OT: Terry Pegula wants new Bills stadium 100% public financed
Hopefully residents tell him to pound sand. Not really sure why Buffalo suddenly needs a new stadium when the state of New York and Erie County just spent 130 million ten years ago to renovate the current stadium. Especially a sport that sees attendance fall every year with more and more people watching on tv.
Someone should ask Pegula if it would be so profitable why doesnt he just build it himself?
Using the threat of moving the team to try and get it too. I wish one day I could be rich so I could know how it feels to be so entitled .
Over the years, both the Colorado Rockies and the Broncos successfully held the taxpayers by the testicular material, with MLB threatening not to give Denver a team and the Broncos threatening to move- both which would never occur. A couple of months ago, shortly after giving Nolan Arenado and his $280M contract away, the city also gave the Rockies ownership (perhaps the poorest in $$$ AND management skills in MLB) a large block of prime land to privately develop, with no apparent plan to roll the profits back into the team. Now the latest rumor has new ownership of the Broncos building a new/stadium/development outside of the city, leaving a practically new Mile High empty.
I once corrected a co-worker when he used the word "we" when describing an issue relating to the Broncos. These are not the DENVER Broncos, they are the Bowlen Family Broncos. Pro teams only hold out for the almighty dollar and will f*** the public at the first opportunity. NO public money should be used for stadiums for billion dollar private enterprises. It's time to say "good riddance". Another reason I rarely watch and never attend pro sports.
Unfortunately, Buffalo is a small metro area that can be replaced.
The Bills are *extremely* valued by the area and you’re right- its a small metro and there a are lots of growing cities with more money so the public here in NY is probably gonna pony up to some degree. The city would be a devastated if they left - they and the Sabres are the only sports teams anyone follows out here. No one follows college sports or NBA/MLB much
What, he should be happy with more money than he could ever spend and treat people with generosity and understanding? But how will he keep needlessly hoarding wealth like a fucking dragon?
Eat the rich.
Tax them first. Then eat.
Oakland is in play!!!
"Please kind sirs and madams, money for the filthy wealthy." - The Pegulas
Billionaires shouldn't exist.
Billionaires are the result of a good economy. Look at the number of billionaires in China twenty years ago compared to now. Don’t be afraid of billionaires. Be afraid of governments that hold too much power and have a monopoly on war and power.
edit: move to a country with little to no billionaires
good luck. said from a handy yooper to a bunch of spoiled Michigan grads
damn, that’s a good one!
oh. you’re serious. never mind.
This is such a BS.
Yeah the govt is so powerful that all of those wonderful billionaires are practically paying nothing in taxes. What we will those poor billionaires do to survive without govt gifting them billions in free stuff on tip of them not paying taxes???
It sounds like you're critiquing the system, not the billionaires. There's nothing wrong with becoming incredibly successful. If you think they shouldn't be able to avoid taxes, that's a different criticism entirely (and one that few disagree with, I'd imagine). That said, I think the "billionaires don't pay taxes" thing is a little overblown.
People who conflate success with wealth should be immediately ignored in these types of conversations.
And yes, there is something morally wrong with being that wealthy.
Can you elaborate on how you equate any level of morality to any level of wealth?
So you would rather be a commie and then the government owns everything? and wastes even more.
Amazon puts to work 200,000 people that is Billions in income/payroll taxes.
I just think we should look at rich people the way that Dwight Eisenhower did from a tax perspective. (shrug)
That's nice that Amazon employs all those people but that doesn't mean they don't get to pay taxes. Why is it such an onerous request to get rich people and companies to pay into the system that benefits them more than anyone else? Pay your goddamned taxes.
Also - why are the choices 1) plutocratic oligarchs pay $0 in taxes or 2) communism? Asking the wealthiest people in the world to pay the bare minimum in taxes isn't communism.
Are you new to American politics? Everything the right doesn't like is either communism or socialism. Just depends on the pull of the string.
There is something in the middle between communism (which in practice is horribly unequal) and a system where the rich pay little in taxes.
Not to jump in to the red/blue part of this discussion, but what I would hope for is as much a separation of the principles of capitalism, which historically has lead to enormous increases in the quality of living for a society, and the principles of purchasing politicians to work the tax codes to the benefit of certain wealthy individuals.
When we see someone like Donald Trump or Jeff Bezos paying pretty much nothing in income tax, that's not capitalism and that's not socialism. It's corruption. And I have a hard time blaming someone for buying politicians - that's just good financial sense. I blame the politicians who make themselves available for sale. Almost everyone in Congress has millions, and the salary alone doesn't explain it.
August 2nd, 2021 at 12:27 PM ^
Actually, in Communism, not even the government owns property. In fact, no one does. So in that sense one might say in a Communist economy/state, there is no such thing as property. Nor is there such a thing as money. Hard to fathom how that would work in practice, but just wanted to point out the details.
Additionally, I think you might want to do a little digging for articles about the conditions that Amazon workers endure before you go praising them for providing "jobs."
I would be less afraid of billionaires than the people who give them what they want
Maybe for example elon musk who was or is the richest person on earth having millions of followers and also being a SNL host and worshipped by the masses. The same masses who say that we shouldn’t have billionaires.
August 2nd, 2021 at 10:35 AM ^
^This.
“It’s okay to be a billionaire as long as you are a celebrity/athlete or someone I agree with politically. Otherwise, off with their heads” /s.
There are plenty of incredibly poor countries—especially in per capita terms—with more than their share of billionaires
But as those poor countries become more wealthy the number of billionaires increase. Sure the thought of billionaires is ridiculous but money printing makes them more imminent. We love our mark Cubans and Elon musks. In order to be strong you have to be heavy but there are 140lb individuals who can bench bench over 300 lbs but if they increased their body weight they could lift more just like an economy can boost its richest citizens
Someone should tell the hundreds of millions of dirt-poor Chinese people that the existence of a handful of politically-connected billionaires in their country is actually a good thing. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
Also - we love Mark Cuban and Elon Musk? You make some weird points.
I’ve been to China 100 times. Next time you’re there, you go tell them
edit: I have a sweet pic of a “ denard for heisman” shirt on a snowy Great Wall
August 1st, 2021 at 10:07 PM ^
Cool story, bro.
August 1st, 2021 at 10:02 PM ^
You’ll never go to China to do anything like I have but I know first the poorest and witnessed an increase in wealth
"Billionaires are the result of a good economy" Ah yes. There were famously no billionaires after the 2008 crash. I'm old enough to remember when the pandemic hit and the economy tanked again and lots of billionaires got richer. Bezos got billions more last year just from sheer luck of circumstances.
Billionaires are the result of plutocracy.
America had it right when we determined democratic capitalism was the most efficient and morally defensible system. Allowing the ultra-wealthy to rule over society for their own benefit to the detriment of everyone else is an absolute embarrassment to our ancestors.
Plutocracy is not sustainable. It never has been and it never will be.
August 2nd, 2021 at 12:30 PM ^
By "democratic capitalism," if you mean each enterprise is a democracy, then I'm in agreement.
August 1st, 2021 at 10:00 PM ^
Libertarian drivel...
August 1st, 2021 at 10:18 PM ^
I’m a libertarian and worked in the peace corps in South America where I met wife then worked in Asia
edit: down vote spoiled woke Michigan grads
lol.
if you were really a libertarian you wouldn't be working the peace corps, you'd be out building your own roads and putting up electrical supply cables to your house.
August 1st, 2021 at 11:46 PM ^
Someone doesn't know his audience, like that was ever gonna work here. Even the leftist rich professes to hate the rich, and demand that other rich people give away their money.
I'd hate to outlaw billionaires, but I'd like to see the government make them carry their own weight more and we can start by making the NFL pay for its own stadiums.
I agree. I hope and see billionaires as a result or innovation and technology. I’ll never be one. I understand this and don’t envy them
The five territories with the highest number of billionaires per capita are Monaco, St. Kitts and Nevis, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Cyprus.
Not exactly beacons of "innovation and technology."
Hong Kong is slipping down that list rapidly.
We both know why. Which begs the question: is it a good thing what China is doing (clamping down on freedom there), thereby leading to less economic inequality?
That question does go along with my other post in this thread: you cannot have both economic equality and freedom.
August 1st, 2021 at 10:02 PM ^
Nobody is demanding "economic equality." We're demanding the absence of an inequality so severe that some people starve while others fly to outer space.
August 1st, 2021 at 10:14 PM ^
Fair enough. But you (1) are demanding less billionaires, while (2) pointing to Hong Kong as an example of a country with too many billionaires (per capita).
Well, Hong Kong DOES have less billionaires these days! Considering how and why that is occurring, is that a good thing?
Fewer.
-Stannis
OK. But perhaps some follow-up questions to further test your economic philosophy:
(1) Should millionaires be able to exist? (I'm sure there are several MGoBlog posters with a net worth of 7 or maybe even more figures)
(2) If you answer "yes" to that question --- why do they get to exist and billionaires don't?
(3) If there's a "cut off" as to who gets to exist, where is that cutoff? Who defines what that cutoff is?
4) what happens to the billionaires income that is over this arbitrary limit? Who gets the “extra” and why? Who doesn’t and why? And of those who do get it … what did they do to be handed what they never earned?
Lots of people working harder than ever to barely make ends meet would be a good start... You honestly think billionaires worked thousands of times harder than mere millionaires? Hundreds of thousands of times harder than people working minimum wage jobs?
Okay, millionaires and billionaires. But NO gazillionaires.
How 'bout this. Let millionaires and billionaires "exist." Then implement reasonable wealth transfer tax policies so that we don't need to have this discussion anymore.
But we are ALWAYS going to be having this discussion. ALWAYS. Even if we did your "reasonable wealth tax policies", the mega rich and the poor would still exist.
And the reason for that is this ......... economic equality and freedom cannot exist together simultaneously for very long, that's a state of imbalance that is counter to the fundamentals of nature and mankind.
If we desire "100% equality", we necessarily need to take away freedom from some people. If we desire "100% freedom", we are going to see inequalities develop over time.
People can downvote away (this board is going down the path of simply downvoting people as opposed to engaging in discussion, which is discouraging). But the above, I believe, is simply a fundamental law of nature.