid of retirement” when he left his job of 34 years as a science professor at a South Dakota community college.
In 2002, he and his wife, Avis M. Norton, 67, a retired farmer, sold their house, bought an R.V. and started volunteering full time for two nonprofits: Nomads on a Mission Active in Divine Service, or Nomads, and RV Care-A-Vanners, an initiative of Habitat for Humanity.
The couple typically rebuilds houses damaged by natural disasters, projects that usually last several weeks. Mr. Norton, who now specializes in drywall finishing, and his wife, who studied carpentry, say they cherish the chance to give back to society while seeing the country. “Now what we’re doing is so satisfying and fulfilling, even though we have some health issues, we say we don’t want to quit,” said Mr. Norton, who estimated that he and his wife had repaired damaged homes in 28 states.
The chance to volunteer on international conservation projects and the opportunity to live like a local inspired Danila Mansfield, 58, and her husband, Chris Gill, 64, to sell their house in San Jose, Calif., last year. They got rid of nearly everything they owned — the exceptions being two suitcases, clothing and a pair of guitars (Mr. Gill’s prized Gibson ES-335 electric guitar is stowed at a friend’s house, but he totes around a travel guitar) — and do not even rent a storage space.
The purge of possessions was “a little nerve-racking” at first, but ultimately “hugely liberating,” said Ms. Mansfield, who is currently in South Africa. She and her husband plan to volunteer on game reserves to protect endangered species and then study great white sharks.
So far, their travels have surpassed expectations. They drove from San Jose to Florida over five months, before cruising to Europe. High points included meeting a judge at a bar in Amarillo, Tex., who invited them to visit his drug court, catching crawfish with locals in Louisiana’s bayou country and making new friends in Austin, Tex., who invited the couple to stay with them in South Africa.
But Ms. Mansfield has also hit bumps in the road. In Galveston, Tex., and New Orleans, an acute respiratory illness required three visits to urgent care centers. “It was really dragging me down,” she recalled. At one point she cried for home, but then managed to brighten her mood. “I kept telling myself, ‘This is home,’ ” Ms. Mansfield said. “Where I am is home.”
By DAVID WALLISAUG. 29, 2014
SOME call themselves “senior gypsies.” Others prefer “international nomad.” David Law, 74, a retired executive recruiter who has primarily slept in tents in several countries in the last two years, likes the ring of “American Bedouin.”
They are American retirees who have downsized to the extreme, choosing a life of travel over a life of tending to possessions. And their numbers are rising.
Mr. Law and his wife, Bonnie Carleton, 69, who are selling their house in Santa Fe, N.M., spoke recently by phone from a campground in Stoupa, Greece, a village on the southern coast of the Peloponnese. He explained that they roam the world to “get the broadest and most radical experience that we can get.”
They recently decided to fold their tent. “Hey, we’re getting to be too old for this,” said Mr. Law about camping out. But they intend to continue what he termed their “endless holiday” in a more comfortable and spacious recreational vehicle.
Between 1993 and 2012, the percentage of all retirees traveling abroad rose to 13 percent from 9.7 percent, according to the Commerce Department.
About 360,000 Americans received Social Security benefits at foreign addresses in 2013, about 48 percent more than 10 years earlier. An informal survey of insurance brokers found greater demand by older clients for travel medical policies. (Medicare, with a few exceptions, does not cover expenses outside the United States). While many retirees ultimately return home or become expatriates, some live like vagabonds.
Lynne Martin, 73, a retired publicist and the author of “Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World,” is one. Three years ago, she and her husband, Tim, 68, sold their three-bedroom house in Paso Robles, Calif., gave away most of their possessions, found a home for their Jack Russell terrier, Sparky, and now live in short-term vacation rentals they usually find through HomeAway.com.
The Martins have not tapped their savings during their travels, alternating visits to expensive cities like London with more reasonable destinations like Lisbon. “We simply traded the money we were spending for overhead on a house and garden in California for a life in much smaller but comfortable HomeAway rentals in more interesting places,” Ms. Martin said by email from Paris.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Your Money: Saving for Bucket List That’s Likely to Evolve in Years Before RetirementJULY 11, 2014
ADVENTURE Meri Murphy has traveled to Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.Free From Work, and Seeing the World on a BudgetMAY 14, 2013
On her blog, Barefoot Lovey, Stacy Monday, 50, a former paralegal and mediator who lived in Knoxville, Tenn., wrote: “I used to dream about all the places I would go as soon as I was old enough to get away. But then ... life happened.” On May 1, 2010 — like many itinerant baby boomers Ms. Monday can quickly recall the date her journey started — she embarked on her dream trip. She “crisscrossed the U.S. three times” and visited Mexico, Ireland, France, Italy, Morocco, Spain and many other countries.
Continue reading the main story
Travel Tips for Vagabonds-in-Training
Make sure travel insurance covers medical evacuation to the United States. A rider or separate policy may be required.
Bring noise-canceling headphones for immediate access to peace.
Consider downloading the Point It app, a catalog of photos of items travelers need with translations in several languages.
Buy a few pairs of fast-drying microfiber underwear, which take up less space in luggage than conventional knickers.
“I sold everything I had,” Ms. Monday recalled earlier this summer from San Francisco before she headed to Las Vegas, Dallas, Memphis and Knoxville. “I paid off all of my debt. I have no bills and no money.” She estimates that she now spends $150 a month — sometimes less if she is saving up for a flight — and earns a modest income through “odds-and-ends jobs,” as well as the tip jar on her blog.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
To stick to her tight budget, Ms. Monday volunteers for nonprofits and organic farms in exchange for room and board or finds free places to stay through Couchsurfing.org. The company puts its membership of people 50 and older at about 250,000.
Ms. Monday monitors ride-share boards at Couchsurfing and Craigslist for free or inexpensive transportation, and she travels light. “I get away with a couple pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, a skirt and four or five shirts and a pair of pajamas,” she said.
When she answers the ubiquitous question, What do you do? Ms. Monday notices that most women respond with encouragement, while many men are less supportive. “They say: ‘You should be home. That’s not safe. You are old.’ I get that from a lot of the men,” she said.
Hal E. Hershfield, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles who studies the influence of time on consumer behavior, observes that many “pre-retirees” still assume retirement is a “decrepit, sitting on a porch, maybe playing golf, ice-tea type of life.”
But current retirees are “changing the way they think,” he said, “because they are still healthy and sort of young at heart.” In the last 50 years, retirement “wasn’t this period that we spent years and years in,” Mr. Hershfield continues. “It really, truly was the end of life.”
Photo
David Law and his wife, Bonnie Carleton, on the Great Wall of China.
Galit Nimrod, a research fellow at the Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Aging at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, says an extended postretirement trip can assuage a sense of loss from ending a career. Travel can “act as a neutral, transitional zone between voluntary or imposed endings and new beginnings” and “serve as a healthy coping mechanism,” Dr. Nimrod said by email.
Gary D. Norton, 69, acknowledges that he felt “afraid of retirement” when he left his job of 34 years as a science professor at a South Dakota community college.
In 2002, he and his wife, Avis M. Norton, 67, a retired farmer, sold their house, bought an R.V. and started volunteering full time for two nonprofits: Nomads on a Mission Active in Divine Service, or Nomads, and RV Care-A-Vanners, an initiative of Habitat for Humanity.
The couple typically rebuilds houses damaged by natural disasters, projects that usually last several weeks. Mr. Norton, who now specializes in drywall finishing, and his wife, who studied carpentry, say they cherish the chance to give back to society while seeing the country. “Now what we’re doing is so satisfying and fulfilling, even though we have some health issues, we say we don’t want to quit,” said Mr. Norton, who estimated that he and his wife had repaired damaged homes in 28 states.
The chance to volunteer on international conservation projects and the opportunity to live like a local inspired Danila Mansfield, 58, and her husband, Chris Gill, 64, to sell their house in San Jose, Calif., last year. They got rid of nearly everything they owned — the exceptions being two suitcases, clothing and a pair of guitars (Mr. Gill’s prized Gibson ES-335 electric guitar is stowed at a friend’s house, but he totes around a travel guitar) — and do not even rent a storage space.
The purge of possessions was “a little nerve-racking” at first, but ultimately “hugely liberating,” said Ms. Mansfield, who is currently in South Africa. She and her husband plan to volunteer on game reserves to protect endangered species and then study great white sharks.
So far, their travels have surpassed expectations. They drove from San Jose to Florida over five months, before cruising to Europe. High points included meeting a judge at a bar in Amarillo, Tex., who invited them to visit his drug court, catching crawfish with locals in Louisiana’s bayou country and making new friends in Austin, Tex., who invited the couple to stay with them in South Africa.
But Ms. Mansfield has also hit bumps in the road. In Galveston, Tex., and New Orleans, an acute respiratory illness required three visits to urgent care centers. “It was really dragging me down,” she recalled. At one point she cried for home, but then managed to brighten her mood. “I kept telling myself, ‘This is home,’ ” Ms. Mansfield said. “Where I am is home.”
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Another Reason to Emigrate: US Cities, States Slashing Pension Benefits While Subsidizing Professional Sports Stadiums
As U.S. states and cities grapple with budget and pension shortfalls, many are betting big on an unproven formula: Slash public employee pension benefits and public services while diverting the savings into lucrative subsidies for professional sports teams.
Detroit on Monday made itself the most prominent example of this trend. Officials in the financially devastated city announced that current and future municipal retirees had blessed a plan that will slash their pension benefits. On the same day, the billionaire owners of the Detroit Red Wings, the Ilitch family, unveiled details of an already approved taxpayer-financed stadium for the professional hockey team.
Many retirees now face a 4.5 percent cut in their previously negotiated cost-of-living adjustments, which is part of a larger plan to cut $7 billion of the city’s debt. At the same time, the public is on the hook for $283 million toward the new stadium after giving the Ilitches key parcels of land for $1.
The budget maneuvers in Michigan are part of a larger trend across the country. As Pacific Standard reports, "Over the past 20 years, 101 new sports facilities have opened in the United States — a 90-percent replacement rate — and almost all of them have received direct public funding." Now, many of those subsidies are being effectively financed by the savings accrued from pension cuts.
The officials promoting these twin policies argue that boosting stadium development effectively promotes broad economic growth. But many calculations rely on controversial and dubious assumptions that have been widely challenged.
A landmark 1997 Brookings Institution study by sports economist Andrew Zimbalist concluded that "a new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment" and that few facilities "have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment" for taxpayers.
That finding was confirmed by University of Maryland and University of Alberta researchers, whose 2008 review of major academic research found that "sports subsidies cannot be justified on the grounds of local economic development." In addition, a 2012 Bloomberg News analysis found that taxpayers have lost $4 billion on such subsidies since the mid-1980s.
At the same time, cuts to pension contributions are rarely described by public officials as negative for local economic growth, though economic data suggests otherwise. An analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based National Institute on Retirement Security notes that spending resulting from pension payments had "a total economic impact of more than $941.2 billion" and "supported more than 6.1 million American jobs" in 2012.
Since Detroit filed for bankruptcy protection, city and state officials have been demanding pension cuts to reduce the estimated $3.5 billion in outstanding pension obligations while at the same time reassuring the Ilitches that the subsidies will be preserved.
As Detroit's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, put it: "I know there's a lot of emotional concern about should we be spending the money [on stadiums] but frankly that's part of the economic development. We need jobs. If it is as productive as it's supposed to be, that's going to be a boon to the city."
According to an analysis by the New York Times, Michigan is one of the top per-capita spenders on such subsidies, providing roughly $6.6 billion a year in taxpayer support to private firms. That includes millions on the Silverdome,Ford Field and now the new Red Wings arena. The money for the new arena will not come directly from the city's general treasury, but from a special tax districtcalled the Downtown Development Authority, which diverts public dollars into such projects.
Other cities and states that have coupled sports subsidies with pension cuts include:
- In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently passed a $55 million cut to municipal workers' pensions. At the same time, he has promoted a plan tospend $55 million of taxpayer money on a hotel project that is part of a larger stadium redevelopment plan for Depaul University.
- In Miami, Bloomberg News reports that the city "approved a $19 million subsidy for the professional basketball arena" and then six weeks later "began considering a plan to cut as many as 700 (librarian) positions, including a fifth of the library staff and more than 300 police."
- In Arizona, the Phoenix Business Journal reports that regional governments in that state have spent $1.5 billion "on sports stadiums, arenas and pro teams" since the mid-1990s. At the same time, legislators are consideringproposals to cut public pension benefits, while voters in Phoenix may face a pension-cutting ballot initiative in November.
- In Jacksonville, Florida, officials have not fully funded the pension system leading to a recent credit downgrade by Moody's. At the same time, city officials just approved a $63 million plan to upgrade EverBank Field.
- In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie is trying to block a planned $2.4 billionpayment to the pension system, at the same time his administration has spent a record $4 billion on economic development subsidies and tax breaks to corporations. That includes an $82 million subsidy for the construction of a practice facility for the Philadelphia 76ers.
- In Louisville, Kentucky, up to $265 million in state and local tax revenues were used to finance the construction of the KFC Yum! Center, which opened in 2010. Only a few years later, Kentucky legislators enacted major cuts to the state's pension system.
"Sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," said Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson in an interview with The Atlantic. "Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)