The city is suffering under a $55 million operating deficit. The mayor pointed out in a 2023 budget letter that “The demands of a City this size in square miles and infrastructure age far exceed affordable options for residents and available resources.”

What to do? The answer is obvious: dedicate more public tax dollars to private corporations. And not just baseball, but women’s soccer, too!

Kansas City leaders are once again proposing public subsidies for a sports facility. This time, the beneficiary is the Kansas City Current and the continued development of the Berkley Riverfront.

According to reporting by The Kansas City Star, the city may create a new tax-increment financing (TIF) district and issue up to $235 million in bonds to support expansion of CPKC Stadium and surrounding development. The project would increase stadium capacity from 11,500 to 18,000 seats and add parking, retail, and mixed-use development to the riverfront.

Why? Why is it the responsibility of taxpayers to fund this? Projects like this can be good. They can even be great! But it’s not on par with, say, public safety or infrastructure, or education—which will all lose money because of the subsidy.

Supporters of the proposal point to the team’s success. Lucas told Fox4 that Kansas City must position itself for future events such as a potential Women’s World Cup and noted that there are limits to what an 11,500-seat stadium can host. He also emphasized that the proposed financing would not come from the city’s general revenue fund.

Let’s be careful about that last point. TIF does not create money out of thin air. Without a deal, the Current owners would pay taxes on their development—just like you and me. The proposal is to change that and let them keep that money. Money that we are told the city doesn’t have enough of.

Perhaps the most revealing thing is that Lucas can’t even be bothered to make a coherent defense of this spending. When asked about public subsidies for the Current, he told Fox4, “We’ve been through this before with another professional team that plays in Kansas City.”

But in an April 17, 2026, live interview with the Kansas City Stack Substack, Lucas said about public financing for a Royals ballpark: “this is like the incentive arrangements that we’ve done in other places. Probably the most stadium-like discussion is the stadium we built on the riverfront for the Kansas City Current. That, of course, was an incentive arrangement where you had votes at city council at one of our incentive agencies, that being the Port Authority, and you had state participation. I expect that to be the same.” [3:36 mark]

In other words, we’re giving public money to the Current because we’re giving money to the Royals because we gave money to the Current. That’s his argument.

I was reminded recently of other reporting from Fox4 in which Lucas defended himself for accepting secret gifts from the Royals, among others, to pay for tuxedos and trips to the Super Bowl. He said, “my goal is always to save taxpayer dollars.”

Lucas may have lots of reasons for accepting gifts. But given his willingness to spend public funds on stadiums, it’s hard to believe he cares about saving taxpayer dollars.

The post Kansas City Mayor’s Circular Reasoning on Stadium Subsidies appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Kansas City Star recently published a story examining the city’s gun violence problem as Kansas City hosts matches during the World Cup.

The article raises a legitimate concern. Kansas City, Missouri, suffers from far too much violence. Recent shootings have again drawn national attention to a problem local leaders have struggled to address for years.

The Star largely frames that problem through the lens of Missouri’s gun laws. Missouri allows permit-less carry. It broadly preempts local firearm regulations. Legislative efforts to tighten gun restrictions have gone nowhere, even after highly publicized tragedies such as the Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally shooting.

Reasonable people can conclude that these policies contribute to violence.

But if we are serious about understanding why Kansas City experiences so much violence, there is an obvious question that deserves attention:

What about Kansas? The state line is not hundreds of miles away. It is literally a road.

Kansas has permit-less carry. Kansas does not require firearm registration. Kansas does not impose waiting periods. Kansas does not require universal background checks for private firearm sales. Kansas broadly preempts local governments from adopting their own firearm regulations.

In other words, Kansas and Missouri have remarkably similar firearm laws, yet the outcomes on violence are very different.

The Star notes that Kansas City, Missouri, averages roughly 30 homicides during June and July, compared with four in Kansas City, Kansas. That is a remarkable difference. Accounting for population, Kansas City, Missouri, still experiences roughly twice the homicide rate of Kansas City, Kansas.

If neighboring jurisdictions with similar firearm laws experience dramatically different homicide rates, serious observers should be interested in what else might explain the difference. They should certainly acknowledge it.

The question is not whether gun laws matter. The question is whether they are sufficient to explain the difference in homicide numbers. The Star asks the first question. It largely ignores the second.

The post If Gun Laws Explain Kansas City’s Violence, What Explains Kansas? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A 2003 Clemson University study by economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson puts this into stark perspective. They looked at the 1994 World Cup, hosted in the United States, and found something shocking: Instead of the $4 billion economic boost that event advocates promised, host cities actually lost between $5.5 billion and $9.3 billion. Let that sink in. Instead of making money, these cities were left holding the bag for billions in losses.

The report lays out the problem:

1. Stadium Spending is a Black Hole – FIFA demands that host nations build or upgrade multiple stadiums, often at obscene costs. South Korea and Japan spent $4 billion for the 2002 World Cup. Many of those stadiums are underused today, costing millions just to maintain.
2. The Tourists Don’t Come – One of the biggest myths is that these events bring in a wave of free-spending tourists. In reality, regular tourists stay away to avoid inflated prices and congestion. The net impact is often negative.
3. Jobs? What Jobs? – Yes, major events create work—but mostly low-paying, temporary jobs that vanish once the event is over. Meanwhile, businesses that don’t cater to event-goers—restaurants, retail, theaters—often see a drop in revenue.
4. FIFA (or the IOC, or the NFL) Walks Away with the Money – The real winner? The governing body that runs the event. FIFA collects billions in ticket sales and sponsorships, while host cities are stuck with the bill for security, infrastructure, and maintenance.

The World Cup is far from the only culprit. Cities and nations have been burned time and again. The 2016 Rio Olympics left Brazil with $13 billion in debt, abandoned venues, and zero lasting benefits. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics cost $50 billion, much of it wasted on corruption and vanity projects. The Super Bowl, despite constant hype, has been shown in multiple studies to provide a fraction of its promised economic impact.

Politicians and event boosters always paint the same rosy picture. They promise jobs, economic growth, and global prestige. But the reality, as study after study has shown, is that these mega-events rarely—if ever—pay off.

If a city really wants to strengthen its economy, it should focus on investing in infrastructure, public services, and policies that support small businesses and long-term growth. Chasing after one-time spectacles that benefit global organizations far more than local residents is a mistake.

So the next time you hear about a city bending over backward to host the World Cup, the Olympics, or any other mega event, ask the hard question: Who actually benefits? If history is any guide, it’s probably not the taxpayers.

The post Mega Events Fail to Deliver: World Cup Edition appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Big Easy has long struggled with economic hardship. Between hurricanes, crime, population loss, and a fragile tourism industry, the city has spent decades trying to regain its footing. Now, officials are using a familiar formula: host a major event, clean up the streets in high-visibility areas, woo corporate leaders, and hope business investment follows.

We’ve seen this before, and the results are almost always the same. These big events provide a temporary tourism boost, but they don’t drive long-term economic growth. The promised “boom” turns out to be a weekend blip, leaving taxpayers on the hook for security, infrastructure, and publicly funded subsidies that rarely pay off.

Take the 2016 Rio Olympics: billions spent, venues abandoned. Or Kansas City’s NFL draft, which filled bars for a weekend but left downtown empty as soon as the crowds dispersed. And New Orleans has been down this road before. The city has hosted 11 Super Bowls, yet its economic struggles persist. If the game were truly a catalyst for prosperity, wouldn’t we have seen the results by now?

New Orleans’ real challenges have nothing to do with hosting big events. The city struggles with high crime, crumbling infrastructure, and a reputation for red tape that drives businesses away.

Louisiana officials tout a $10 billion Meta AI center as a sign of a turnaround. But real economic success comes from stability, not one-off incentives and government handouts. Businesses thrive where there’s predictability—not just tax breaks to lure companies in temporarily.

Visitors saw an enhanced police presence, vehicle restrictions, and heightened security in the French Quarter. But that won’t change the fact that the city has one of the highest crime rates in the country—a problem that can’t be solved with temporary measures.

Some business leaders remain optimistic about the benefits of incentives, arguing that Louisiana can’t afford to keep losing talent and investment to Texas and Florida. But unless the city addresses its deeper systemic problems—crime, education, infrastructure and a business climate that discourages investment—it will continue to rely on big events as temporary Band-Aids.

New Orleans doesn’t need another Super Bowl. It needs leaders willing to fix real problems—not just hang banners and hope for the best.

The post The Super Bowl Is a Bad Bet for New Orleans appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the political realm, Tennessee has a strong track record of crossing the finish line, such as reducing the individual income tax to zero. Now, the state is adding to its policy trophy case with a new statewide school voucher program that will open doors for students across the Volunteer State.

Under the Education Freedom Act of 2025, Tennessee will offer 20,000 vouchers worth $7,296 each in taxpayer funds to help students statewide attend state-accredited private schools. The vouchers are first reserved for families with incomes 300% below the income limit to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The remaining scholarships have no income restrictions. This is a major step forward in expanding educational choice for Tennessee families.

Families (and even individual children within a family) have different needs. Education options should reflect that reality, and private schools are not a feasible choice for many families without financial assistance. EdChoice recently released a 2024 survey comparing educational preferences to actual enrollment numbers.

In Figure 1, parents were asked where their children are currently enrolled (the bottom bar), and then were asked where they would enroll them if they could select any type of school (the top bar).

Missouri’s actual enrollment numbers are nearly identical to actual percentages shown in Figure 1. But what is Missouri doing to allow families to meet their preferences? Tennessee saw what families wanted and took action; Missouri should follow this formula.

Governor Lee of Tennessee, much like Governor Kehoe in his recent address, placed a high priority on school choice reform. And much like Missouri, Tennessee faced strong opposition to breaking up the status quo—but leaders remained determined and got it done.

Missouri has come up short in many instances. Charter schools exist in our state, but are extremely limited. Our own ESA program helps some families, but lacks necessary public funding. Open enrollment has made it through the House four years in a row only to stall in the Senate.

If Missouri wants to build momentum and deliver education reform, determination will be key. The plays are drawn up, the end zone is in sight—we just have to get across the goal line.

The post Will Missouri Follow Tennessee’s Example? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But that hasn’t kept Kansas City and other local government from bah-humbugging it, flying the banner of coronavirus prevention as it dumps coal in the stockings of local proprietors in the food service industry. In November, city officials shut down The Corner Bar and Grill in the historic 18th & Vine District during a Chiefs game when a “field supervisor noted multiple violations of the mask and social distancing rules” set out by the mayor. In fact, until relatively recently, Kansas City proper was requiring all bars and restaurants to not only close by 10 p.m. to mitigate the spread of COVID-19—because it’s, what, not communicable during the day?—but force all of the patrons out by that time, or else be sanctioned by the city.

The Corner Bar’s closure and the city’s draconian time restrictions meant that when the Chiefs played the Denver Broncos for the league’s Sunday night game on Dec. 6, Kansas City bars were forced to turn patrons away due to capacity limitations and to warn patrons who were allowed inside that they’d be kicked out of the bar before the late game had finished. This isn’t hearsay either; this happened to me. However, not all places of imbibing and engorging for the game were closed. I eventually found myself at, of all places, a local casino that is not only open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but whose social distancing norms are, shall we say, necessarily loose.

Having the right to leisurely eat, drink, smoke and gamble at 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday from the comfort of a barstool in the middle of a pandemic would feel a lot more liberating if you do these things at any establishment of one’s choosing, pandemic or not. But on this Sunday night, the patrons of the Argosy Casino had acquired an immunity to coronavirus (or, rather, to government-imposed coronavirus restrictions) that the small businesses and patrons in downtown Kansas City had not yet achieved. Shortly after that weekend, Kansas City officials “clarified” that the city’s bar and restaurant patrons could now remain in their seats and finish their meals, even past 10 p.m., but couldn’t order food or drink after that hour and had to be out of the building by 11 p.m.

It’s tempting to accept the clarification of mandated closure times as an improvement, and in technical terms, it is. After all, requiring establishments to close in the middle of a sports event is bad for business. But local officials are merely returning rights to taxpayers that I believe should never have been taken to begin with and where in other local businesses like casinos, the same rules aren’t being applied. That’s before addressing whether these new rules should be applied at all, and on what actual scientific basis they’re being pursued.

But I’ve said this before and I must say it again, especially now that we’re close to the 2021 legislative session: If a rule is good enough for big businesses, it’s good enough for the small ones too. That applies to all of “Chiefs Kingdom,” both in Kansas City itself and outside it. If casino patrons can live it up safely and watch the Chiefs beat the hated Broncos late at night, so too can supporters of local bars. If Chiefs fans can socially distance at Arrowhead, so too can fans of Blue Springs High School. And in the coming weeks, state legislators must start the process of reining in the excesses of local governments. Kansas Citians may live in Chiefs Kingdom, but they aren’t the subjects of their elected officials.

The post Living in Chiefs Kingdom Doesn’t Make You Kansas City’s Peasant appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With Super Sunday just around corner, we will cite the Apple commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer in January 1984. It had the punch line: “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

That was an allusion to the dystopian future described in George Orwell’s book, 1984. The ad opens with a lone woman on the run. She bursts into an auditorium, where Big Brother—speaking not in person, but from a towering television screen—is haranguing a frightened mass of people. Then, spinning like a top, she hurls a sledgehammer at the figure on the screen. It flies high and right. Big Brother is silenced. The voice-over followed.

In this 60-second spot that aired during Super Bowl XVIII, the first Macintosh ad captured the one thing that an all-powerful or monolithic state cannot easily afford to tolerate. That is, any real expression of individual freedom and initiative.

We believe that is a timely message not just on the eve of another Super Bowl, but still more in the context of the current debate over economic and public policies.

Following a long period of stagnation, the U.S. economy has come roaring back to life. We now have full employment, a booming stock market, and rising wages for most workers, including the lowest paid.

How did that happen? Fast answer: Over the past three years, the free market became a whole lot freer.

In its first year in office, the current administration delivered on its promise of sweeping regulatory relief. Suddenly, the regulatory state, which had expanded by leaps and bounds during the previous administration, began to contract . . . and that has continued, as a result of major changes in policy and direction at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other arms of government.

Then came the biggest tax cuts and tax reforms since the Reagan era. With the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the administration lowered income taxes across the board and left more money in the pockets of individuals and business entities alike.

So, we are now living in the best of times economically. How could anyone argue otherwise? But they can—and are. Never mind what the numbers say.

Among leaders on the Left, there is a broad consensus that we are living not in the best of times, but in the most desperate of times—almost as if we were back in the early years of the Great Depression, when industrial production plunged, unemployment soared, and more than a quarter of the population was without any income at all.

In the badly mistaken belief that capitalism and free enterprise have run amok, they are promoting economic policies and ideas that are diametrically opposed to those that got us where we are today.

With little disagreement between them, these same leaders want free college, free health care for all, universal child care, and the banning of fossil fuels as part of a many-splendored Green New Deal—and they don’t appear to care what anything costs or what the adverse impact may be on ordinary people.

Apart from the astronomically high price tags associated with all of these programs—which would quickly bring the economy to a shuddering halt if any serious attempt were made to implement them—it is worth thinking about the underlying message that the leaders who are espousing this great agglomeration of multi-trillion-dollar programs want to send to the American people.

The real take-away message comes down to this:

·         “If you or any of your children want to go to college, don’t worry about being able to afford the college tuition. We’ll take care of the problem for you.”

·         “If you’re worried about health care, don’t think you have to buy health insurance or do anything else. We’ll take care of you.”

·         “Got young children at home and want to go to work? We’ll take care of the kids, too.”

If all that sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is too good to be true. Someone has to pay for college tuition—and all the other freebies—and that can only mean higher taxes on working people at all levels of income.

As George Orwell, the author of 1984, understood very well, a free people who stop taking care of themselves and rely on the state to do everything for them make a very bad bargain. It is one of the insights you find on almost every page of his book.

When people cease to make their own plans—and trust government to make decisions for them in more and more areas of their lives—they commit the error of failing to make full use of their capacities as individual human beings. In failing to make the most of their own gifts and talents, and their own dreams and aspirations, they sell themselves short . . . and lead less-fulfilling lives.

How prophetic was Orwell’s book? Not that this was the author’s intention, but how well did the book foretell the future of socialism in his native country—this being Britain in the first few years after World War II?

The British elections in mid-1945 marked a major turning point—not only sweeping Winston Churchill and a Tory-led government out of office, but also standing as an unquestioned affirmation of the desire of most of the British electorate to bring a new government to power that was fully committed to socialism.

So how did things work out in Britain during the three and a half decades when socialism, as opposed to free-market capitalism, was the prevailing mode of government—a period lasting from 1945 to 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power?

Socialist Britain did not become a police state. But it did undergo a metamorphosis. It changed from a powerful and dynamic country into the perennial “sick man of Europe,” reeling from one financial crisis to another in a sustained period of economic stagnation and decline. It became a country obsessed with issues of job security and income redistribution as different groups competed with one another in trying to wring more favors out of an increasingly improvident state. There was little or no new business formation—none of the spark provided by people like Steve Jobs and products like the first Macintosh computer.

Even the Labor Party could see the futility of its centralized, interventionist approach. Jim Callaghan, the last Labor prime minister before Thatcher, admitted in Parliament: “Let me say that of course there has been a fall in peoples’ standard of life. It has fallen this year and will fall again next year.”

Fortunately, Thatcher supplied the leadership that was necessary to pull Britain out of the decades-long decline that began with the wrong turn that it took at the end of World War II.

Is there any possibility that we as a country could make the same mistake that Britain made in 1945?

The danger is there. It is time to throw another hammer—or sledge-hammer—into the works of another historic wrong turn—this time involving the United States.

This does not require heroic action on the part of a solitary individual. But it does require a willingness on the part of many people to play the same kind of role within their own group of friends and relatives that Thatcher played in Britain—in stressing the paramount importance of individual freedom and initiative in securing the future we want for ourselves and future generations.

The post Is There a 1984 in Our Future? A Super Bowl Reflection appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s right, this story is not about the Rams; it’s about the St. Louis Football Cardinals circa 1988. Then, as now, NFL teams still would prefer that the public subsidize new stadiums, with the possibility of leaving town as the not-so-veiled threat. Saint Louis and Missouri officials hope to oblige, presenting a plan to spend more than $400 million on a new stadium for the Rams.

Saint Louis is a great sports city with enthusiastic support for professional teams (especially the baseball Cardinals), and many local leaders and residents take pride in being an NFL city. However, government officials here and around the country argue that pro sports franchises boost regional economies and spur urban regeneration.

Unfortunately, it just isn’t so. Cities have been funding stadiums for decades. The vast majority of economic research shows little evidence that these subsidies have yielded any economic benefits or growth in tax revenue. Speaking about the plan to subsidize a new stadium for the Rams, one University of Chicago economist said, “. . . building a football stadium is probably one of the worst expenditures of taxpayer dollars there is.” As for urban regeneration, while stadiums can ride a revitalization trend, there is no evidence that they create them. The issue with stadiums is that they tend to divert entertainment dollars that were already being spent in the metro area. Unless the teams draw in many tourists, which is not the case with most teams (including the Rams), NFL stadiums do not have a significant impact on the regional economy.

In the case of Saint Louis, officials do not even need to read up on the economic literature, they can simply look at the results of the Edward Jones Dome, Saint Louis’ current stadium. Originally conceived as an effort to keep the Football Cardinals (now playing in Arizona), the Edward Jones Dome was entirely publicly financed. When it opened in 1995, it was considered state-of-the-art.

Only 20 years later, the Edward Jones Dome, on which the city still owes money, is maligned as outmoded. The arrival of the Rams had no noticeable effect on tax revenue, aside from a small increase in income tax receipts. As for urban regeneration, the area immediately north of the stadium, known as the Bottle District, is an empty lot. There has been no dome-centered growth.

Nevertheless, public officials and representatives still talk as if a new riverfront stadium will cause urban regeneration and generate hundreds of millions of dollars of new state tax revenue. If regeneration means parking lots (which will surround the stadium), then they may have a point.

Even assuming the best case—that Saint Louis is blessed with a football team that holds home-field advantage through two playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl—does anyone really believe that having 10 great tailgate parties a year outside a new riverfront stadium is the key to Saint Louis’, or any other city’s, economic revitalization?

Common sense tells us “no.” So too does past experience, along with an abundance of economic literature.

The post The Fallacy of Tailgate Economics appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy and human freedom, the richest citizens often paid for roads, bridges, theaters, and gymnasiums. They picked up the bill for athletic games and other public amusements. In times of peril, they built war ships and donated them to the city.

This voluntary giving of both time and money maximized freedom, reduced the need for government, and reinforced a powerful sense of Athenian exceptionalism. In his famous funeral oration in 431 BC, Pericles spoke of how the freedom and openness of their city did not weaken but only served to redouble the valor, resourcefulness, and generosity of the citizenry, enabling Athens to exceed all its neighbors in dedication to the common good, both in war and peace.

Charles W. Adams, author of the classic book For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization, called this system of giving “the Greeks’ brilliant alternative” to government ownership and control. He described it as “private enterprise for public good.”

In our own time, sports-minded cities across the United States have stood this ancient ideal on its head. In trying to attract or to hold onto sports franchises, most U.S. cities have followed the model of public assistance for private gain, or what is also known as crony capitalism.

Political leaders in our cities and states have been all too willing to grovel at the feet of the wealthy owners of professional sports teams, saying, in effect: If you pick our stadium over competing venues, we will do everything in our power to use the public purse to swell your bottom line and multiply the value of your franchise.

Consider the astounding concessions that the city of Saint Louis made to get the then Los Angeles Rams to move to Saint Louis in 1995—and how the city has now landed in a situation in which it will have to agree to another roughly $400 million in taxpayer assistance to have any hope of holding onto the team.

Neil deMause, co-author of Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit, calls the original deal that the city of Saint Louis struck with the Rams “the worst lease ever”—meaning the most one-sided in enriching the team’s owners at the expense of taxpayers . . . while doing far more to please deep-pocketed corporate clients than to control ticket prices or provide better seating for ordinary fans.

The Rams paid no part of the $480 million in construction costs in building the Edward Jones Dome, and they have paid almost nothing in rent (just $250,000 a year). They received all luxury box and concession revenues, took 75 percent of advertising and name rights, and pocketed a $46 million relocation fee.

Still more, political and civic leaders signed on to a deal that gave the team the right to opt out of a 30-year lease after 20 years—if the stadium no longer ranked in the “top tier” of NFL stadiums. As a result, the Rams may move as soon as 2016, but Saint Louis City and County and the state of Missouri are still on the hook for $120 million in remaining bond payments falling due between 2016 and 2021.

According to Forbes, the St. Louis Rams football team is now worth about $930 million. Experts say that the value of the franchise will jump to between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion if the team moves to Los Angeles. Any such increase in value would more than offset the cost of building a new stadium in Los Angeles. Rams owner Stan Kroenke—a billionaire developer and the husband of Ann Walton Kroenke, daughter of Wal-Mart co-founder Bud Walton—has acquired a prime site in the city’s Inglewood neighborhood.

The city of Saint Louis and the state of Missouri are considering a brand-new publicly owned riverfront stadium, with still more luxury suites, high-priced club seats, scoreboard, and other amenities, aimed at meeting the most exacting NFL specs. It would cost close to a billion dollars, with local and state taxpayers picking up about 40 percent of the bill through publicly financed debt, state tax credits, and other means that would deplete local and state treasuries and leave less money for police, roads, schools, and other public needs.

However, there seems to be little public or political support for the project. A recent poll commissioned by the Missouri Alliance for Freedom shows that 70 percent of Missouri voters are opposed to public funding for the stadium.

In waving good-bye to the Rams, many Saint Louisans (this writer included) are therefore inclined to say “thanks for the memories.” We had “the greatest show on turf” for three years—with the 1999 Super Bowl champion, a playoff contender in 2000, and losing only in the final seconds of another thrilling Super Bowl in 2001.

Thirteen out of 32 NFL teams have never won the ultimate prize, and four have never made a Super Bowl appearance.

But as for public funding of a new stadium built mainly for the benefit of a billionaire owner and wealthy patrons, enough is enough.

Andrew B. Wilson is resident fellow and senior writer at the Show-Me Institute.

The post Super Bowls and the Super Rich: A Tale of Two Cities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It doesn’t work.

Richard Florida first proposed the idea that cities need to attract the so-called creative class in order to survive. His prediction was not borne out by time. But like all good economic theories, zealous adherents aren’t swayed by plain evidence. Here in Kansas City, leaders still talk about attracting this creative class with streetcars despite the fact that the evidence tells us that even the millennial-age cohort is no less likely to own cars than their peers in past generations. They act the same way any group does: They move to regions that offer jobs.

A study of successful innovation hubs even demonstrated that among those that have been successful there is no winning government strategy—success does not lend itself to a simple formula.

Boosters of Baristanomics point to the slight growth of downtown residents to show the success of the city’s profligate spending. As another high rise is proposed for downtown—and subsidized with taxpayer dollars—the high availability no doubt will drive prices into the basement. Laying aside the question of whether such modest growth is worth the huge cost to taxpayers, it is clear that Baristanomics has not produced the jobs necessary to keep people downtown. Downtown residents commute out of the core for work—something that writers elsewheredubbed Urban Inversion. Basically, Kansas City is turning itself inside out.

Without jobs—baristas, hotel concierges, and restaurant staff notwithstanding—any measure of success will be short lived if Kansas City isn’t attracting jobs. In fact, the growth of residential development is coming at the cost of commercial and industrial growth potential as one-time office buildings and warehouses are converted into trendy lofts. Furthermore, many of those living spaces were built or renovated with tax abatements or subsidies that will make them much less attractive in 25 years when they end.

Cities do not form around coffeeshops and large entertainment venues. (If they did, where is the development around the Truman Sports Complex? There are barely hotels over there.) People generally live where they work, and if Kansas City continues to be an unattractive place to build a business, all the hip speakeasies and entertainment subsidies will amount to nothing more than curious finds for future archeologists.

The post Kansas City Embraces Baristanomics appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In this issue:

• Policy Progress In Kansas City
• A Message From The Chief Executive Officer
• Charter School Dropouts: Accountability Reform
• A Message From The Director Of Development
• Super Bowl Not So Super For Kansas City’s Economy?
• Clayton’s Blight
• A New Home For The Show-Me Institute
• Staff Announcements
• Uber Enters Saint Louis Market

Read it all: .

The post Show-Me Institute November 2014 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Strongly agree — 26 percent
• Agree — 9 percent
• Disagree — 14 percent
• Absolutely not — 51 percent

That’s a pretty strong vote of 65 percent opposition to the idea. Readers offered several dozen comments.

We at Show-Me had some immediate comments too. The least of which not being that you’d certainly have to work at the Star to be surprised by this result. Kansas City has had ruinous results in building big projects like this. For example:

• The Power & Light District remains a drain on city resources, having never lived up to the promises made by boosters.
• The Citadel Plaza project was never even built, yet it cost the city millions.
• The city got itself into a horrible bind by taking on huge responsibilities with Kemper Arena and then not meeting them.
• The city spent money studying a proposed streetcar expansion before voters had a chance to voice their views. They rejected it.
• The city spent hundreds of thousands pitching itself for the Republican Convention even though the economic impacts claimed by supporters were specious.
• The city proposed a $1.2 billion new airport terminal based on at least one false premise.

Furthermore, just as mega-events such as Republican Conventions and Super Bowls fail to generate economic benefits, stadiums and arenas fail as well. (Read here for studies by The Brookings Institution and The Atlantic.) Kansas City voters are wary of such promises, and they are either defeating such efforts as translational medicine taxes and streetcars or are demanding sign-off on efforts to build new airport terminals. Why this well-founded skepticism is surprising to anyone is itself a surprise. The city should focus on delivering basic and necessary services and leave the economic speculation to others.

The post Star Survey Results Actually No Surprise at All appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Does the Super Bowl have any positive net economic impact on a host city?

The answer is it can, but it probably won’t. In a 2009 study, Michael C. Davis and Christian M. End found that hosting a Super Bowl has no economic impact on a city’s real per capita income, and in some cases it can have a negative effect. Robert A. Baade, Robert Baumann, and Victor Matheson examined the economic impact of mega-events (including the Super Bowl) in Southern Florida from 1980 to 2005. During that period, three cities (Tampa Bay, Miami, and Jacksonville) hosted the Super Bowl a total of seven times. The Super Bowl had a statistically significant positive impact on the city’s economy in only one instance (Tampa in 2001). Dennis Coates found that Houston saw increased sales tax revenue because of the Super Bowl in 2004. But the next year in Jacksonville, the Super Bowl was found not to have had an economic impact.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJiVdo5GV_U?rel=0&w=600]

This takes us back to the Kansas City Super Bowl task force. Why is the state in the business of trying to lure the Super Bowl to Kansas City? Couldn’t a private group of interested residents and businesses sell the city as a Super Bowl destination just as well? Possibly, but the state can offer the NFL subsidies. However, just because the state can do something, doesn’t mean it should. Economists in general oppose sports subsidies because, “The large and growing peer-reviewed economics literature on the economic impacts of stadiums, arenas, sports franchises, and sport mega-events has consistently found no substantial evidence of increased jobs, incomes, or tax revenues for a community associated with any of these things.”

It’s true that there could be intangible benefits to hosting a Super Bowl, like increased exposure to the outside world. Yet, is there any concrete measure on what kind of return the city would see from such exposure? Will businesses or residents move to Kansas City because it hosted the Super Bowl? I don’t know, and the burden of proof should be on those arguing for government subsidies.

Kansas City is a great football town, and I agree with Joe Clifford when he says, “The Super Bowl’s tremendous.” However, I don’t think the residents of Kansas City nor the rest of Missouri should pay for the privilege.

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“‘I can think of no better place to host the Super Bowl than Kansas City, the best football town in America,’ [State Senator Paul] LeVota said in a statement. ‘We’ve got incredible fans and a city more than capable of handling such a huge event.’

“Not only would the fans love it, but the economic impact would be enormous, he said.”

Ah, there is that elusive term, “economic impact.” It is thrown about to justify all sorts of government spending, but it is little examined by media and little understood by the taxpayers whose money will be used. We recently reviewed similar claims about Kansas City’s effort to attract the GOP convention. In that piece, we cited a Daily Beast story about the recent Super Bowl in New Jersey:

“So, there’s no economically sound way to predict a Super Bowl’s impact before the event and those that try have been proven wrong again and again. But don’t expect that to stop the cheering from the few with the most to gain. When asked for a more detailed analysis of Super Bowl XLVIII, the host committee demurred, but assured in a statement, ‘Super Bowl XLVIII is expected to be an economic boom [sic] for the region.'”

A 2006 study conducted by the College of the Holy Cross, “Mega-Events: The effect of the world’s biggest sporting events on local, regional, and national economies,” analyzes past Super Bowl impacts. The report concludes with a sobering warning to those who would embark on such expenses:

“The most important piece of advice that a local government can take regarding mega-events, however, is simply to view with caution any economic impact estimates provided by entities with an incentive to provide inflated benefit figures. While most sports boosters claim that mega-events provide host cities with large economic returns, these same boosters present these figures as justification for receiving substantial public subsidies for hosting the games. The vast majority of independent academic studies of mega-events show the benefits to be a fraction of those claimed by event organizers.”

Hosting a Super Bowl in Kansas City would be a great opportunity to show off our city to the rest of the world. Afterall, the term “Super Bowl” was coined by Chiefs owner and American Football League founder Lamar Hunt. But regional boosters need not wear blinders. At what cost does such an event cease to be worthwhile, especially when so many basic services in Kansas City already seem to be falling by the wayside? If we’re going to bring people to the City of Fountains, let’s at least make sure we can afford to operate the fountains.

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FOX 4 reporter Macradee Aegerter also asked about the claims of economic development that come from such conventions. I said in the interview that such claims are speculative, the bid committee often employs the economists that make the claims, and that the real impact rarely lives up to the hype. (This segment aired in the 6 p.m. version of the story, which is not yet online.) In the segment, a member of the bid committee claimed that the convention would have an economic impact of $250,000,000. That’s a quarter-billion dollars.

We don’t believe it. (Or, perhaps more delicately, we want to verify those numbers before we believe it.)

Certainly, having such a convention in Kansas City is a good thing, and not just for the money it will bring to the area. As a matter of pride, I would love to see Kansas City host again on the 40th anniversary of our last convention. But the idea that having the convention here amounts to a net gain of $250 million is absurd, and it casts a light on how calculating the economic impact of other items is the economic equivalent of alchemy.

The host committee is likely assuming that without the convention, hotel occupancy would be zero. Spending downtown would be zero. Travel in and out of Kansas City would be zero. Then it still probably over-estimates what will be spent here because of the convention. In reality, a hotel that would have had 70 percent occupancy without the convention may have 95 percent occupancy because of the convention. One can claim the difference as “economic impact” but not all of it. But we won’t know how the committee reached the quarter-billion number until it reveals how it calculated a $250,000,000 impact. (If the committee releases the estimate and it proves to be legitimate economic analysis with a multiplier effect below two, we will gladly admit we are wrong.)

As written in the Daily Beast story about the recent Super Bowl in New Jersey:

So, there’s no economically sound way to predict a Super Bowl’s impact before the event and those that try have been proven wrong again and again. But don’t expect that to stop the cheering from the few with the most to gain. When asked for a more detailed analysis of Super Bowl XLVIII, the host committee demurred, but assured in a statement, “Super Bowl XLVIII is expected to be an economic boom [sic] for the region.”

We’re not asking the committee to reveal anything legitimately embargoed about its bid. We just want to know how the committee arrived at that estimate for the impact should the convention occur in Kansas City. Certainly, Republicans would agree that the sound economic policies they advocate require sound economic assumptions — otherwise, how are they supposed to be any more responsible with taxpayer money?

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While most Missouri residents are aware that the Seahawks defeated the Broncos in the big game, they might not know that transportation enthusiasts had dubbed this year’s game the first “mass transit Super Bowl.” The New York metropolitan area is the nation’s densest, with extensive rail and bus networks. Organizers encouraged almost 100,000 fans to take public transportation, either rail or bus, to reach the game. Indeed, this is the type of event where mass transit systems should be most effective: moving a large crowd of predictable size to and from a centralized location.

However, things did not go as planned. As fans left the game, thousands packed into the Secaucus train station, where people waited up to 45 minutes for hot, crowded train cars. Some passengers reportedly required medical attention. It took hours, and scrambling 50 buses to the site, to clear out the jam.

What went wrong? Despite actively promoting the use of mass transit to get to the Super Bowl, organizers underestimated the number who would use the trains by a factor of three. Trains are a relatively inflexible form of transit; it takes a long while to bring extra capacity to an area with a sudden, unexpected spike in demand.

There are lessons Kansas City should take from the Super Bowl in planning the city’s future transit priorities:

First, planning for transit is fraught with pitfalls. Organizers of the Super Bowl had a set population and pre-sold tickets, only to massively underestimate those who would take rail transit. In the same way, no one can be sure of the future traveling habits of Kansas City residents or the city’s growth pattern.

Second, buses are flexible, trains are not. To alleviate the jam after the Super Bowl, New Jersey brought on 50 extra buses. New Jersey could not suddenly bring a whole set of trains to the Super Bowl when a problem arose. They could not build a new station to spread out the crowd. If Kansas City builds light rail and the population shifts or there is economic growth in an area where there is no rail service, there is little the city can do but eat its losses and build a new line. But if the city focuses on Bus Rapid Transit, it could shift resources to meet new demand.

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The Portrait of America video has just over 6,500 hits…which would sound pretty pathetic for a 10 month campaign if only it wasn’t revealed that the other six videos posted 10 months ago each received between 347 and 1,305 hits. In the series of videos posted 6 months ago, the most widely-watched video, about the address-canvassing operations, has been viewed a measly 1,083 times. (This means that only a tiny fraction of the workers involved in this process even watched the video…)

For comparison, 1,700,000 people watched Google’s Super Bowl ad on YouTube. And “How Many Times Must Our Health Care Fail,” the song I linked to in this post, has been viewed 3,700 times.

My Two Census’ numbers don’t reflect the Census Bureau’s full impact on YouTube, because they don’t take into account the separate channel that the Bureau created for its Super Bowl ad. The ad features an imaginary film director named Payton Schlewitt, and it can be found — along with other clips of Schlewitt’s antics — on the Payton Schlewitt channel. There, the numbers are better. The ad itself drew 117,300 hits within five days. Another video of Schlewitt and his cohorts, which highlights the fact that animals are not counted in the Census, is up to 1,400 hits, also after only a few days.

So, the numbers aren’t as bad as they would appear from the Census Bureau’s channel alone. Still, My Two Census has a point. Payton Schlewitt’s viewership pales next to Google’s. And, of the people who watched the Census ad, many reacted unfavorably. Viewers rated it a mediocre two-and-a-half stars, and several comments complain that taxes had to pay for it.

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Rev. Lovejoy: [surveys his congregation, one man and two old ladies] Well, I’m glad some people could resist the lures of the big game.
Man: Oh, my God!  I forgot the game! [rushes out]
— Super Bowl Sunday, “Lisa the Greek”

Hopefully, when I return to work on Monday, all bones intact, we will have no red light cameras, fewer state government employees, Warner will have his second ring, Fitzgerald his first, and the attention of the state of Missouri will turn to my study of state government, to be released next Thursday. I know how excited you all are.

P.S. — I make no claim to being anything more than a fair-weather Cardinals fan, who — like most of St. Louis — has decided to root for them on Sunday because of the presence of Kurt Warner. Although Larry Fitzgerald really is an amazing player.

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Mr. Schler, the acting state liquor and tobacco supervisor, said any salon requiring a purchase in order to obtain a complimentary drink is indirectly selling alcohol.

“You’re getting a haircut and alcohol all in one monetary consideration. It’s all a package,” he said. “You cannot get the drink without the money. So, it’s not actually free.”

I am pretty sure that at some point in the future, the government will try to license Super Bowl parties at your house. Because, you know, somebody has to pay for the television in the first place — so it’s not actually free. Speaking of guys who love beer and sports, thanks Combest for the link.

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