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The Olympics

Jul 30th, 2012 by

By most accounts, a fool’s investment.

What to do?

 

H. M. Stuart

Alexandria

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Posted in Economics, Nation, Politics, Sport, World

6 Responses to “The Olympics”

  1. John E. says:
    July 30, 2012 at 10:54 am

    I ignore it.

  2. Kim Margosein says:
    July 30, 2012 at 8:13 pm

    Sit back and enjoy it. The torch ceremony was quite moving. Look at it as the world’s birthday party.

  3. H. M. Stuart says:
    July 30, 2012 at 9:04 pm

    Perhaps I was too brief in my post.

    By fool’s investment I meant the monetary expense on the part of the host city yielding little or no return at all, often with additional unforeseen costs later after the fact. I was not speaking of an individual’s person experience of the event.

    H. M. Stuart
    Alexandria

    • Mustang Sally says:
      August 1, 2012 at 8:24 pm

      I love the idea of the Olympics, but it seems to have gotten out of control. Did cities always have to build entire stadiums, which afterwards go unused and contribute to urban decay, in order to host the events? It’s such a waste of resources. Maybe the Olympics needs to scale down and use existing structures.

  4. John E. says:
    July 31, 2012 at 9:48 am

    Back in the day, Houston’s “Mattress” Mac tried very hard to get the Olympics to come to Houston. Fortunately that never happened.

    Anyways, in these sorts of situations, the benefits are privatized – ego strokes to guys like Mac, construction contracts, hotel revenues, while the costs are socialized.

    Obvious solution is to require that not one single dime of taxpayer funds will be used and no public bonds will be sold to pay for the event.

    I’d like to see the same policy for sports stadiums.