The City of Chicago is working diligently towards securing the bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The people with whom I have had conversations about the Olympic Bid have generally fallen into two categories 1) People who are against the Olympics coming to Chicago and cannot understand why there is such a big push to secure the bid and 2) People who genuinely think it will be "good" for Chicago to host the Olympics.
As a fan of the summer Olympics, I do think it would be cool to have the Olympics here in Chicago. However, the ends do not justify the means, and the means to bringing the Olympics to Chicago is taxation. Contrary to the belief that hosting the Olympics pays for itself and gives a boost to the economy, host cities use taxation and go deep into debt to finance the games, and we all know that governmental debt means more taxation. Then, who are the people pushing for the Olympic bid in Chicago, and why are they doing it?
The two groups pushing hard for the Olympics in Chicago are the politicians and the profiteers. Chicago politicians are as crooked as they come, and they are the ones that benefit the most from any public works project, especially one that is on the scale of building an Olympic village and managing the production. Politicians also like to build monuments to themselves, and Mayor Richard Daley is about as close to a dictator as we have in the United States. He likes to provide all sorts of "gifts" to the citizens of Chicago with his name on them, gifts which were paid for through the tax dollars of the most productive citizens of the city. Next time you want to buy your mother a gift, steal the money out of her wallet to pay for it.
The other group of cheerleaders for the Chicago Olympic bid are the profiteers, all of Daley's good ol' friends, the contractors, the unions, and most people in the restaurant and hospitality industries. Most of the people in this group are the kinds of people that would not make as much money as they do if it were not for the fact that the income they receive consists of stolen goods. To clarify this point, it is important to analyze the claim that such a huge public project like the Olypmics is "good for the economy." According to the Chicago Sun Times, the Olympic Village is projected to cost $1.1 billion to construct, which means it will probably cost closer to $2.5 billion. This figure includes only the costs of constructing the village and infrastructure, and does not include all of the other costs associated with the production of the Olympics games. The cheerleaders say, "Look, that $2.5 billion will go to laborers, suppliers, and contractors. It will increase employment!" Yes, that $2.5 billion will increase employment in those sectors, but it will decrease employment in those productive sectors which are footing the bill through their taxes. "But the Olympics will draw hundreds of thousands of people to the city, and they will shop, get hotel rooms, go to restaurants, buy gifts, which will serve to bolster the economy." Again, those industries which provide these tourists with goods and services will flourish, temporarily, at the expense of those productive sectors which are footing the bill through their taxes.
This is an important point, so let us follow this through from the beginning. The individual companies in a market economy are generally working to maximize profit. Profit is essentially a measure of the degree to which the aggregate of individual buyers want a product or service compared to all other products or services available to them. Companies and entrepreneurs are using all data available to them to bring to market the products and services that people want the most. It is a remarkably efficient process when left alone. When the local city and state governments step in and say to the profitable companies, "We are going to take money from you via taxes to pay for our new public works project," this money, as stated above, will go to people directly involved in the public works project. Prior to this money going to the contractors, hoteliers, suppliers, etc., involved in this public works project, those people were already involved in production in some capacity. The income and profits they were earning were either in equilibrium or tending towards equilibrium with everything else being produced in the economy. In other words, they were producing just enough, and people were buying just enough of their products. Now, when money is taken by force from certain companies and given to the people that will be involved in the public works project, the equilibrium has been disrupted and these certain goods and services related to the public works project are produced in a quantity above what the aggregate of people would have consumed for them if they weren't forced to do so through taxes. This means there will be fewer of the goods and services that people consider more essential compared to the public works project.
Going back to the case of the Olympics, it is also not true that revenue attributed directly to the Olympics games will more than offset the costs of the entire production. To put another way, it is not true that Olympics games are profitable. According to this document from the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee, actual revenue from the sales tax spike, sponsorship revenue, sales of food and merchandise, and other miscellaneous revenue equaled approximately $4.2 billion. Total costs, after factoring in the tax funds used to "offset" the direct costs of the Winter Olympics, were approximately $16 billion. Therefore, in addition to forcing people to pay for a project they otherwise would not have paid for, the taxpayers are then saddled with a deficit of nearly $12 billion dollars.
It is important to realize that when the elected officials propose a spending spree which is supposed to be good for "the public", you are most likely not included in their definition of "the public". Southern slave owners argued that slavery was good for the economy, but you know they did not think of their slaves as being members of that economy and neither did the slaves believe that their slavery was in their own best interest.
