Are you ready for some.. free-money? With 15 minutes until the NFL season opens this evening, we thought this little gem from Bloomberg [4] was perfect to stoke the fires of Giants-Cowboys fanatic antagonism. That’s because the 80,000-seat Cowboys Stadium was built partly using tax-free borrowing. The resulting subsidy comes out of the pockets of every American taxpayer, including Giants' fans. The money doesn’t go directly to the Cowboys’ billionaire owner Jerry Jones. Rather, it lowers the cost of financing, giving his team the highest revenue in the NFL and making it the league’s most-valuable franchise. "It’s part of the corruption of the federal tax system, subsidizing activity that the private sector can finance on its own." This is not just the Cowboys but such tax-free public borrowing 'municipal' debt helped build structures used by 64 major-league teams, including baseball, hockey and basketball. As Bloomberg concludes, “You come back to this thin line of, ‘What is a legitimate municipal government undertaking?’ If the owner can get away with the public putting up part of the money, he’s going to do it.”
...of course there are legitimate uses of taxpayer funds... (cue gratuitous Cowboys cheerleader image)
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