Bread (and roses), not circuses

Amazing fact: Forbes calculates profits of the big four sports (I guess that’s baseball, football, basketball, and tiddlywinks?) at $1.6 billion, but these industries receive taxpayer subsidies totaling more than $2 billion a year. That is, taxpayers provide the entire profits of sports. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

I’ve always had a deep resentment of sports analogies, the continued job security of sports writers even as investigative reporters become an endangered species, and sports films with “universal appeal,” not to mention taxpayer-funded stadiums. Why am I supposed to take overgrown boys’ games any more seriously than I would expect anyone to take pedicures, eye-brow-plucking technique, or the collection of Beanie Babies?

Now I know what I've always suspected: the whole sports business really is parasitism, pure and simple.

The above revelation comes from a terrific article in the current issue of Mother Jones laying out how we can get the economy back on track. Check it out.

Another fact to ponder in a different article in the same issue of MoJo: Tax cuts and credits for corporations and wealthy individuals have a negative return on investment—less than 37 cents on the dollar—while every dollar spent on food stamp benefits returns $1.73 to the economy. I’d like to see what the return on investment in childcare or paid family leave might be. Something tells me it’d be better than sports stadiums.