Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post has the column of the week, a righteous piece of outrage at the NFL and what it says about our society.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in Jerry World. In Jerry World, a $1.15 billion stadium looks like the Taj Mahal on the outside, but inside some of the seats violate the fire code. In Jerry World, the state of Texas spends $31 million to host the Super Bowl, even as deficits force public school cuts. In Jerry World, it can cost $900 just to park. In Jerry World, fans pay hundreds of dollars to stand outside the stadium…
Everything you need to know about the future of the NFL could be seen in the gloriously decadent stadium that hosted this Super Bowl. As NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell pointed out, “Quite frankly, that’s our stage.” It was the cleanest, safest, nicest stadium anyone has ever visited. It was also the most extravagant and economically stratified. It cost double what Jerry Jones said it would, and taxpayers financed about a quarter of it, yet its innermost marble interiors are totally inaccessible to the average fan…
The average cost of attending a game for a family of four is $412.64. At Cowboys Stadium, it’s a staggering $758.58. That’s what the league calls growth.
Corporate welfare funds this ridiculousness and subsidizes the obscene salaries of players, coaches, and NFL executives.
Jenkins is smart to key in on the arms-race angle:
his Super Bowl was the future, and it set some lousy precedents. Every owner in the league wants a stadium like this one, and they will be pitching - maybe even extorting - their communities to help them build one. They want ever-larger luxury suites and bigger restaurants, and giant scoreboards and TVs, so they can replicate this Super Bowl, and sell standing room space in plazas and blocked views of a big screen for $200.
Would that more sports columnists would quit slobbering over these taxpayer-financed boondoggles and write about them as clearly as Jenkins does here.
— David Leonhardt has a simple post putting the lie to all the yammering about “inflation” coming from the Paul Ryan/Ron Paul precincts.
It’s a picture of core inflation going back forty years:
Does it look dangerously high?
Or might the slow pace of economic growth and the high level of unemployment be larger problems?
Weimar, here we come!
— Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil writes about the toothless SEC, which accused General Electric of willful fraud but closed the case without trying to nail any individual for committing the fraud.
GE settled for $50 million for committing accounting fraud to massage its earnings (of course, the usual boilerplate part of the settlement is the company neither confirmed or denied the allegations). But the SEC decided not to charge anyone.
Imagine that: A fraud without fraudsters.
Weil’s conclusion:
It makes no sense that GE could have defrauded its shareholders unless some living, breathing people committed the same violations. So either the wrongdoers got off scot free, or the SEC shouldn’t have brought the case it did against the company.
This isn’t enforcement. It’s a charade.
The view of inflation and the CPI is not so peachy when you stop using the govt's "core inflation" measurement (Keynesian alchemy) and start including food and energy prices. Moreover, the increase in the money supply is true inflation, and its effects are not easy to measure but are eventually felt.
(BTW: Grouping Ron Paul with Paul Ryan on economic or fiscal matters is comparable to grouping Dennis Kucinich with Barack Obama on civil liberties or foreign policy. In both cases, the former walks the walk while the latter is a vile hypocrite.)
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 12:34 AM
Food and energy prices are global commodities which often fluctuate due to factors unrelated to fiscal policy (if the price of wheat rises globally, is the price increase really related to one country's increase in money supply?)
Core inflation gives an indication of what the currency is worth in sticky goods (prices for which rarely fluctuate and can therefore be used as a gauge of a currency's fiscal condition).
Even if you include those, prices haven't jumped by that much because the stock needs to sell out at the current price before a store can consider raising the price for the next batch.
And what we've observed is that demand is repressed right now because debt is high. credit is low, and wages are stagnant / falling in the lower income percentiles.
Normally the increase in money supply would be causing inflation, but all of that money that was printed was given to TBTF bankers who are not circulating it. The money is out there, but it's not in the economy (might be in China's. I hear they have an inflation problem).
And I was going to mention your point before you did it yourself, Ron Paul is speaking based on his sincere understanding of Austrian Economics. He's wrong, but he's acting sincerely based on what he believes is right.
Paul Ryan on the other hand doesn't really believe what he says and often says things which he should know to be lies:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/fun-with-paul-ryan-and-the-washington-post
He's wrong too, but he's dishonest wrong. You cannot trust his intentions nor his integrity at all. He's the one spreading the "Obamacare double counts medicare savings" + "Obamacare doesn't include the doc fix" deceptions.
I don't know whether you feel that grounds to separate them since they're both wrong on the inflation question, but I feel more comfortable binding dishonest minds together on the issue, like Sarah Palin (who's inflation fiascos were covered on cjr) and Ryan, than Ron Paul and Ryan.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 01:43 AM
A nice little aside you might add is how the owners have decided to break their side of the agreement with players and force a lock out, canceling next season.
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2011/02/greedy-players-force-impoverished.html
Yeah, the players make a little cash, but they're the ones with the lives literally shortened and sacrificed:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/01/26/might-as-well-get-this-one-out-of-the-way-early-in-the-superbowl-hype-fortnight/
Taxpayers sacrifice subsidies and tax breaks for the new stadium, players sacrifice three years of productive living for every year of pro-ball, owners - they don't sacrifice a thing. They are Galts, the lot. Everyone else is a parasite but them.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 02:17 AM
Hi Ryan C.,
Just sent the following email ...
Hi David Leonhardt,
I write re. the chart
Core inflation, previous 12 months
in your post
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/inflation-in-one-picture/
I went to BLS and got the series from its 1957 beginning, and posted the chart here (in case you don’t want attachment):
http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf/CUUR0000SA0L1E_420943_1297457096589.gif
The 1966 trend break started a future severely different from the past -- AND I do recall reading along the way that the higher inflation was intentional/LBJ to help ‘pay for the Vietnam War’.
Honest!,
EJH
#4 Posted by Ed, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 04:39 PM