Gregg Easterbrook loves football, but he doesn’t love how taxpayers get the shaft for his beloved sport. He thinks people should know that whether you go to the games or not, you’re paying for it.
In an interview with Nick Gillespie at Reason magazine, Easterbrook says, “The [state-supported] University of Maryland charges each…undergraduate $400 a year to subsidize the football program.” But he says that only a half-dozen or so college teams are actually self-supporting. Even enormously successful programs such as the University of Florida’s pull money from students and taxpayers. “They do it,” he says, “because they can get away with it.”
Capitalism for the poor! Socialism for the rich!
Taxpayers are also on the hook for publicly financed stadiums where team owners pay little to nothing while getting to keep all the revenue. Lobbyists got the NFL chartered as a non-profit. Easterbrook says that the team owners are hypocrites saying, “Everyone in football talks rock-ribbed conservatism, self-reliance. Then their economic structure is subsidies and guaranteed benefits. Isn’t that America?”
Oh, and before you make the argument that the taxpayer funded sports stadiums are an economic benefit… watch this:
